by CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire woman who sued her adoptive parents for abuse she suffered as a child was granted $29.6 million in damages by a New Hampshire Superior Court judge on Tuesday, an award her attorney called one of the largest ever in New Hampshire.
Olivia Griffin (formerly Atkocaitis), 22, was born in China and adopted by Denise and Thomas Atkocaitis as a 14-month-old baby. Griffin endured years of psychological and physical abuse at her parent’s home in New Boston, where she lived with the Atkocaitis’ three biological children.
Griffin’s parents subjected her to forced labor and
kept her locked in a small basement room
until she was able to escape in 2018 by digging her way out of the room.
In 2023, when she was 19, Griffin brought a lawsuit against her parents as well as some of the state and local officials and agencies she argued should have intervened after seeing
signs of the abuse
and her confinement. The lawsuit argued Griffin was effectively enslaved in intolerable conditions.
“The state failed me,”
Griffin told the Globe
in a 2023 interview.
Her brother had gone to the police in 2011 and told them Olivia had been locked in the basement for weeks at a time, that his mom had hit her in the face, and pushed her down the stairs.
While the police came to the house and documented Olivia’s living conditions in a four-page report, sparking the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Families to schedule subsequent interviews with Olivia, she was never removed from the house.
The New Hampshire Department of Health’s Division of Children, Youth and Families was a state agency named in the suit, and they are among the parties that previously reached a settlement with Griffin, according to her attorney Michael Lewis.
Prior to Tuesday’s award, Lewis said settlements made in this case totaled about $1 million.
The New Boston Police were among the parties that were dismissed from the case, a decision Lewis said he now plans to take to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
“What this shows is that the judicial system sees this as an incredible harm worthy of one of the largest verdicts in the history of the state,” he said.
The New Boston Police Department filed felony level charges against Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis and arrested them in 2018. They were charged with criminal restraint, kidnapping, and endangering the welfare of a child.
Denise Atkocaitis pleaded guilty to felony criminal restraint and served no time. Prosecutors dropped the charges related to child endangerment and accessory to criminal restraint.
Thomas Atkocaitis pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment and served six months in Hillsborough County Jail.
“I never felt that law enforcement and the prosecution of her parents did right by her,” Lewis said. For instance, he said, they never interviewed her siblings who could’ve corroborated her account of the extreme abuse she suffered.
“What this shows is the civil arena is an avenue for justice when, for whatever reason, our struggling criminal justice system fails to do its job,” he said. “And it sends a strong message that the judicial system accepts Olivia’s allegations. The judge said he believed Olivia.”
