Last week we made the case here that the state of New Hampshire is cynically breaking faith with hundreds of victims who suffered terrible sexual and physical abuse while they were in state custody as children. Gov. Kelly Ayotte, Attorney General John Formella and Republicans in the Legislature worked together this year to terminate the role of the independent claims administrator of the Youth Development Center Settlement Fund in favor of a political appointee and gave the Attorney General’s Office veto power over all proposed settlements with victims. Moreover, the Legislature reneged on its yearly financial commitment to the settlement fund, appropriating only a fraction of what it had promised.
This tawdry spectacle, however, is not the only instance in which the state has demonstrated lately that, rhetoric aside, it is not serious about curbing child abuse or taking responsibility for doing so. The state budget that went into effect July 1 gutted the Office of the Child Advocate, the watchdog agency created in 2018 to oversee the child welfare, juvenile justice and residential youth care systems and broadly to serve as an advocate for the interests of children.
In this case, legislators invoked a purported budget crunch to justify unjustifiable action, a crunch they created in previous years by cutting business taxes and eliminating the state’s interest and dividends tax. Just how seriously lawmakers take the welfare of children may be gauged by the remarks of state Rep. Dan McGuire, R-Epsom, who during budget deliberations in that chamber proclaimed that the child advocate’s office and a few others “are sort of nice-to-haves, but they’re not necessary, and so we need the money.”
This remarkable assertion must be viewed in the context of the Youth Development Center Settlement Fund, which under the independent administrator has already settled 386 victim claims for more than $221 million, the average being $545,000 per victim. More than 1,500 claims totaling $1.8 billion remain pending.
Eliminating the Office of the Child Advocate entirely, as the House voted to do, would have saved $2 million over two years, which likely wouldn’t even cover legal fees if the state were found liable for a future case of child abuse. The Child Advocate’s Office is the ounce of prevention that might by timely intervention preclude the need for a pound of cure.
The Senate, at Ayotte’s urging, restored funding for the office but at a level that required shrinking the staff from nine to five; the House ultimately went along with this. This reduction netted a savings over two years of all of $500,000, which amounts to a rounding error on the state budget.
Cassandra Sanchez, the child advocate, detailed for the New Hampshire Bulletin news site just what these cuts will mean to the office she heads. Most critically, the office will no longer be able to review the use of physical restraints and enforced seclusion at residential care facilities for children. Although their use is sometimes necessary, they are meant to be used sparingly and as a last resort. One of those laid off was responsible for reviewing incident reports filed by staff to make sure that restraints and seclusion were employed appropriately and in accordance with state law, something the office will no longer be able to do.
“The research, what it tells us about restraints and seclusions is that (they) are not beneficial for children and (are) extremely traumatizing,” Sanchez said. “So as a state, we have been focusing for many years now on reducing the use of restraint and seclusion on children.”
Now, not so much. One can easily imagine in a year or two some egregious misuse of restraints that results in yet another lawsuit for which the state will be held liable, while lawmakers bray for answers as to who was responsible. We’re pretty sure they will not point fingers at themselves.
We wish in one way that the gutting of the Child Advocate’s Office could be chalked up entirely to ignorance and shortsightedness on the part of lawmakers. But there is also evidence that the cuts were made in retribution for Sanchez’s advocacy on behalf of transgender youth. In April 2024, she participated in a press conference called to express opposition to bills targeting LGBTQ children. This did not sit well with some legislators — let’s call them the Hate Caucus — who as part of the budget bill are now prohibiting the office from partisan advocacy.
If by partisan they mean common decency, we get the point.