The Sunday Story: Uncovering Abuse in a Juvenile Detention Center : Up First from NPR

In the U.S., many kids in trouble with the law are sentenced to juvenile detention facilities. In New Hampshire, the largest such facility is a place commonly known as the Youth Detention Center, or YDC (recently renamed the Sununu Youth Services Center). YDC was founded with good intentions: keep kids out of adult jails and prisons and care for them. But now, nearly 1,300 former residents of YDC have come forward, filing lawsuits over alleged abuse at the facility. The allegations include hundreds of cases of assault and rape that span over six decades. It’s become one of the biggest youth detention scandals in American history.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s Jason Moon and his colleagues on the Document team spent the last year investigating the Youth Development Center. They combed through the cases, worked around legal roadblocks, and spoke with residents and staff who’d never before told their stories.

This week on The Sunday Story, host Ayesha Roscoe and Moon discuss what may have happened inside YDC and how the allegations stayed under wraps for so long.

Listen to NHPR’s podcast, The Youth Development Center, at ydcpodcast.org.

This episode was produced by Hazel Feldstein and edited by Jenny Schmidt and Liana Simstrom. It was engineered by James Willetts and Maggie Luthar.

We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email at TheSundayStory@npr.org.

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