Former YDC employee guilty of being an accessory to rape

Nov. 26 — A jury convicted a former Youth Development Center house leader Tuesday of holding a 14-year-old boy on a staircase while two other youth counselors raped him in the 1990s.

Bradley Asbury, 69, who was free on bail, was handcuffed by a court officer and taken into custody in Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester after each of the jurors, seven women and five men, were questioned to ensure the verdict was correct. unanimously. He will be sentenced by Judge Will Delker on January 27.

The verdict came around 2 p.m., after the jury deliberated for three days, starting Friday morning.

Asbury stood with his eyes closed as the foreman read two guilty verdicts on aggravated sexual assault (accomplice). Asbury was the second of eight former workers to be prosecuted and the first to be convicted following an extensive investigation into abuse at the former juvenile detention center in the 1990s and 2000s.

Asbury showed little emotion as he looked on at family and friends as he was taken into custody two days before Thanksgiving.

Victim Michael Gilpatrick, 41, sitting in the back row, held his wife’s hand and put his head behind the benches in the gallery after the verdict. He was surrounded by half a dozen friends and family.

“God is good,” Gilpatrick testified during the trial.

Gilpatrick threw a punch and left the courtroom. Later, as he walked hand in hand with his wife, Kelly, he said he was instructed not to speak, although he did share a few words.

‘It’s time’

“God is good and the truth has prevailed,” he said. “I was believed. Now is the time.”

(The Union Leader does not routinely identify victims of sex crimes, but Gilpatrick has made her allegations public.)

Prosecutor Adam Woods said he would not comment on anything that happened during the trial while other proceedings were ongoing, including the incident between Gilpatrick and Asbury attorney David Rothstein, when Gilpatrick called Rothstein a “sick man” and left the stand during cross-examination. , wants to take a break.

“We are grateful that they considered all of the victim’s statements and came to this decision,” Woods said.

Rothstein left the courtroom without making any comment.

The prosecution argued that Asbury and three other employees carried Gilpatrick to a landing, where she was raped and told to perform other sexual acts.

Three other staff members (Jeffrey Buskey, Stephen Murphy and James Woodlock) also face criminal charges.

“He (Asbury) was the leader of the house. He was the one who had the final say. He was the guy who ran the whole show, and he was the muscle that held Mike’s arm back to make Murphy and Buskey’s crime possible,” Woods said during his closing argument.

Jury selection in the case against Murphy will begin on January 6.

Throughout the hearing, Rothstein argued that Gilpatrick was motivated by money in filing a lawsuit against the state.

“Mike Gilpatrick falsely accused Brad Asbury of a crime that he did not commit and that was by all accounts impossible to commit,” Rothstein said in his closing argument.

Gilpatrick’s lawsuit was the second of more than 1,000 lawsuits filed over the decades alleging misconduct at the YDC.

The initial criminal case against former YDC employee Victor Malavet, who faces 12 charges of aggravated sexual assault for incidents that allegedly occurred in Merrimack between June and November 2001, ended in a mistrial in September after a deadlocked jury. A dispute hearing is scheduled for December 19.

[email protected]