A prosecutor told jurors on Tuesday that Manchester youth detention center employee Bradley Asbury restrained a 14-year-old resident while two other colleagues raped him 26 years ago.

Asbury’s attorney countered that the allegations were made up or misremembered, potentially in an effort to score a sizable civil settlement.

The criminal case against Asbury, 69, of Dunbarton, is the second to proceed to trial in the sprawling Sununu Youth Services Center abuse scandal. It follows a similar case from September when a jury failed to reach a verdict because one juror cited a lack of evidence for the decades-old allegations. 

During opening statements in Hillsborough County Superior Court on Tuesday morning, a prosecutor and defense attorney agreed on certain basic facts: The victim, Michael Gilpatrick, now 40, failed to return from a multi-day furlough from the youth detention center. After a Derry police officer arrested and returned him to the Manchester facility, he was given a 10-day room confinement punishment.

But the attorneys diverged on what happened next. Prosecutor Audriana Mekula told the jury of 9 women and 5 men that on the day Gilpatrick returned, two youth counselors brought him to the office of Asbury, who held a role of authority as the “house leader.”

After Gilpatrick “talked back” to Asbury, Mekula said Asbury and three other employees dragged the boy to the landing of a staircase, where two of the youth counselors raped him as Asbury and the other employee held him down. 

“This trial is about how Mike was raped; it is not about revenge and it is not about money,” Mekula said. “It is about this defendant and the role he played in Mike’s rape, a crime that could not have happened without the defendant’s help.”

The three other employees involved in the alleged rape – Jeffrey Buskey, Stephen Murphy, and James Woodlock – have also been charged and are scheduled to go to trial at various points in 2025.

Asbury’s attorney, David Rothstein, argued in his opening statement that Gilpatrick’s statements to police about the abuse he claims to have endured have been “inconsistent or unreliable” and that he has significant motivation to lie given the money he could gain via a civil lawsuit filed against the state.

“You will hear that Michael Gilpatrick was deep into the business of suing the State of New Hampshire before he gave the statement to the New Hampshire State Police” about what he experienced at the detention facility, Rothstein said. “… He has a lot riding on the verdict.”

However, the state does not need to obtain a guilty verdict against Asbury for Gilpatrick to prevail in his civil case.

In all, 11 former juvenile jail and detention center employees have been criminally charged in connection with alleged physical and sexual abuse that allegedly occurred from 1960 to 2021. Along with Gilpatrick, nearly 1,300 former youth facility residents have filed civil suits against the state.

Of the 11 employees charged, one has since died, another has been found incompetent to stand trial, and prosecutors have dropped charges against a third, citing a lack of evidence. A new trial has yet to be scheduled in the case against Victor Malavet, in which the jury deadlocked in September.

In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a jury awarded David Meehan $38 million in May for the abuse he says he suffered in the 1990s, though that verdict remains in dispute as a judge capped it at $475,000 and Meehan’s attorneys appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court.

Gilpatrick testified at the Meehan civil trial, describing Asbury and the three other youth counselors allegedly responsible for his rape as being known as “the hit squad” among the teens.

“The four of them used to roll together, and they would go to different cottages and beat kids,” Gilpatrick testified. “They would literally come over and just go door to door and beat every single one of us, down the line.”

Asbury is charged with two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated sexual assault. If found guilty, he faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on each count.

In 1994, four years prior to the alleged rape of Gilpatrick, Asbury had been fired from the youth detention facility over allegations of physical and psychological abuse, but he was ultimately rehired under an agreement that kept his termination off his personnel file, court records show. He continued to work at the Manchester facility until 2001.

In 2000, when the state was investigating a series of complaints of physical abuse and neglect at the center, Asbury was quoted as saying the allegations were offensive.

“We take them personally,” he told The Union Leader. “That stuff does not take place. It’s not tolerated. We don’t have time to abuse them.”

In court on Tuesday, Asbury wore a dark suit, white shirt, and tan tie, and occasionally took notes as attorneys gave their opening statements. Asbury, who has been out on bail since his arrest in 2021, was accompanied by a handful of supporters, some of whom embraced him during the first break in the day. 

The trial is scheduled to last through the end of the week, during which Gilpatrick and his wife are expected to testify, according to prosecutors’ witness list. A number of state police officers and investigators are also expected to potentially testify.

The defense is likely to question the chronology of when Gilpatrick came forward with his allegations. In his opening statement, Rothstein said Gilpatrick was contacted by an attorney for Meehan in 2018 or 2019, and then subsequently spoke with Meehan. Gilpatrick did not bring his allegations to state police until after he filed a civil lawsuit of his own, Rothstein said.

However, Gilpatrick told investigators that he first disclosed his alleged abuse to his wife in 2016 or 2017. The Concord Monitor does not typically identify those who say they were victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.