A prosecutor says James Woodlock helped former co-workers at the Youth Development Center beat and rape a teenage boy into submission in the 1990s.
“He acted in concert in the forcible, violent rapes of a child,” prosecutor Charles Bucca said Tuesday during the trial’s opening day. “Not just a child, but a child he was supposed to be mentoring. A child who was supposed to be guided. A child who was supposed to be protected.”
Woodlock, 60, faces three charges of being an accomplice to aggravated felonious sexual assaults that allegedly took place between Oct. 30, 1997, and Sept. 12, 1998, The acts were allegedly committed by former co-workers Jeffrey Buskey and Stephen Murphy, who also face sexual assault charges, according to indictments.
The trial, which is expected to last three days, started Tuesday morning with opening statements in a packed courtroom at Hillsborough Superior Court in Manchester with many others in support of Woodlock waiting in the hallway unable to be seated. The jury is made up of 12 men and three women.
Woodlock is one of eight men charged with alleged abuse while working at youth detention centers in Concord and Manchester in the 1990s and 2000s. The facilities were used for youth sentenced or awaiting court dispositions.
The allegations include Woodlock keeping watch, forcibly holding the victim, David Meehan, and beating Meehan into submission, Bucca said.
Meehan was the first to take his case to trial after filing a lawsuit against the state for the years of abuse he says he suffered at the state-run correctional facility. A jury awarded Meehan $38 million after the trial that lasted several weeks, but Meehan and his lawyers are fighting the state over a $475,000 damages cap.
(The Union Leader doesn’t routinely identify victims of sex crimes, but Meehan has gone public with his allegations.)
Woodlock’s lawyer, Richard Guerriero, told the jury about Woodlock growing up in Manchester and going to college at Northeastern to study criminal justice. He started at YDC part time and was there for 11 years.
“Jim Woodlock is innocent. This is what the evidence is going to show you,” he said. “He didn’t help sexually assault David Meehan.”
In 2017, Woodlock got the “shock of his life” when police called him about Meehan’s allegations.
“He didn’t do any of those things,” Guerriero said. “He didn’t help Buskey or Murphy commit a sexual assault of David Meehan.”
The case doesn’t have an eyewitness, confession or forensic evidence, Guerriero said.
He said Meehan failed to report until more than 25 years later. He didn’t tell teachers, nurses, his probation officer or family.
“He was out of YDC at the age of 18. He aged out,” Guerriero said, adding Meehand didn’t say anything from the time that he aged out in 1999 until 2017.
Guerriero also pointed to Meehan’s alcohol and drug abuse in “trying to erase these memories.”
Like other YDC cases, Guerriero spoke of a “financial motive” in filing the lawsuit.
Bucca told the jury he doesn’t anticipate Meehan testifying to the exact dates that the assaults happened, but it is not an element they must prove.
“The defense will argue that he is not being truthful, they will try to discredit him in your eyes,” Bucca said. “They will try to discredit him with anything they can whether it is small inconsistences or whether it’s his demeanor or how he acts on the stand.”
Buskey’s case is expected to head to trial next year.
Murphy, who has four cases of alleged abuse, had his first trial end with a hung jury.