How The NHCADSV Failed Marisol Fuentes
SPECIAL EDITION: “She Begged Them”
The Marisol Fuentes Story — and the institutions still not answering for it
Marisol Fuentes went to court.
She begged them to protect her from her husband.
They didn’t.
On July 6th, 2025, he killed her in Berlin, New Hampshire.
What happened next is a masterclass in how powerful institutions manage catastrophe — not by fixing it, not by owning it, but by going quiet in exactly the right places, at exactly the right time.
In this special edition of The Gracie Gato Podcast, I’m pulling the thread on a story that has more layers than a New Hampshire winter:
A brand-new magistrate who set bail, watched a woman die, and then resigned — leaving a very interesting legal question about who’s now exposed without her umbrella of protection.
A Right to Know request that Executive Councilor Janet Stevens has been pursuing for months — and that Berlin Police Department is blocking, citing privacy concerns for a woman who is no longer alive to need them.
A press release from the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence calling for more training — issued by the very organization that runs the training the police were supposed to have completed.
A judicial selection commission that approved the magistrate who resigned. A commission that included, among its members, NHCADSV Executive Director Lyn Schollett.
And one question that nobody — not the police department, not the coalition, not the crisis center — has answered:
Was a victim’s advocate present when Marisol Fuentes went to court and begged for her life?
The silence around that question is not nothing. It’s everything.
This episode connects the dots between Berlin PD’s stonewalling, the sovereign immunity doctrine that may have just lost its roof, the NHCADSV’s conspicuous PR pivot, and the funding structures that give powerful nonprofit institutions every incentive to manage optics over accountability.
I want to be clear: this is journalism, not prosecution. We don’t have all the answers. But we have the questions — and we have the names.
Marisol Fuentes deserved better.
So does the next woman standing in a courtroom somewhere in New Hampshire, asking the system to protect her.
New Hampshire courts have extended this protection to nonprofits before. There’s precedent from a case involving CASA NH — Court Appointed Special Advocates — where a judge ruled that because CASA volunteers function as an arm of the court, they get the same immunity protections as a judge.
Here’s why that matters in Berlin.
RESPONSE, the local crisis center, provides advocates to attend court hearings with victims. That’s literally on their website. Victim advocacy in court settings is their *job.*
If RESPONSE had an advocate present — or was supposed to have one present — in Marisol’s case, their liability exposure is significant. *Unless* they can claim sovereign immunity.
*But.* Sovereign immunity in these cases flows through the judge — or in this case, the magistrate.
Stephanie Johnson *resigned.*
When a magistrate resigns in disgrace after a catastrophic failure, does the sovereign immunity umbrella she could have extended to nonprofits working under her court... disappear with her?
That is a legal question I am not qualified to definitively answer. But I can tell you this: it’s a question that *someone* in a law office is asking right now. And the answer to that question may have a lot to do with why Berlin Police are stonewalling a Right to Know request.
Think about it. If both the PD and RESPONSE dropped the ball — and the magistrate who could legally shield RESPONSE is gone — you’ve got a situation where a crisis center under the NHCADSV umbrella is potentially exposed.
And if RESPONSE is exposed, NHCADSV is exposed.
And if NHCADSV is exposed...
Funding. Federal funding. State grants. Millions of dollars that flow through that organization annually.
Now the wall makes a little more sense, doesn’t it?
Listen. Share. And if you know something — you know how to find me.
Listen now — available on all major podcast platforms and right here on Substack.
Sources with relevant documents are always welcome. I protect sources. That’s not a tagline. It’s a promise.
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