How Could You? Hall of Shame-Stanley Watson

By Rally on 2-04-2026 in Abuse in foster care, Abuse in Juvenile Justice Facility, How could you? Hall of Shame, Stanley Watson

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Manchester, New Hampshire, a former Youth Development Center worker, now known as the Sununu Youth Services Center, and foster father, Stanley Watson, 55, is “charged with three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault of two boys, A.C. and C.S., both then under the age of 16. One of the charges alleges a pattern of sexual abuse involving A.C, who he became a foster parent to after he was released from the state juvenile detention center.

The allegations go back to 1997 and 1998 and involve two teens who were 14 years old when they were first court-ordered to be detained at the YDC on River Road, now known as the Sununu Youth Services Center. Watson is accused of engaging in fellatio with the teens in their bedrooms and in a laundry room.

Watson is not accused of forcibly raping the teens but of being in a position of authority and engaging in sex with the underage teens. Prosecutors said he sexually groomed them by giving them extra privileges, letting them out of their rooms after curfew, and rewarding them with food, before moving on to oral sex.

Testimony revealed that investigators obtained nearly a million documents in investigating allegations of abuse at YDC. Documents submitted as evidence included logs that showed Watson on duty on two nights when A.C. was let out of his room at 2 a.m. and again at 5 a.m.

While Watson worked mainly at Stark House, where A.C. was housed, he occasionally filled in at Spaulding Cottage where C.S. resided. Prosecutors also presented logs of days where Watson was there and C.S. was as well.

Jurors listened to testimony from both alleged victims, now in their 40s, and an interview of Watson, recorded surreptitiously by State Trooper Josh Quigley with permission from the Attorney General.

In the interview, Watson denied having sexual activity with either of the teens while they were at the YDC. However, he admitted to a sexual relationship with A.C. when he was 18. He said he never engaged in sexual activity with him when he was his foster dad and A.C. lived with him in Allenstown. A.C. said otherwise.

” A.C., he said, lived with him for months but the teen kept getting into trouble and was arrested for burglarizing his home with two others. Ultimately he left but later lived with him again.

Watson portrayed himself as a good guy who was not aggressive with the kids at YDC. He told Quigley he was shocked to learn about former colleagues being accused of sexually abusing the boys. However, he said he had witnessed some colleagues physically abusing the teens, although he did not say he reported the abuse. ”

Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Nicholas Chong Yen, in his opening statement, described the culture at YDC as one of a brotherhood where staff protected each other.

Watson also told the trooper about one incident where he saw a teen whose eyes were blood red and asked him what happened. One of the youth counselors, the teen told him, had choked him.

The jury also heard from Jessica Taylor of Chichester, who was A.C.’s foster mother prior to Watson. She said she knew A.C. from the time he was 15 and was transferred from YDC to a youth center in Canterbury where she and her husband worked. As he was nearing 17 years of age, she said they decided to become his foster parents. She explained that A.C.’s family did not want him and she did not want him to end up on the streets.

At age 15, Taylor said, A.C. was skittish, untrusting and showed signs of having been abused. “He didn’t like to be around men,” she said.

The family found a two-bedroom apartment in Pembroke so that A.C. could continue to go to the same school.

Three weeks after A.C. moved in, he went for a walk and came home with Watson who wanted to take him out to eat, fishing and camping. Taylor was concerned and asked to see Watson’s ID. It didn’t make sense, she said, that an adult who knew A.C. in a lockdown situation would want to take him out. “I didn’t think it was an appropriate situation.”

They informed foster care personnel of the situation. They also tried to get to know Watson, going to his home and talking with him around a campfire. Eventually, they allowed A.C. to spend time with Watson but she “still had reservations.”

By June 1999, before A.C. turned 17, he was staying overnight at Watson’s house on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

The couple had four children between them and their Pembroke place was too small on the weekends when her husband had his three kids. Ultimately, they found a house to rent in Franklin. A.C. wasn’t happy, she said, about having to attend a different school. He acted out, was disrespectful to teachers, got into fights and was suspended.

