The former head of New Hampshire’s youth detention center is defending himself against claims that he either encouraged physical abuse or was “ willfully blind” to it during his nearly 40 years at the facility.
Ron Adams didn’t testify during the landmark trial in which a jury found the state negligent and awarded $38 million to a man who said he was beaten and raped hundreds of times at the Youth Development Center. But his name came up often: Multiple former staffers testified that Adams was resistant to training or disciplining staff, was dismissive toward whistleblowers and endorsed his predecessor’s philosophy: “If the kids give you any (expletive), beat the (expletive) out of them.”
