First criminal trial in New Hampshire youth detention center abuse scandal begins

The first criminal trial in a five-year investigation into allegations of abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center begins Monday, though the case involves another state-run facility.

Victor Malavet, 62, of Gilford, is one of nine former officials charged in the attorney general’s criminal investigation into the Sununu Youth Services Center. Charges against a 10th man were dropped in May after he was found incompetent to stand trial, and another died last month.

While the others worked at the Manchester facility, formerly known as the Youth Development Center, Malavet worked at the Youth Detention Services Unit in Concord, where children were held while their cases were awaiting court decisions. He is charged with 12 counts of aggravated sexual assault, all against a 16-year-old girl detained there in 2001.

Prosecutors say Malavet began paying special attention to the girl shortly after she arrived, treating her better than other residents and granting her special privileges.

“She was selected to be the resident who would go into a candy storage room to pick out candy for the other residents,” Assistant Attorney General Timothy Sullivan said during a court hearing shortly after Malavet’s arrest in 2021. Once inside the closet-like room, she was allegedly forced into sex.

Malavet was transferred to Manchester after other staff reported “there was something going on between the two of them,” Sullivan said.

Malavet’s attorney, Maya Dominguez, said Friday that her client maintains his innocence and looks forward to fighting the charges.

According to court documents, Malavet’s accuser was transferred from Manchester to the Concord unit after she assaulted a staff member with a metal pipe and fled. Defense attorneys sought to introduce evidence of that incident at her trial, saying he paid attention to her because she had been treated poorly by other staff and residents because of it. He also wanted to use it to weaken his claim that she had been coerced, according to a judge’s ruling denying his claim.

The judge, however, granted Malavet’s request to allow evidence of her previous criminal convictions to be presented, over prosecutors’ objections. After being tried as an adult, the girl spent 10 years in prison for assaulting the Manchester employee.

In a 2021 interview, the woman, now 39, said she was too afraid to report the abuse she suffered.

“I didn’t want the situation to get worse,” she told The Associated Press. “I was very afraid to report anything. I saw how other children were treated.”

She also said she hopes to return to school to pursue a degree in finance.