Gov. Kelly Ayotte, shown here talking to reporters on Oct. 15, told the Bulletin on Nov. 12 she’s been in communication with the commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services and attorney general about systemic issues raised in the Bulletin’s reporting. She said she will “continue to make sure that these are investigated, that we follow through with any changes that need to be made to the system.” (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Weaver, shown here during an Oct. 15, 2025, Executive Council meeting, declined the Bulletin’s requests for an interview. Bureau of Developmental Services Chief Jessica Gorton and Director of Long Term Supports and Services Melissa Hardy also declined. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
Jim Piet poses with his wife, Pat, in their Concord home in May 2025. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)
David Rochefort
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a three-part series on New Hampshire’s intellectual and developmental disability care system.
In 1956, a documentary titled “Help Wanted” placed viewers inside the Laconia State School, which from its founding in 1903 as the New Hampshire School for Feeble-Minded Children to its closure in 1991 housed people with disabilities.
So disturbing were the visuals that the Portsmouth Herald compared the institution to images of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
Overcrowding plagued the New Hampshire facility, with over 1,000 residents by 1942, according to a historical account from the Laconia Daily Sun. There was no privacy or personal space in the group bedrooms — and in one building a single toilet was shared among 80 people. Many residents were forcibly sterilized, and beatings were routinely given as punishment for bad behavior.
For nearly a century, the institution served as the state’s response to the needs of people with disabilities. It took a class-action lawsuit — and its articulated horrors — to shutter the place for good and usher in a new system for state-administered care more than three decades ago.
But as a monthslong Bulletin investigation into New Hampshire’s modern disability care network has revealed, systemic problems of abuse and neglect haven’t gone away. Tragic story after tragic story — many of them reported this week for the first time — provide the evidence.
A caretaker’s violence
Sterling Jordan was drunk, police would later confirm, when he sexually assaulted a man with autism and cognitive disabilities who had been placed in his care.
After the November 2017 assault, the 26-year-old victim — who remained anonymous in the court filings, press reports, and other materials describing the crime — was bleeding, had vomited, and called his mother from the bathroom to tell her he’d been raped. She told officers her son had the mental capacity of a 15-year-old.
Jordan is currently serving a 10-year sentence at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord, according to the Department of Corrections website.
Jordan and the victim lived in a Manchester home operated by Community Integrated Services, which was overseen by the Moore Center, a Manchester area agency designated by the state to coordinate care for people with disabilities.
A lawsuit filed in October 2019 by the victim’s family alleges that neither Community Integrated Services nor the Moore Center did a background check on Jordan before hiring him to live with and care for the young man.
In 2014, Jordan was convicted of driving while intoxicated, which is legally disqualifying to serve as a caretaker for people with disabilities, and charged with unlawful possession of a weapon. The lawsuit claims Community Integrated Services and the Moore Center were made aware of the charges by the home’s landlord, who had discovered them during a background check.
Still, neither agency fired Jordan nor removed the young man from his care.
In the weeks leading up to the assault, the victim’s mother reportedly witnessed Jordan belligerently intoxicated, per the lawsuit, but Community Integrated Services denied he was drunk, arguing he was on medication that prevented him from drinking alcohol. The mother reportedly asked them to install a video camera in the apartment to monitor Jordan and was told it was “in the works,” the lawsuit alleged.
Community Integrated Services and the Moore Center didn’t respond to the Bulletin’s requests for comment or an interview.
The governor’s response
Jordan’s crime played out publicly in court and was widely reported in the state’s press. However, a Bulletin investigation found that Jordan’s assault was not an isolated incident within New Hampshire’s intellectual and developmental disability care system — that acts of violence, negligence, and exploitation are common. Many never make it to court or are settled behind closed doors with parties unable to speak of the outcomes. Others take years for the state to fully investigate.
In New Hampshire, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are entitled to services. The state designates 10 area agencies, including the Moore Center, to either provide this care or subcontract with another vendor agency, such as Community Integrated Services, to do so. The area agency system, established in the wake of the Laconia State School, is overseen by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services’ Bureau of Developmental Services and is paid for by Medicaid and other state and federal dollars.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte told the Bulletin on Wednesday that after the first two parts of this series were published, she reached out to DHHS Commissioner Lori Weaver and Attorney General John Formella to discuss the issues raised.
“These are very serious allegations,” Ayotte said. “They need to be examined, and we need to make sure that the system is serving the people that have disabilities in our communities, and also any of the contractors, the area agencies that contract with the state to serve people with disabilities, make sure that they are performing and that they are treating people well, so I take this very seriously.”
She said she will “continue to make sure that these are investigated, that we follow through with any changes that need to be made to the system.”
The Bulletin repeatedly requested interviews with Weaver, Bureau of Developmental Services Chief Jessica Gorton, and Director of Long Term Supports and Services Melissa Hardy to discuss issues within New Hampshire’s disability system. The three declined. Jake Leon, director of communications for DHHS, instead provided a statement.
“While we are unable to comment on individual cases, DHHS has a process in place to review and investigate complaints made against providers and vendors licensed or certified through the Department,” he wrote. “We take these allegations seriously and will continue working to ensure Granite Staters with disabilities are protected and that allegations are thoroughly investigated.”
Rampant abuse and neglect
State records obtained by the Bulletin show New Hampshire investigated 1,405 reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation committed against people with disabilities in the state’s intellectual and developmental disability system from January 2023 through the first six months of 2025.
Those reports include allegations of physical attacks, sexual abuse and assault, and verbal attacks committed by staff against people with disabilities in their care. Of the reports, 467 were deemed credible after a state investigation, according to the records, while 18 of the complaints were withdrawn before the investigations were complete and 28 complaints were ongoing when the records were produced.
