She spent years imprisoned in ‘dungeon.’ Adoptive parents owe $30M, NH judge says
A woman who sued her adoptive parents on claims including slavery, involuntary servitude and false imprisonment testified to spending her childhood imprisoned in their New Hampshire home, where she was kept in a basement “dungeon” until her escape.
Now, a New Hampshire Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of Olivia Griffin, who changed her name from Olivia Atkocaitis, by ordering Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis to pay her more than $29.5 million, the amount in damages requested by Griffin.
“Ms. Griffin’s testimony was compelling and credible,” reads a July 8 order signed by judge John C. Kissinger Jr.
“She testified to the years of abuse the Atkocaitises perpetuated from when she was 14 months old to when she escaped the Atkocaitis home at 15 and a half years old.”
Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis represented themselves in the case. They could not immediately be reached for comment.
The couple adopted Griffin from China in 2004, McClatchy News previously reported.
She fled their New Boston home in 2018, when she successfully dug her way out of the basement, according to her lawsuit.
In Kissinger’s order, he wrote that Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis confined Griffin inside a small “8x8 basement room without ventilation” as punishment while isolating her from the local community and preventing her from attending public school.
The order says “at one point, the Atkocaitises handcuffed Ms. Griffin’s ankle to a dog leash in the basement room and forced her to use a commode,” which is a portable toilet.
Griffin testified to the couple forcing her to do different chores, including cleaning a barn in bare feet and giving hourslong foot massages.
When Griffin “did not complete the tasks to Ms. Atkocaitis’s satisfaction,” the order says Denise Atkocaitis would beat her.
Denise Atkocaitis is also accused of threatening to have Griffin deported to China and using racist slurs toward her.
Griffin detailed the abuse she endured during a July 8 hearing, WMUR-TV reported.
“Being told for 15 years that your life is not worth living, and any time you do something wrong, you were told 110 ways you should kill yourself. I don’t think I’m ever going to recover from that,” Griffin said in court, according to the TV station. “I was conditioned to not think that I was worth anything.”
‘New Hampshire failed Olivia’
When Griffin sued the Atkocaitises in January 2023, she also sued New Boston, its police department, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, its child protective services agency and a nonprofit international adoption agency, accusing them of enabling the abuse.
“New Hampshire failed Olivia,” Griffin’s attorney Michael Lewis said in a statement to McClatchy News on July 9.
Except for the New Boston Police Department, which was dismissed from the case, the other parties named in the suit reached settlements with Griffin, including the state agencies, the Boston Globe reported citing Lewis.
The state department of health and human services did not immediately return McClatchy News’ request for comment.
Lewis told McClatchy News over the phone that he plans to appeal the dismissal of New Boston police as defendants.
The police department was previously represented by attorney Michael P. Courtney, who told McClatchy News in February 2023 that an investigation “led to the removal of (Griffin) from the home and conditions her adopted parents subjected her to.”
But Griffin’s lawsuit accused the police of repeatedly returning her to Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis after her prior attempts to escape.
Brother describes abuse
In 2011, Kaleb Atkocaitis, Griffin’s older brother, left home to live with another family at age 15, after he reported his parents abusing Griffin and their two other siblings to the state and to police, according to an affidavit he wrote in February 2024.
The affidavit, which is attached to a brief supporting Griffin’s request for damages, says he was 8 when Griffin was adopted.
Kaleb Atkocaitis described his father as an “emotionally unavailable man” and his mother as “an extreme Christian fundamentalist” who was “dangerous and violent” in the affidavit.
Before Griffin’s adoption, he said he told a social worker that Thomas Atkocaitis beat him with a belt and that, around that time, his parents beat him and his siblings with a “crop whip.”
Despite this, “Olivia’s adoption went through anyway,” Kaleb Atkocaitis wrote.
His affidavit says Denise Atkocaitis hated all her children, especially Griffin.
“My mom would scream at us until she would foam at the mouth,” Kaleb Atkocaitis wrote. “When she beat us, she would urinate on herself.”
Kaleb Atkocaitis recalled how his parents were the most abusive toward Griffin and subjected her to racism and threats of deportation, as well as sexism and sexualization.
He said they would abuse Griffin with food, too. Griffin also testified to this.
In the judge’s July 8 order, it says Denise Atkocaitis would feed Griffin nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for several months.
Other times, she would feed Griffin “flour with water, oil, and peanut butter; water with hot sauce and cayenne pepper; bread with apple cider vinegar: and ‘detoxes,’” the order states.
Parents plead guilty
Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis were arrested in connection with their abuse of Griffin in 2018, according to the Boston Globe.
Thomas Atkocaitis was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment, the newspaper reported. Denise Atkocaitis did not serve jail time after she pleaded guilty to felony criminal restraint.
Lewis told McClatchy News that they are looking to collect the multimillion dollar award they owe Griffin.
Since Griffin brought her lawsuit, she graduated summa cum laude from Plymouth State University in the fall, when she was the president and speaker for her class, according to Lewis.
“We hope that the work we’ve done made up for the egregious shortfalls by state, county and local law enforcement in her case,” he said.
“Her civil case, and this result, is proof that there are ways to seek justice on your own terms when police and prosecutors fail,” Lewis added.
This story was originally published July 9, 2025 at 3:41 PM with the headline "She spent years imprisoned in ‘dungeon.’ Adoptive parents owe $30M, NH judge says."
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