Lawsuit: Girl adopted from China suffered slavery in NH
Jan. 30—A Chinese-born girl ended up a slave to a New Boston family who adopted her and subjected her to years of confinement, beatings, starvation and forced labor, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in a New Hampshire court.
The 70-page suit names the parents as defendants but also targets New Hampshire's child protection system, New Boston police, a nonprofit Massachusetts adoption agency and the local school district.
It claimed those agencies ignored the girl's situation — in part because she was a minority child — and kept her with an abusive family.
"In my view, the state permitted slavery to exist in its jurisdiction, and the state did nothing about this," said Michael Lewis, a Concord lawyer representing Olivia Atkocaitis, who is now 19.
The lawsuit alleges that Atkocaitis was denied her rights under the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery shortly after the Civil War.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in Merrimack County Superior Court. Most of the organizations named in the lawsuit either did not reply to requests for comment or did not provide a substantive response.
The parents previously pleaded guilty to related charges.
According to the lawsuit, Atkocaitis' parents, Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis, locked her in an 8-by-8 foot room in the basement of their four-bedroom, 4,300-square-foot home. The home sits on 27 acres adjacent to a state forest.
The lawsuit refers to the room as a dungeon, and the only window was secured with chicken wire.
Olivia was let out to massage Denise Atkocaitis and do other chores, including caring for farm animals and clearing their manure, the suit reads. She attended school for only one day, while the Atkocaitises' three biological children attended public schools.
Olivia used a bucket for a toilet, and the smell pervaded the house, her siblings told school officials.
"When Olivia attempted to escape, as she did repeatedly as a child, local police hunted her down, reprimanded her for escaping, and returned her to servitude. During her last effort at escape, the police used dogs to track her," the suit reads.
The lawsuit alleges racism and sexism on the part of agencies that came into contact with the girl.
For example, in 2011 a teenaged sibling reported to a school counselor that Olivia had been whipped, starved and pushed down stairs. She was 8 at the time.
The school notified New Boston police, who went to the home and photographed Olivia's room. They also notified the state Division for Children, Youth and Families, which moved the teen out of the home but left Olivia.
"It did not offer the same protections to Olivia, a younger child, a girl, a racial and ethnic minority, even after Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis admitted to police that they had locked her in a basement dungeon," the lawsuit reads.
After her 2018 escape, officials brought charges against the Atkocaitis couple.
Denise Atkocaitis pleaded guilty to a felony criminal restraint and avoided any prison time. Thomas pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment and received a minimal jail sentence, according to the lawsuit.
News media at the time of their indictment reported the couple had kept the girl confined to a basement room.
According to the lawsuit, the Atkocaitises no longer live in New Hampshire. His address lists an apartment in Auburn, Maine; she lives in Byron, Georgia. According to town records, they sold their home on Helena Drive for $445,000 in October 2019.
The lawsuit faults the placement agency, Wide Horizons for Children.
In a pre-placement investigation, one of the Atkocaitis children reported being beaten by a belt by their father. Wide Horizons reported to DCYF, according to the lawsuit. The state agency never investigated, and 10 months later reported no valid complaints against the couple.
Wide Horizons' last contact with the Atkocaitises was in May 2005, when the agency did a post-placement inspection. It described the couple as "devoted to their children, and they are raising them in a loving, Christian home, where each child is thriving."
The lawsuit is one of several filed in recent years challenging DCYF and the state's system for protecting children.
"We are reviewing the filing and will respond as appropriate in court in the ordinary course of litigation," reads an email sent by Michael Garrity, a spokesman for Attorney General John Formella.
Besides the 13th Amendment violations, the lawsuit claims deprivations of due process, equal protection, citizenship rights, failure to provide an education, breach of fiduciary duties, false imprisonment and discrimination.
