The same Republican lawmakers that tried to eliminate the child advocate’s office, slashed victim payouts, and gave the GOP attorney general veto power over settlements now wants the public to trust its investigation.
For more than a year, New Hampshire Republicans have systematically dismantled the independent process meant to deliver justice to survivors of sexual and physical abuse by employees at the state’s youth detention center.
Now, with new allegations of abuse emerging at the same facility, the GOP has appointed one of the Senate’s most polarizing figures to lead the investigation — undermining its credibility before it even begins.
Senate President Sharon Carson announced April 10 that she has formed a subcommittee to investigate reports of abuse and neglect at the Sununu Youth Services Center, the facility formerly known as the Youth Development Center.
The party tapped Sen. Victoria Sullivan (R-Manchester) to serve even though she told NHPR in April of last year she would only support restoring funding for the Office of the Child Advocate — cut by Republican writers of the state budget— if it maintained “a more narrow focus,” calling its advocacy for LGBTQ+ youth a “distraction” from what she described as the office’s real work.
That office, which Sullivan threatened to defund for political reasons, is the same one that just uncovered the abuse she’s now been appointed to investigate.
Days earlier, the state’s Office of the Child Advocate reported that children at the center had been subjected to punitive, jail-like conditions under new leadership, including an illegal restraint that resulted in a broken bone. Children were also denied access to the outdoors and limited to standing in a doorway for fresh air.
RELATED: Kelly Ayotte’s role in alleged YDC cover-up under fire
Sullivan was part of a broader Republican campaign that nearly eliminated the office entirely, cut its staff from nine to four, and resulted in a law prohibiting the child advocate from engaging in what the Legislature deemed partisan advocacy.
Her broader record in the Senate should also raise concerns.
She has spent her brief Senate tenure publicly shaming a constituent for buying “junk food” with SNAP benefits, sponsoring legislation to strip food assistance from an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 households, pushing a bill to ban student IDs for voting over the opposition of 469 people who testified against it, and voting for book bans.
As a state representative, she voted in support of conversion therapy, made public comments calling homosexuality “not science” and claiming transgender protections “open the door for predators,” and voted against increased fines for domestic violence — twice.
This is the person Republicans have chosen to investigate allegations involving some of the state’s most vulnerable children.
Sullivan’s appointment is not an isolated decision. It is the latest move in a pattern of politicization that has shadowed the detention facility scandal since Republicans shifted their posture from compassion to cost-cutting.
When the Legislature created the $100 million settlement fund in 2022, it was pitched as a victim-centered, trauma-informed process. Attorney General John Formella called it the right thing to do. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick was unanimously confirmed to administer the fund as a neutral, independent arbiter. Victims’ attorneys encouraged their clients — many of whom had been raped, beaten, and tortured as children by state employees — to halt their lawsuits and enter the settlement process instead.
Then the rules changed.
Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte put zero dollars into the settlement fund in her initial budget.
The Legislature allocated just $20 million for fiscal year 2026 — a fraction of the $75 million per year former Gov. Chris Sununu had pledged through 2032. Through the state budget process, Republicans stripped the fund administrator of independence, making it a political appointee who serves at Ayotte’s pleasure.
Formella was given veto power over settlement amounts and has already used it, rejecting at least three of 15 offers Broderick finalized. Broderick, who says he was forced out rather than resigning, called the new structure a system where “the defendant gets to pick the judge.”
Victims’ attorneys have called the changes a bait-and-switch. Nearly 1,500 survivors had already filed settlement applications and halted their civil lawsuits before the new rules took effect on July 1 — one day after the filing deadline. They are now suing the state, and the case has reached the NH Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the state is arguing in the David Meehan case that hundreds of rapes of one child by state employees should legally count as a single “incident,” which would slash his $38 million jury verdict to $475,000
House Finance Chair Ken Weyler mocked victims’ claims as “ridiculousness,” called their lives “misspent,” and suggested they would waste settlement money on “drugs and alcohol.”
Weyler was never removed from his leadership role.
Asked for comment on her role investigating new claims in light of the context of her high-temperature political career, Sen. Sullivan posted this reporter’s emailed questions to social media, pointed to her time serving as PTA President for her children’s elementary school, and said the accurate characterization of her policy record was “disgusting” and she would not be “wasting her time responding.”
