Gov. Kelly Ayotte has nominated retired Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg to temporarily head New Hampshire’s Office of the Child Advocate, an independent watchdog for children in the state’s care.
Ayotte said Aldenberg would hold the post for 90 days while she looks for a permanent advocate.
Aldenberg retired from the Manchester Police Department in 2024 to become director of the Easterseals Military and Veterans Campus in Franklin. He and the campus’s leadership resigned last year, citing concerns about mismanagement.
If confirmed by the Executive Council, Aldenberg would replace Cassandra Sanchez, whom Ayotte did not reappoint to a second term. Under Sanchez, the Office of the Child Advocate was the first to report allegations of abuse and neglect inside the state-run Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester earlier this year.
Sanchez’s report prompted investigations by the Disability Rights Center in New Hampshire, lawmakers, and the Attorney General’s office, which disputed Sanchez’s findings but concluded the state Division for Children, Family and Services was mismanaging the facility.
Aldenberg was critical of the child protection system two years ago when a jury found Adam Montgomery guilty of killing his 5-year-old daughter, Harmony. She had been in the care of New Hampshire’s Division for Children, Youth and Family Services and Massachusetts child protection officials due to allegations of abuse and neglect.
Following Adam Montgomery’s conviction, Aldenberg said, “There’s been some failures here. And those failures were not on the part of the Manchester Police Department,” according to a media report. “I will stand by that, ‘til the end of my career. I still firmly believe that some people in some other agencies need to be held accountable.”
Aldenberg served in the Manchester Police Department from 2003 to 2024. He started his law enforcement career working for the Goffstown Police Department in 1998.
