New Hampshire
Consolidated youth center abuse lawsuits move forward
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A choose has consolidated a whole lot of lawsuits alleging bodily and sexual abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention heart, greater than two years after the primary case was filed.
David Meehan sued the state, the youth heart, businesses that oversee it and a number of former staff in January 2020, alleging that he endured near-daily rapes and beatings on the Youth Growth Heart in Manchester within the Nineties. On the time, he was one in all about three dozen women and men who had come ahead, however since then, about 450 have filed lawsuits alleging abuse by 150 staffers over six a long time.
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The civil litigation has largely been on maintain since 11 former youth staff had been arrested final 12 months, however a choose final week kicked it into excessive gear with an order setting out the consolidation course of.
Whereas consolidation brings the “the danger of cookie cutter tendencies,” continuing with particular person circumstances would current a “backbreaking clerical burden” for the court docket, stated Merrimack County Superior Court docket Choose Andrew Schulman. The state is predicted to provide greater than 3 million pages of paperwork within the preliminary discovery part. Discovery possible will take a number of months, and teams of circumstances shall be mixed for joint trials, legal professionals stated.
Lawyer Rus Rilee, who represents all however a handful of the plaintiffs, on Friday filed a “grasp criticism” masking the allegations and authorized claims which can be frequent to his purchasers. He stated he expects to file particular person complaints for about 700 purchasers within the subsequent 30 days.
“We’re excited that we are actually shifting into the invention part of those lawsuits, so we are able to start to take depositions and launch paperwork to the general public to shine a lightweight on a long time of systemic governmental youngster abuse, with the hope of stopping these atrocities from ever occurring to a different youngster within the custody of the state,” he stated Monday.
The grasp criticism describes the historical past of the power from 1850s onward, portraying it as a spot the place “violence, abuse and neglect simmered simply beneath the floor,” whereas these in energy “persistently turned their backs on the kids.”
It alleges that a number of staff not solely didn’t take motion to cease abuse however actively hid it.
“Greater than that, State Defendants, together with brokers and staff in supervisory positions, tolerated or ignored a common tradition of violence, abuse, boundary crossing, and disrespect and antipathy towards the kids of their custody, creating fertile floor for fairly foreseeable particular person acts of abuse to proliferate, persist, and be left unaddressed, thereby making a cycle that perpetuated abuse,” the criticism states.
In line with the criticism, every plaintiff suffered at the very least one type of bodily, sexual or emotional abuse, was topic to neglect or extreme restraint or was disadvantaged of an schooling. Examples of bodily abuse embody being pushed down stairs or slammed into partitions; emotional abuse included forcing youngsters to devour urine or rubbish and inspiring a suicidal youth to “go for it.”
In hopes of avoiding prolonged litigation, the Legislature has created a $100 million fund for bodily and sexual abuse victims. Victims can have two years to file claims, beginning Jan. 1. Particular person funds for sexual abuse shall be restricted to $1.5 million, whereas funds for bodily abuse shall be restricted to $150,000.
New Hampshire
More Snow For New Hampshire This Week Should Make It A White Christmas
But now, just days away, it looks like it will be white.
After the coldest weekend of the year — there were 20 below-zero wind chill temperatures on Sunday morning in the North Country, there will be a bit of a warm-up into the 20s on Monday with sunny skies and a light breeze.
Overnight, snow is expected sometime after 8 or 9 p.m. in Concord and the capital region, 10 p.m. on the Seacoast, and after 2 a.m. Tuesday in Nashua and Hillsborough, and Rockingham county communities, with temperatures in the teens. About an inch of snow is expected Monday evening.
Snow is expected to continue Tuesday through the early afternoon.
Forecasters warned of possible driving issues on Monday night and Tuesday morning.
“A light snowfall is likely on Monday night into early Tuesday, bringing slick travel conditions,” the NWS hazardous weather outlook alert stated.
Accumulations will be light — no more than 2 inches in the central and southern parts of the state.
The sun returns on Tuesday afternoon, but the evening temperatures will still be chilly in the teens.
Christmas Day will be sunny, with highs in the lower 30s during the day and in the teens overnight.
Expect similar weather on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
The most up-to-date weather is available on every Patch.com site in the United States. This includes the 14 New Hampshire Patch news and community websites for Amherst, Bedford, Concord, Exeter, Hampton, Londonderry, Manchester, Merrimack, Milford, Nashua, North Hampton, Portsmouth, Salem, Windham, and Across NH. Patch posts local weather reports for New Hampshire every Sunday and Wednesday and publishes alerts as needed.
Do you have a news tip? Please email it to tony.schinella@patch.com. View videos on Tony Schinella’s YouTube.com channel or Rumble.com channel. Follow the NH politics Twitter account @NHPatchPolitics for all our campaign coverage.
New Hampshire
City Of Concord Library: Christmas Eve Early Closure
The library will be closing early on Tuesday, December 24, at 12pm. We will be closed Wednesday, December 25th, and will resume of normal hours on Thursday, December 26th. The CPL wishes you a happy holiday!
This press release was produced by the City of Concord. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
New Hampshire
Hypothermic hiker rescued after stranded in waist-deep snow amid wind chills near zero
MOUNT LAFAYETTE, N.H. – A hiker was rescued on Thursday after becoming lost and suffering from hypothermia during a solo hike in central New Hampshire.
Patrick Bittman, 28, of Portland, Maine, had embarked on a hike to see the sunrise from Mount Lafayette on Wednesday night.
Officials said Bittman came upon deep blowing snow near the summit of Little Haystack on Franconia Ridge, forcing him to come back down the mountain.
On his return, however, he became lost and ended up moving into the Dry Brook drainage, where temperatures dropped to around 20 with wind chills near zero.
After spending the night lost on the mountain, Bittman called 911 on Thursday morning. He said that his limbs were frozen, he was experiencing hypothermia and that he was no longer able to move through the snow, which was several feet deep.
HOW TO WATCH FOX WEATHER
Ground crews with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department and Pemi Valley Search and Rescue Team, along with an aerial crew with the Army National Guard, responded to his call.
However, they faced poor visibility from cloud cover and intermittent snow squalls over the steep terrain and thick vegetation, forcing them to adjust their approach to rescuing Bittman.
The first ground rescuers had to spend an hour bushwhacking 1,000 feet of vegetation off the trail to reach Bittman by early Thursday afternoon. By then, he was found suffering severe hypothermia and was placed in an emergency sleeping bag for shelter and given warm, dry clothes and warm fluids.
Two hours later, weather conditions allowed for the Army National Guard to reach Bittman with a medic. They hoisted the young man into the helicopter and then was flown to a local hospital for treatment.
“This aerial rescue saved a multi-hour carry out thru rugged terrain and is a testament as to how search and rescue works in New Hampshire with several different groups working together for a common goal,” New Hampshire Fish & Game officials said.
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