A New Hampshire jury on Tuesday found a former leader at a youth detention center guilty of holding down a teen while he was raped in 1998.
Bradley Asbury, now 70, was found guilty on two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated sexual assault. He faces a maximum prison term of 20 years on each count. The jury deliberated over three days following a four-day trial.
Asbury served as a house leader at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. He was accused of restraining 14-year-old Michael Gilpatrick on a staircase with help from a colleague, while a third staffer raped the teen and a fourth forced him to perform a sex act.
It was the second criminal trial to stem from a broad 2019 investigation into longstanding abuse at the center. Asbury is among 11 men who worked there or at an associated facility in Concord who were arrested.
The case turned on the testimony of Gilpatrick, now 41. He said he’d struggled to cope with the attack for many years and that talking about it at the trial was part of a healing process.
He said he wanted to hold the perpetrators accountable and recalled having an out-of-body experience during the attack.
“I can see it happening, but I can’t do anything,” he testified. “I was just not there. But there.”
After the verdict was read Tuesday afternoon, Gilpatrick cried and hugged family members.
“God is good and the truth prevailed. And I was believed,” he said as he left the courthouse.
Meanwhile, Asbury shook his head as he was handcuffed and thanked his family and supporters as he was led away. His defense attorney, David Rothstein, left the courthouse without offering any comment. Asbury will be held without bail until he’s sentenced in January.
“We hope that this brings the victim some relief,” state Assistant Attorney General Adam Woods said of the verdict.
Last week, Gilpatrick got into several heated exchanges during cross-examination, and at one point called Rothstein a “sick man” as the defense attorney urged him to repeat his claim of rape over and over.
During closing arguments, Rothstein said, “I want to apologize to anyone I may have upset during that exchange, or any other exchange.”
Rothstein said Gilpatrick lived in an imaginary world in which he’d created villains to explain things that had gone wrong in his life.
“Mike Gilpatrick falsely accused Brad Asbury of a crime that he not only didn’t commit, but which, in every shape and form, was virtually impossible to commit,” Rothstein said.
He said there were no eyewitnesses or corroborating pieces of evidence, and that Gilpatrick had changed crucial details over time to suit the narrative. He said such an attack on an open staircase in the middle of the facility would have been seen or heard by somebody else.
He said Gilpatrick was motivated by money, pointing out he’d already received more than $146,000 against an anticipated payout from a related civil case.
The prosecution said Gilpatrick didn’t have perfect recall of all the events surrounding the rape but had always been consistent in his recall of the key event. He couldn’t tell anybody at the time, the prosecution said, because Asbury was in charge.
“Instead of guiding Mike, counseling him, showing him a better way to go out and live his life, these four grown men, including the defendant, shattered the trust,” Woods said.
An earlier case against Victor Malavet ended in a mistrial in September after jurors deadlocked on whether he raped a girl at the Concord facility. A new trial in that case has yet to be scheduled.
The investigation has also led to extensive civil litigation. More than 1,100 former residents have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual or emotional abuse spanning six decades. In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a jury awarded David Meehan $38 million in May for abuse he says he suffered in the 1990s, though that verdict remains in dispute as the state seeks to reduce it to $475,000.
The Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they were victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly, as Meehan and Gilpatrick have done.
