First criminal trial starts in New Hampshire youth detention center abuse scandal

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire prosecutor told jurors Monday that a former youth detention center worker “took exactly what he wanted, where he wanted it and when he wanted it” when he repeatedly raped a teenage girl, while his attorney said the accuser concocted the allegations for money.

The case against Victor Malavet marks the first criminal trial arising from a five-year investigation into allegations of abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center, though unlike the other eight men facing charges, Malavet, 62, worked at a different state-run facility. Charges against a 10th man were dropped in May after he was deemed incompetent to stand trial. An 11th man who was charged died last month.

While the others worked at the Manchester facility formerly known as the Youth Development Center, Malavet worked at the Youth Detention Services Unit in Concord, where children were held while awaiting court disposition of their cases. He’s charged with 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, all against a girl held there in 2001 when she was 15 and 16.

Prosecutors say Malavet started paying special attention to the girl soon after she arrived, treating her better than other residents and giving her special privileges. He's accused of assaulting her in a candy closet, storage room and TV room.

“This defendant took exactly what he wanted,” Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula said in her opening statement. “He raped a child, a child locked away in a detention facility, isolated from her family and the outside world. He used his authority as a youth counselor at YDSU and his control over her daily grades and restrictions and her special privileges to take what he wanted.”

Malavet’s attorney, Maya Dominguez, argued that the girl, now 39, made up the allegations in an attempt to get money from the state. She is among more than 1,100 former residents who are suing the state alleging abuse that spanned six decades.

The accuser "has a million-dollar motive to lie,” Dominguez said. “Money can change almost anything. It can change memory, it can change motive, it can even change someone’s morality. But the one thing that not even millions and millions of dollars can change? That’s the truth.”

Dominguez said the allegations initially were made up by another girl seeking to cause trouble for the accuser. The alleged victim told investigators at the time that she and Malavet had never so much as hugged, but “she kept that seed in her pocket for nearly two decades,” Dominguez said.

Mekula, who displayed a photo of the teen, said the girl didn't tell investigators at the time because she was scared. She also was scared every time she was raped, “because if she did not give him what he wanted, he had the power to control her life at YDSU," she said.

The other girl mentioned in the defense's opening statement was among the first witnesses called by prosecutors Monday. She testified that she and the alleged victim were friends — not enemies as the defense suggested — and that she reported inappropriate behavior she witnessed, including Malavet “making out” with the girl and what appeared to be the girl touching him sexually.

“It was scary to tell at that point but I knew something was going on,” she said.

The witness also said Malavet later groped her breasts and suggested she was jealous of her friend, but she didn’t tell authorities about that until recently when she filed her own lawsuit.

Jurors also heard from Evelyn Clark Smith, a former staffer at the facility. She said she reported Malavet after watching him feed shrimp to his accuser in a suggestive manner and seeing the girl lick sauce off his finger. She also investigated how the girl was repeatedly able to wear her own black thong instead of state-issued underwear and suspected Malavet had retrieved it from a locked storage room.

According to court documents, Malavet's accuser was transferred to the Concord unit from Manchester after she assaulted a staffer with a metal pipe and escaped. After being tried as an adult, the girl spent 10 years in prison for the assault.

In a 2021 interview, the woman said she was too scared to report the abuse she suffered.

“I didn’t want it to get worse,” she told The Associated Press.

In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a jury awarded David Meehan $38 million for abuse he says he suffered at the Youth Development Center in the 1990s, though the verdict remains in dispute.

Together, the two trials highlight the unusual dynamic of having the state attorney general’s office simultaneously prosecute those accused of committing offenses and defend the state. While prosecutors likely will be relying on the testimony of the former youth center residents in the criminal trials, attorneys defending the state against Meehan's claims spent much of that trial portraying him as a violent child, troublemaking teenager and delusional adult.

The AP generally does not name people who say they are the victim of sexual abuse unless they come forward with their story publicly, as Meehan has done.

This story has been edited to correct that the prosecutor who gave opening statements is Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula, not Senior Assistant Attorney General Meghan Hagaman.