State records also show 119 people died in New Hampshire’s disability system from 2023 through June 2025. Of those deaths, 79 were deemed “anticipated” by the state (state officials refused to define “anticipated” for the purposes of these records) and at least 22 were categorized under “unknown” cause of death. The causes of death in the records include “intracranial hemorrhage” (brain bleed), complications from a “right femur fracture,” and “probable bacterial infection, and malnutrition.”
This mortality report, obtained by the Bulletin through an open records request, details deaths within New Hampshire’s intellectual and developmental disability care system. The state declined to provide more documentation to add context to the nature of the deaths.
No further information is included in the records that would provide more context, and the state declined to provide the Bulletin with further documentation on the deaths even with personally identifying information redacted, citing state statutes.
Compared to elsewhere
News reports from other states — including Missouri, West Virginia, and California — suggest New Hampshire is not entirely unique, as abuse and neglect have been reported elsewhere. Additionally, the Bulletin collected data from neighboring states on their developmental disability systems through a series of open records requests. However, differences in how data is categorized and reported — as well as population variations — make comparisons with bordering states challenging.
In Vermont, 92 people died within the state’s intellectual and developmental disability system in 2023 and 2024, according to state records. In Massachusetts’ system, 730 people died in 2023 and 2024. Massachusetts categorized the deaths even further: 18 were determined to be accidental, one cause was undetermined, and 21 were still pending investigation earlier this year when the records were produced. The remaining were attributed to natural causes. In Maine’s system, 112 people died in 2023 and 2024, per state records. Of those deaths, three were accidental and 56 were attributed to “unknown causes.”
As for abuse and neglect, Vermont saw 680 instances of “alleged abuse, neglect, and prohibitive practices” and 254 “criminal acts” in 2023 and 2024, per state records. In Massachusetts, records show 11,652 complaints of abuse and neglect in 2023 and 2024. And in Maine, there were 370 complaints of abuse and neglect in 2023 and 2024.
Looking forward
Jim Piet, who has cerebral palsy and serves as vice chair of the New Hampshire Council on Developmental Disabilities, said he’s “not surprised” to hear of abuse within the care system and has experienced yelling and threats from caregivers himself.
The Council on Developmental Disabilities is a federally funded agency independent of state government that advocates for people with developmental disabilities. Piet said DHHS provides so little data and information that it makes it impossible for his council to meaningfully offer recommendations or identify issues.
Piet said the market to hire caretakers is so difficult that some people with disabilities or agencies put up with abusive or neglectful behavior because they’re afraid of not being able to find a replacement. He said low wages, minimal benefits, and little opportunity for career advancement for these employees sometimes leads to lower quality employees.
“Abuse can look like lots of different things,” Piet said.
State Sen. David Rochefort, a Littleton Republican and chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, said he was unaware of the abuse and neglect cases before hearing about them from the Bulletin. That’s “unsettling to hear,” he said.
“As someone who lived through the clergy abuse of 20 years ago,” he said, “there’s been past instances where things like this have been covered up, and this can’t be covered up. It has to be brought out into the open and people need to have the justice that they deserve. Everybody deserves justice, but this is such a vulnerable community that is so dependent on others. I would certainly support anything that would protect them.”
He said it’s important for lawmakers to look for breakdowns in the system.
“My first initial thought is, how did these cases get to this point,” he said. If there were breakdowns, he said, “then we can dig into that a little bit and find out what in the process failed these people, and look to make adjustments there.”
He said in other interactions he’s had with the area agency system, he’s wondered if there needs to be more oversight on area and vendor agencies.
“We want people to get the best care that’s available, especially a very at-risk population,” Rochefort said. “But we want it done right, and we want it done safely, and if there’s areas that need to be addressed, hopefully we can address them, but the proliferation of these private vendors just makes you wonder, are we doing enough to vet these these places and are they providing the best care that’s possible?”
Stephanie Patrick is the executive director of the Disability Rights Center-NH. This federally designated agency is tasked with investigating suspected abuse and neglect in New Hampshire; pursuing litigation on behalf of the state’s disability community; assisting people trying to receive services for their disabilities; advocating for people with disabilities; and working with lawmakers on solutions to problems facing the disability community.
“It doesn’t seem clear that there’s a path forward,” Patrick said. “I think there’s potential to make systems better. People do that all the time. We, the state of New Hampshire, are hopefully constantly looking at how to make systems work better to meet the needs of the people that they are supposed to serve. But I don’t know how you do that if you don’t want to talk about it.”
Patrick said nothing will change until state leaders are willing to be frank about what’s going on and commit to changes. She called it “unacceptable” for the state to delegate responsibility for abuse and neglect to private agencies.
She said high-level elected officials need to call for evaluations of the Department of Health and Human Services’ licensing and certification officials, its investigations teams, and adult protective services. Those groups need to “work together to address systemic failures instead of operating in silos or blaming one another.”
Patrick also said lawmakers need to devote more funding to ensure quality services and staff to monitor the conditions of residential programs.
“It is challenging because there are not enough providers,” Patrick said. “But to me, it’s worse to have poor quality providers than to not have as many as you want. A healthy system involves setting real true expectations for the kind of care that people get and holding providers accountable.”
Patrick said the state needs a full investigation conducted by an independent agency separate from the state.
“Civil lawsuits for damages provide resources for the abused person with disabilities and bring some solace to families,” she said. “Criminal charges can hold the perpetrators accountable. But neither actually forces the state and its Medicaid providers to actually examine the systems that led to these failures.”
William Skipworth covers health for the New Hampshire Bulletin. New Hampshire Bulletin is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to keeping the people of the Granite State informed about the issues that matter most. Its content is shared through a Creative Content license.