An employee at a youth detention facility in Concord groomed a 15-year-old girl and then repeatedly sexually assaulted her over the course of several months in 2001, prosecutors argued Monday during the first criminal trial involving nine guards accused of abusing children in the state’s care.

Victor Malavet, 62, of Gilford, was a youth counselor at the Youth Detention Services Unit in Concord when he befriended a resident there, invited her to Bible study, called her his “sister in Christ”, and singled her out to do chores with him, Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula alleged.

“It was during these times when the defendant and [she] were all alone doing chores or special privileges that the defendant raped her repeatedly,” Mekula told the jury. “He had [her], a child, under his complete control with no one to turn to.”

Malavet, who appeared in Merrimack County Superior Court on Monday, is one of 11 former juvenile jail employees to be criminally charged in connection with decades-long physical and sexual abuse that nearly 1,300 people have alleged occurred in state-run youth facilities from 1960 to 2021. One of those employees has since died and another was found incompetent to stand trial. The rest have trials scheduled to start later this year or in 2025.

Malavet is charged with 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, each carrying a sentence of 10 to 20 years. All of the assaults allegedly involved a girl who has been identified in court filings by the initials N.M. She was identified by her full name in court Monday, but the Monitor does not identify victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly.

Malavet, who is now mostly bald and wore a white button-down shirt and red tie, looked on attentively but expressed little emotion as a team of prosecutors questioned a trio of witnesses who either claimed to have seen some of his interactions with the girl or dealt with allegations against him.

Viviana Rosario, a resident at the Youth Detention Services Unit at the same time as N.M., recalled seeing Malavet “making out” with her and placing “her hand on his private area” under his pants. She said she also often heard Malavet talking with N.M. late into the night, while the other residents were locked in their rooms.

“She told me that was her man,” said Rosario, who now works as a recovery coach.

Rosario reported what she had seen to other staff, after which she said she was retaliated against.

“It was scary to tell at that point, but I knew there was something wrong going on,” said Rosario, who said Malavet groped her and accused her of being jealous of his relationship with N.M. after she reported his behavior.

Defense attorneys for Malavet told jurors during opening arguments that N.M.’s allegations, which were first made in 2020, were not true, and that N.M. was motivated by the prospect of a large monetary settlement after people began to come forward to allege abuse in the state’s youth detention facilities and the state set up a settlement fund.

So far, nearly 1,300 people, including N.M. and Rosario, have filed civil lawsuits against the state, alleging they were physically or sexually abused while held in the state’s juvenile facilities. N.M.’s civil case, filed in 2021, is ongoing.

The girl, now a woman, “has a million-dollar motive to lie,” said Public Defender Mariana Dominguez during opening arguments.

Dominguez said N.M. had plenty of opportunities to report the abuse she allegedly experienced before 2020 when the first lawsuit was filed. Investigators asked N.M. in 2002, 2017 and 2019 if she had been assaulted while at the Youth Detention Services Unit, and each time she denied anything improper had occurred, according to Dominguez.

N.M. “did not tell anyone that she was being sexually assaulted because she wasn’t,” Dominguez said.

“Money can change almost anything. It can change memories. It can change motives. It can even change someone’s morality,” Dominguez said.

In addition to Rosario, two former youth counselors who worked alongside Malavet testified Monday that they either saw what they believed to be improper behavior between Malavet and N.M. or investigated it.

Evelyn Clark-Smith, an employee at the Youth Detention Services Unit for 27 years, described witnessing Malavet share his lunch with N.M. He was “feeding her shrimp”, Clark-Smith said, as she pantomimed dangling a piece of shrimp over N.M.’s opened mouth. Clark-Smith said she also saw N.M. “licking the sauce off his finger.”

At around the same time, Clark-Smith said that on multiple occasions she found during regular body searches that N.M. was wearing her personal underwear, rather than a state-issued pair. Clark-Smith testified that she concluded that a staff member must have given her the personal underwear, because the storage area where residents’ street clothes were kept was locked.

She said the incidents were investigated and the staff who conducted the investigations determined Malavet was working each time N.M. was found wearing her personal underwear.

Malavet was subsequently transferred to the Youth Development Center in Manchester, where much of the abuse alleged by others is said to have occurred.

Mike McGeehan, a former supervisor at YDSU who worked with Malavet for approximately six years, said he directed Malavet to not show favoritism to N.M. He also said he intercepted a letter sent by N.M. that seemed to cause some concern, but he did not say why. His testimony will continue on Tuesday morning.

Frequently, all three of the witnesses said they did not remember details of what transpired in late 2001 and early 2002. Lawyers for both the state and the defendant at times showed witnesses contemporaneous documents to attempt to jog the witnesses’ memories, to varying effect. The significant time that has passed since some of the alleged abuse occurred and the fraying of memories will likely come up again throughout the trial. 

Malavet’s trial, which is expected to take five days, could involve dozens of witnesses, according to lists attorneys submitted. N.M. will testify at some point, a prosecutor said.

Malavet’s case is the first criminal trial to go forward, but it is not the first time a jury has heard the allegations in the wide-reaching scandal. In April, a Rockingham County Superior Court jury who heard evidence in a civil case awarded a former YDC resident $38 million for abuse he experienced that they found the state was liable for. The amount of the verdict has since been disputed by the state.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.