On Friday, survivors and supporters of those who went through the horrors of YDC gathered at the Capitol in Concord, NH.
YDC is the youth correctional facility that was the place where possibly millions of children were molested or brutally abused over 170 years.
The survivors are asking for a federal investigation. It doesn’t seem right that the state is investigating a state facility.
My question is: who fights for the disadvantaged? That’s what I want you to ask yourself as you read the story of Adam Cordano and other children who suffered at the Sununu Youth and Services Center.
Last week, I sat down with Adam Cordano to talk to him about what he experienced in the NH state foster care system and at the Sununu Youth and Services Center. Adam is one of many plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Sununu Youth and Services Center. The lawsuit alleges that state employees sexually and physically abused many children who were detained at the center.
I will just highlight some of my takeaways from the interview. I encourage you to watch the whole interview to hear Adam for yourself.
Adam stated that he was constantly running away from foster parents because he always felt abused.
The abuse was not always physical, but it was emotional. The reason for that is that he was always one of many, many foster care children in a house and he was treated like a paycheck.
One family had ten foster children and four biological children. They fed the foster children state rations. While the biological children ate store-bought food.
Because he was made to feel less, he ran away, and he did that repeatedly.
After running out of foster homes to live in, at 13 years old, Adam was forced to live at YDC, which is now called the Sununu Youth and Services Center. At YDC, he was sexually abused repeatedly by Stan Watson. Stan would come into his room in the middle of the night and force him to have sex.
He reported the abuse to Joe Peters, the unit manager, but Peters refused to send Adam to the medical facility for an exam. Instead, he talked to Stan about it. After that, Stan beat Adam for reporting him.
Next, Stan asked Adam’s case worker, Evelyn Blaze to let him be Adam’s foster dad. Adam told Evelyn that Stan was raping him. She told him that if he didn’t go with Stan, he would be forced to stay in King Cottage, a prison-like facility at YDC.
Without a background check or the usual hoops that foster parents need to go through, Stan was allowed to bring Adam home.
After some time of living with Stan, Adam got fed up and decided to hold Stan at gunpoint. The cops were called, and he told the cops what was going on. That’s when Stan’s dad, the chief of police from Merrimack (a different county from the arrest), stepped in. He told Stan that if he talked about what went on, he would never see the light of day.
So, Adam went back to Stan’s house.
According to Adam, Evelyn Blaze became the head of DCYF.
If Adam had trouble learning, they would cuff him to a poll and put him in seclusion. How did that help Adam learn anything? Why didn’t someone step in and say, stop hurting these children?
Adam said that he was forced to wrestle other boys naked at YDC. Then, if a child was hurt, they brought them to medical. At medical, the workers never questioned why children were always getting hurt.
Stan probably abused more children, not just Adam. Yet, why didn’t those children come forward after getting out of YDC?
If they did, what happened to their complaints?
Were the complaints treated like Adam’s complaint? Are we not a country that believes in innocence until proven guilty? Why were these children treated like liars if they reported their crimes?
Is that how the state treats all children who came forward with claims of abuse?
If there are over 300 people that have come forward to add their names to this lawsuit, many people have surely come forward in the past to report abuse.
Why did it have to take a class action lawsuit brought by so many people to get the state to investigate and question the system.
Adam obviously felt very alone. His foster families used him as a paycheck. His case worker didn’t fight for him. Workers at the state facility were abusing him. When he reported crimes, his crimes were dismissed. The police threatened him if he spoke out.
Who was he supposed to turn to?
If you want to read about the horrors that went on at the Sununu Youth Center and other facilities for disadvantaged youths, check out this NPR article.