That, she said, was when Watson offered to be his foster parent. Taylor said it took her and her husband six weeks to get certified; Watson’s application was fast-tracked and he received certification in two weeks. A.C., she said, was 17 when he moved in with Watson, in September/October 1999 who was now his foster father.

Defense Attorney William Korman, in cross-examining Taylor, asked only one question: Didn’t she say that A.C. had the propensity to tell tall tales and lies. She said she did.

Korman maintains that both alleged victims made up the accusations so they could profit financially from a settlement from their lawsuits against the state. More than 1,000 people are suing New Hampshire over the abuse they allege they sustained while in the state’s care at facilities operated by the state or at ones under contract with the state.

Korman, in his opening statement, said there was nothing wrong with the relationships outside of YDC because A.C. was at the age of consent once he left the juvenile detention facility. He noted Watson is not facing criminal charges connected to that conduct.

Manchester Ink Link is identifying the alleged victims only by their initials because of the sexual nature of the charges.

Korman said both obtained loans in anticipation of a settlement payment from their lawsuits.

Korman also said the two accusers were sent to YDC because of criminal conduct and because they had no place to go. He said when they were released it “wasn’t the end of their criminal conduct.”

Yen contended Watson was a 27-year-old sexual predator at the juvenile detention center which operated like a prison. When A.C. moved in with him, Watson was 30.

Yen said the two men who said Watson sexually assaulted them did not know each other. Both came forward 25 years after the alleged assaults and told similar stories about Watson. One was assigned to Stark House at YDC, while the other was a resident of Spaulding Cottage. Both alleged the sexual assaults happened inside their assigned houses at night.

Watson mostly worked the night shift and presented himself as a “friendly guy,” Yen said. He became the guy both C.S. and A.C. confided in. He was the one adult who gave them attention and appeared to care for them.

Watson was in a position of authority over the children, according to the charges. “They had no one they could turn to and if they did, who would believe them. They were children,” Yen said.

They also feared if they did tell that they would be “retaliated against by the brotherhood,” the prosecutor said.

The sexual abuse didn’t end when the two teens left YDC, Yen said. “Watson contacted them after they aged out,” Yen said. “[At the time] This defendant was [now] 30 years old. He had sex with the boys outside of YDC.”

Watson, Yen said, denies having any sexual contact with the boys at YDC but admits post YDC sex with both.

“He admits the conduct he can afford to admit and he denies the conduct he can’t afford to admit,” Yen told the jurors. “The post YDC sex was the continuation of sexual abuse.”

This is the third trial of former state employees accused of sexually abusing teenagers at state-operated facilities.

The first criminal trial against Victor Malavet, charged with a dozen counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault of children in 2001 at a Concord facility, ended in September with a hung jury. A new trial is scheduled for June.

In November, Bradley Asbury, 69, was found guilty of holding down a 14-year-old boy in a staircase with another employee as two other youth counselors raped him in the 1990s. He is to be sentenced Jan. 27 but is already being detained in the New Hampshire State Prison.

The jury is to resume deliberations on Monday.”

Jury deliberates fate of former YDC worker accused of sexually abusing 2 boys in his care
[Manchester Ink Link News 1/11/25. by Pat Grossmith]

“A judge sentenced a former staffer at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly called YDC in Manchester, to serve 30 to 60 years in prison after being convicted of three counts of sexually assaulting two boys while they were incarcerated at the juvenile detention facility in the 1990s.

In Hillsborough County Superior Court Thursday, Judge William Delker, said the nature of Stanley Watson’s crimes warranted the sentence.”

“Two other criminal prosecutions of former YDC staffers have ended in mistrials.

The state brought indictments against only 11 men in the scandal in which more than 1,000 adults have said the were physically and sexually abused in state juvenile detention.