Public Defender Mariana Dominguez gives the opening in the Victor Malavet trial at Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. Malavet, a former state employee, is charged in connection with the attorney general's probe of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)

Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula gives the opening statement in the Victor Malavet trial at Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. Malavet, a former state employee, is charged in connection with the attorney general's probe of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)

Superior Court Justice Daniel St. Hilaire conducts a bench meeting with lawyers during the first day of the trial for Victor Malavet, 62, of Gilford at Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. Malavet is a former state employee charged in connection with the attorney general's probe of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)

Superior Court Justice Daniel St. Hilaire gives instructions to the jury during the first day of the trial for Victor Malavet, 62, of Gilford at Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)

Victor Malavet, center, stands with his lawyers as the court clerk reads the charges against him during his trial at Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. Malavet, a former state employee is charged in connection with the attorney general's probe of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)

Victor Malavet looks behind him and waves to a person in the gallery during his trial at Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, N.H., on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. Malavet, a former state employee is charged in connection with the attorney general's probe of the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)

FILE - The Sununu Youth Services Center is seen amongst the trees on Jan. 28, 2020, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — English soccer fans have been waiting almost a lifetime to win another World Cup. Just imagine what British sailing fans feel when the America's Cup rolls around.

Their best yachtsmen have been trying — and failing — for 173 years to conquer the Holy Grail of sailboat racing.

The schooner America won the race's very first edition back in 1851 in a loop around the Isle of Wight, where Queen Victoria herself was in attendance as the Royal Yacht Squadron was bested off the English coast. Since then, no country has challenged to win the Auld Mug as many times as Britain — only to always come up short.

And this for a country that holds a record 30 Olympic medals in sailing and whose ships used to rule the oceans in the times of empire.

Ben Ainslie, the most successful sailor in Olympic history with four golds and a silver, heads the latest British effort to end the wait for the oldest international trophy in sport.

“It’s massive for us because we’re a proud sporting country and our maritime heritage is massive for us as an island nation,” Ainslie told The Associated Press after a race in Barcelona. “The America’s Cup is the one international sporting trophy Britain has never won. And it originated in the UK.

"So that’s a big motivator for us to try, as we say, and get the America’s Cup back home.”

Ainslie's description of the weight of history on his team's shoulders echoes that of England's soccer team, whose anthem, “Football’s coming home,” sums up the mission of trying to lift its first title since winning the 1966 World Cup.

While the country is soccer crazed and its wealthy Premier League the envy of the sport, Britain's history has for centuries been closely linked with its nautical might.

The 47-year-old Ainslie has the unique role at the America’s Cup in his dual position as INEOS Britannia's skipper and its team principal. That means he runs the team in every facet and calls the shots on the waves from his starboard cockpit on the 75-foot foiling monohull.

Britannia has made a promising start and topped the challenger standings in the opening round-robin phase, which included beating a strong Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli of Italy twice. Britannia will get to pick its rival — from the Italians, Americans and Swiss — for the semifinals starting on Saturday. The last boat standing will win the Louis Vuitton Cup and face defending champion New Zealand in the America’s Cup finals.

Ainslie already knows what it feels like to win the America’s Cup, albeit for the Americans.

He was on the 2013 winner Oracle Team USA. After the Americans fell into a large early deficit against New Zealand, Ainslie, a tactician, was promoted from the backup crew to the race crew. New Zealand expanded its lead to 8-1 and match point, but Ainslie helped the American-flagged crew pull off one of the greatest comebacks in sport, winning eight straight races to become the first British sailor to win the America’s Cup in 110 years.

As to why the cup has proven so elusive to a nation that excels at sailing, Ainslie insists that it is just “incredibly hard” to dethrone a sitting champion in a winner-takes-all event like no other — the champion sets the rules, picks the venue and gets a ticket to the final of the next edition.

“(So) much goes into the competition, the technicality, the boats and the competitive nature of it," he says. "And the fact that we know that the defender is really in the hot seat. They’re rewriting the rules for the next event and are in the final. So if you have a strong defender, like the Team New Zealand that we’ve seen in previous America’s Cups, it’s very, very hard to beat.”

Britannia has the backing of billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of petrochemicals giant INEOS who bought into storied soccer club Manchester United this year. His sailing outfit also shares a technical director and design expertise with the Mercedes Formula 1 team.

Ainslie first challenged for the cup in 2017 in Bermuda. INEOS came aboard the following year and they made a run at the cup in 2021 in Auckland. Both times New Zealand won.

The America’s Cup was born some four decades before the modern Olympic Games, and only four countries have even won it. The Americans successfully defended the title 24 times until that incredible 132-year run ended in 1983 at the hands of the Australians. The Swiss were the last country to join the select club.

The first step for the Brits is emerging as the best challenger. They haven’t reached the match final since 1964.

“The only thing we have in our mind is trying to win the thing. I think we can win it,” Ainslie says. “If we can keep that momentum going, we can be dangerous. Are we going to do it this time or not? Only time will tell.”

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

FILE - Skipper Ben Ainslie steers the boat as the British team crosses the finish line in the second fleet race of the SailGP series in Sydney, Feb. 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)