Distant Dome: New Hampshire's Own Trail Of Tears

By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome, InDepth NH

The unbridled power of the national government created a Trail of Tears nearly 200 years ago killing tens of thousands of native Americans, stealing their land and bilking survivors of their livelihood and dignity.

The United States government forcibly removed the five civilized tribes from their ancestral land and relocated them to distant reservations. The government-sponsored genocide killed thousands through starvation, disease and exposure.

Earlier Native Americans were promised their own land and sovereignty but when the white man chased gold, land and opportunities westward, the promises were broken.

In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act which created the trail of tears and the members allowed President Andrew Jackson to ignore a US Supreme Court ruling upholding native sovereignty.

Over 500 treaties with Native Americans were broken so the country could expand westward under the flag of manifest destiny.

Last week, the state Republican-controlled government embarked on its own forced Trail of Tears involving more than 1,000 people who were physically, sexually, and psychologically abused as children while under the state’s care when they were incarcerated at the state’s Youth Development Center.

They were abused by employees of the State of New Hampshire and those running the Manchester River Road facility knew it, refused to stop it and threatened those who would expose the horrific actions of their colleagues.

Lawmakers have grappled with how to address the state’s exposure for the thousands of legal claims for a number of years after the horrific reports of abuse began to surface in 2017 when David Meehan told police about his abuse at the hands of his caretakers at the center.

After Meehan went public, more claims surfaced and in 2019 the Attorney General’s Office created a task force to investigate.

Eventually more than 1,100 civil claims were filed against the state which, if heard, would overwhelm the court system and expose the state to billions of dollars of potential settlements with the victims.

Using $100 million in state surplus funds, lawmakers established the YDC settlement fund with an independent administrator appointed by the state Supreme Court to oversee the awards to victims.

The process was adjusted several times mainly by increasing the benefits to victims and expanding the abuse landscape to include more claimants.

The idea was to have claims settled through the independent process rather than the courts where the state’s exposure would be considerably higher.

Meehan, whose case went to trial, was awarded $38 million last year and another case was settled for $10 million this year. The settlement claims totaled nearly 2,000 at the end of June.

The claimants going through the settlement process have to agree not to seek further action against the state through the courts.

Even last year, lawmakers were discussing a $75 million annual commitment for 10 years to provide $750 million in money for the victims, although many lawmakers believed the program would have to provide more than $1 billion to keep claimants out of court and in the settlement process.

A new governor took office and the first indication the state may not live up to its agreement with the vast majority of the abuse victims, was when Gov. Kelly Ayotte released her proposed biennial budget in February without any money for the program.

At the end of the legislative process, there was little real money put into the settlement fund, although the promise of the sale of the YDC in Manchester, now the Sununu Youth Services Center, would be earmarked for that, but the real shock for the victims and their attorneys was revamping the settlement process to do away with the independent administrator, having the governor appoint the person and giving the Attorney General, John Formella, veto power over any settlement.

The independent administrator, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick, was frustrated with the legislature’s handling of the situation and perplexed at the proposed change to do away with an independent decision-maker and instead subject someone to the political and administerial pressure that could be brought to bear.

Formella also told Broderick his office would be moving to dismiss as many sexual and physical abuse cases as possible on statute of limitations grounds. “That’s the responsibility of my office,” he said.

Formella last week was nominated by Ayotte for another four-year term after he was in hold-over status for a number of months.

So after the state had sought to move claims from the courts to the settlement process, and received agreement from most of those filing claims to go forward with that process, the state now pulls the rug out from under the 1,300 or so victims of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at the hands of state employees and a state that declined to intervene to stop the abuse when it was happening.

Besides the blatant hypocrisy, it is difficult not to acknowledge the elected leaders of the state may have acted immorally against the abuse victims.

The actions would be even more shocking if this were the first time the legislature has done something like this, but it is not.

You do not have to look too far into the past to see how lawmakers treated the state’s hospitals after they helped bail the state out of a $200 million budget hole through “Mediscam.” It was not long before lawmakers reduced the money going back to reimburse the hospitals who paid the Medicaid Enhancement Tax and in the 2011-12 budget, taking all the money for the general fund.

And the numerous public education funding suits are examples of school districts settling with the state, which did not live up to its end of the agreement.

In the 1980s the state settled an education funding suit filed by Laconia by agreeing to the Augenblick formula which targeted more state money to poor districts. But the state never fully funded it which led to the Claremont suit, which was settled by the state Supreme Court 30 years ago, and the state has yet to meet the requirements in the decisions, as recent court rulings indicate.

County nursing homes are a godsend for many people and at one time the state and the counties split the non-federal share of the costs.

The state and counties agreed the counties would pay a greater share of the nursing home costs, while the state would pay a greater share of the Children in Need of Services costs for at-risk juveniles.

Soon after the agreement, the legislature did away with the youth services program and only reinstated it after an uproar from police, schools, parents and advocates, but removed the courts from decision making. Sounds familiar.

But the damage done to the victims of abuse at the YDC is more egregious as the consequences are life altering and life long.

But so is the impact on children in poorer performing schools that never have had enough new state aid to compete with the opportunities in property wealthy school districts.

If there is one thing lawmakers have mastered over the years, it is the fine art of kicking the can down the road and leaving the problem solving to a future generation.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.