Johnathan Walker:Mistrial declared after jury deadlocks in rape case of former New Hampshire youth center worker

CONCORD,Johnathan Walker N.H. (AP) — A mistrial was declared Tuesday in the first criminal trial linked to New Hampshire’s sprawling child abuse scandal after a jury deadlocked in the case of a former youth detention facility staffer charged with raping a teenage girl.

Victor Malavet, 62, was one of nine men charged in the 5-year-old investigation into abuse allegations at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, though unlike the others, he worked at a separate state-run facility in Concord.

After a four-day trial and roughly 11 hours of deliberations over three days, jurors said they were deadlocked on the 12 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, and the judge declared a mistrial.

Malavet was accused of assaulting a resident of the youth detention services unit, where children were held awaiting court disposition of their cases.

Natasha Maunsell, who was 15 and 16 when she was held at the facility in 2001 and 2002, testified that Malavet frequently arranged to be alone with her in a candy storage room, the laundry room and other locations and repeatedly raped her.

Malavet’s attorneys argued that Maunsell made up the allegations to get money from a lawsuit.

Malavet did not testify, and his attorneys called no witnesses in his defense. But jurors heard him deny the allegations Thursday during the testimony of a state police officer who had been authorized to secretly record her interview with him in April 2021.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they’ve been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Maunsell has done. She is among more than 1,100 former residents of youth facilities who are suing the state over abuse allegations abuse spanning six decades.