New Hampshire agrees to pay $10 million in youth center abuse case

The New Hampshire attorney general's office has agreed to a $10 million settlement in the case of a man who alleged that he was gang-raped in a stairwell at the state's youth detention center in the 1990s.

Michael Gilpatrick's lawsuit against the state would have been the second of more than 1,300 to go to trial, but instead both sides agreed to settle out of court, his lawyers said Saturday.

The payout is four times the maximum amount available to those who submit claims via the state's settlement fund for abuse victims, though less than half the amount a jury awarded last May in another lawsuit, the first of its kind that went to trial. The $38 million verdict in that case remains in dispute as the state seeks to slash it to $475,000.