State denies improper restraint of boy at detention center

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — An advocacy group’s allegations of abuse and neglect at New Hampshire’s youth detention center are unfounded and irresponsible, state officials said Tuesday.

The Disability Rights Center issued a report last week saying staff at the Sununu Youth Services Center broke the law when they fractured a 14-year-old boy’s shoulder in December and failed to notify the advocacy group until three months later despite being required to report such incidents. Further review revealed that staff routinely violated state law in using dangerous, face-down restraint methods, the report concludes.

Attorney General Gordon MacDonald and Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers responded Tuesday in a 28-page description of what they called the report’s “numerous factual errors, unsupported conclusions, and incorrect statements of law.” They denied that children are being abused through the improper and unlawful use of restraints and accused the center of cherry-picking information about the incident.

“The lack of objectivity and fairness in DRC’s report creates obstacles to the state’s goal of working with DRC collaboratively to identify and improve the services it provides to New Hampshire’s youth,” Meyers wrote.

The Manchester facility is named for Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s father, former Gov. John H. Sununu, and serves children ages 13 to 17 who are ordered to a secure institutional setting by the juvenile justice system.

In the original report, the disabilities rights group said the 14-year-old boy, diagnosed with severe anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, had been at the center for two weeks while awaiting an opening at a community-based residential program.

The report said he was moved to a crisis services unit after disobeying an order to go to his room, and that video footage shows him opening the door and standing just outside the room several times before a staffer pushed him back into the room and threw him to the ground, putting his knee on his back and pushing the boy’s face against the floor. The report says two staffers later grabbed the boy’s arms and pushed him to the floor, face down.

In their response, state officials said the report ignores virtually all evidence from a state police investigation that concluded that the restraint was legal and in keeping with policies allowing children to be restrained for their own safety and that of others. The report also doesn’t mention the boy’s history of physical aggression or escalating behavior leading up to the incident, they said.

According to MacDonald and Meyers, the boy was moved to the unit for both disobeying an order and ripping up a book, and that he was verbally threatening staff and aggressively kicking and punching the door before being restrained. Witnesses said the boy was injured because he and the staffers unintentionally fell to the floor during the restraint and one staffer “landed awkwardly” on him.

“The department is committed to providing a safe and therapeutic environment for the state’s most at risk youth,” Meyers wrote. “We vehemently disagree with the DRC’s report, which appears to have been created with the sole purpose of making a finding of abuse against SYSC staff in order to further DRC’s objectives.”

Stephanie Patrick, director of the Disability Rights Center, said the center stands by its report that it examined all available evidence and is confident in its conclusions.

“The law is clear. Physical restraint may only be used ‘to ensure the immediate physical safety of persons when there is a substantial and imminent risk of serious bodily harm to the child or others,’ not when a child refused to leave a room, kicks a door or uses profanity,” the center said in a statement.