Mistrial declared after jury deadlocks in rape case of former New Hampshire youth center worker

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The first criminal case linked to New Hampshire’s sprawling child abuse scandal ended in a mistrial Tuesday after a jury deadlocked on charges against a former youth detention facility staffer accused of raping a teenage girl in 2001.

Victor Malavet, 62, is one of nine men charged in the 5-year-old investigation into abuse allegations at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, though unlike the others, he worked at a separate state-run facility in Concord.

After roughly 11 hours of deliberations over three days, jurors said they were deadlocked on the 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault.

Jurors had indicated they were deadlocked two hours earlier, but Judge Dan St. Hilaire instructed them to continue. He declared a mistrial after receiving a note from the jury stating: “After additional time with thoughtful deliberation, we are still unable to come to a unanimous decision on any charges.”

During the four-day trial, Natasha Maunsell, who was 15 and 16 when she was held at the facility in 2001 and 2002, testified that testified that Malavet frequently arranged to be alone with her in a candy storage room, the laundry room and other locations and repeatedly raped her.

“I remember having this gut wrenching feeling that this is never going to end. This is never going to stop, and it’s going to continue the same way every time,” she testified.

Malavet did not testify, and his attorneys called no witnesses in his defense. But jurors heard him deny the allegations Thursday during the testimony of a state police officer who had been authorized to secretly record her interview with him in April 2021.

“The only relationship I had with her, and all the kids, was just a professional relationship,” he said.

Malavet’s attorneys argued that Maunsell made up the allegations in order to get money from a lawsuit. Maunsell is among more than 1,100 former residents who have filed suits alleging abuse spanning six decades and has received about $150,000 in loans in advance of a settlement.

“It’s all lies. Money changes everything, but it can’t change the truth,” defense attorney Jaye Duncan said in her closing argument.

Both sides declined to comment after the mistrial was declared. The judge said a status conference would be held before the trial is rescheduled. In a statement, Attorney General John Formella called the outcome disappointing but said his office remains committed to prosecuting abusers.

In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a jury awarded David Meehan $38 million in May 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 attorneys for the state spent much of Meehan’s trial portraying him as a violent child, troublemaking teenager and a delusional adult, state prosecutors relied on Mansell’s testimony in the criminal case.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they’ve been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly as Maunsell has done.

During the trial, Maunsell acknowledged that she denied having been sexually assaulted when asked in 2002, 2017 and 2019. She said she lied the first time because she was still at the facility and feared retaliation, and again in the later years because she didn’t think anyone would believe her.

“It had been so long that I didn’t think anybody would even care,” she said. “I didn’t think it would matter to anyone … so I kept it in for a long time.”