Rep. Maggie Goodlander is asking the US Department of Justice to investigate the Sununu Youth Services Center after two watchdogs documented new abuse. The Republican officials dismissing her request have overseen the facility through decades of scandal, weakened its independent oversight, and produced state reviews that survivors and advocates say cleared the state of responsibility.
New Hampshire Republicans are attacking Democratic Rep. Maggie Goodlander for asking the Trump administration’s Department of Justice to investigate conditions at the scandal-plagued Sununu Youth Services Center, a state-run facility named after Gov. Chris Sununu (R). The center’s decades-long abuse crisis unfolded largely under Republican oversight.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) led the attorney general’s office during years covered by many of the victims’ claims, and the legislative committee that investigated the newest allegations included no Democratic lawmakers.
In a letter to the US attorney for the District of New Hampshire, Goodlander requested a review, including by the department’s Civil Rights Division, to “determine whether a pattern or practice at the facility has deprived children in state custody of their constitutional or federal rights.”
“I’m deeply concerned by the reports of two independent watchdogs in New Hampshire about ongoing reports of abuse and neglect at the Sununu Center,” Goodlander told WMUR. “We owe it to every child and to every survivor to have an independent investigation into the conditions and into the past practices that have gone on at this facility.”
The Legislature created the Office of the Child Advocate in 2018 in direct response to the abuse scandal.
“Where has she been? It makes me suspect that this is politically motivated, and these kids are not political pawns,” said state Rep. Kim Rice (R-Hillsborough) dismissing the request for a federal investigation. “I think bringing in the DOJ creates more chaos. We don’t need them. Kiddos don’t need them. We are already in the problem-solving stage of this scenario.”
State Sen. Victoria Sullivan (R-Manchester), Republicans’ controversial pick to chair the facility’s oversight committee previously threatened to defund the Office of the Child Advocate, citing its advocacy for LGBTQ+ youth.
Sullivan accused Goodlander of being “silent and absent” during past investigations and heaped praise on herself for her own work.
“I have been working with the members of the Ad Hoc Committee, the Attorney General’s Office and the Governor’s Office to identify what went wrong and fix it. The children and families affected deserve real solutions—not a Washington politician arriving after the work is well underway in search of a headline.”
Criticism of that work has come from inside her own party’s administration.
When her committee’s report landed in May, Ayotte’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) disputed its conclusions in a 22-page response, calling them unsupported by “the full evidentiary record,” and told lawmakers the report was based on partial or inaccurate information.
The facility, formerly known as the Youth Development Center (YDC), sits at the center of a scandal spanning generations. More than 1,300 former residents have filed lawsuits alleging abuse, assault, and rape, and the state has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.
Ayotte served as state attorney general from 2004 to 2009, a period covered by many of those claims, and her handling of YDC complaints has been questioned by victims and political opponents alike. Nearly two decades after she left that office, she is the governor responsible for the facility, where new allegations of abuse have continued to emerge..
In January, Ayotte tried to fire Child Advocate Cassandra Sanchez by declining to reappoint her after Republican lawmakers had spent a year attacking the office over Sanchez’s opposition to GOP bills targeting LGBTQ+ children.
Sanchez said she believed that opposition was the reason she was pushed out; Ayotte denied it.
Weeks later, it was Sanchez’s office—with Sanchez serving on holdover status while the governor sought her replacement—that uncovered the new abuse: Staff broke a child’s bone during an illegal restraint caught on facility security cameras, delayed medical care afterward, and held children under restrictive lockdowns lasting weeks.
The Disability Rights Center-NH independently reported that staff had been instructed to escalate to dangerous prone restraints on children who refused to be physically guided.
The Republican response was to investigate themselves.
State Senate President Sharon Carson formed a subcommittee whose lawmaker members, Sullivan, Rice, and Rep. Jodi Nelson, were all Republicans. Children’s Law Center of New Hampshire Executive Director Lisa Wolford joined later.
The committee’s May report blamed facility leadership, finding an “extreme failure of the facility that falls squarely on the Bureau Chief,” and Bureau Chief Joshua Nye resigned a day after its release.
Ayotte turned to her own Republican attorney general for yet another report on abuse at the facility and rebutted critics who called for an independent probe.
Attorney General John Formella’s office concluded in a July 7 report that claims of current abuse were unsupported while acknowledging systemic problems and dysfunction.
But that office’s independence on this issue has been in question for over a year. Through the state budget, Republicans handed Formella veto power over settlements with survivors, and he used it, rejecting settlement offers finalized by fund administrator John Broderick, the former state Supreme Court chief justice. Broderick resigned in protest after lawmakers moved to change the position into a political appointment.
Ten days after Formella’s report, a teenager at the center was hospitalized with serious injuries following an assault by another youth and underwent surgery for a broken femur.
Criminal charges were filed against the other juvenile. More than half the youth counselor positions at the facility are vacant, primarily due to staff injuries. Days after the assault, Sullivan called for the removal of HHS Commissioner Lori Weaver and Marie Noonan, the director of the Division for Children, Youth and Families, saying “they cannot be trusted and failed as leaders.”
As the situation has grown increasingly chaotic, Republican officials have at every stage directed blame away from themselves: at the bureau chief, at agency leadership, at the watchdog office they tried to gut, and even at the children.
The Division for Children, Youth and Families told lawmakers that recent abuse allegations were false, contradicting both watchdogs.
Now the target is Goodlander.
The state review Sullivan points to has faced credibility questions since the day she was appointed to lead it. Democrats, including gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington, argued the Republican-led probe was compromised because its chair had tried to defund the very office that uncovered the abuse.
Sullivan’s own recent statements also undercut her assurance that the work is well underway. In early July, she told NHPR that her committee’s findings and recommendations “need to be taken seriously and acted on immediately” and that “it is time for the state to consider whether to privatize this facility.” Weeks later, she was demanding the removal of the commissioner and division director responsible for running it.
The state Republican Party’s treatment of survivors has turned to victim-blaming as lawmakers sought to save money on settlement costs from lawsuits.
House Finance Chair Ken Weyler mocked victims’ claims as “ridiculousness,” called their lives “misspent,” and suggested victims were fabricating abuse for money: “Someone on the streets says, ‘YDC, I’ll just say they abused me and I’ll become a millionaire.’”
Weyler apologized after bipartisan backlash but was never removed from his leadership role. In June, the fiscal committee he chairs put off a $55 million request to resume settlement hearings for nearly 1,700 pending claims, saying the state could not afford it.
Republicans slashed funding for the victim settlement fund, allocating $20 million for fiscal year 2026—a fraction of the $75 million per year Sununu had, during his time as governor, pledged through 2032—after Ayotte initially budgeted nothing. This spring, Republican lawmakers moved to direct proceeds from any sale of the facility back to the state’s general fund rather than to victims.
Goodlander said the state’s own review is no substitute for an outside one.
“What we need now is clarity from an independent source,” she said. “I believe governing is a team sport. I know law enforcement is a team sport. And that’s why we have partners at every level of government, at the federal level, at the state level.”
