The Path Forward: Remembering Willowbrook - Full Documentary

foreign [Music] [Music] I visited the state institutions for the mentally [ __ ] and I think particularly at Willowbrook that we have a situation that borders on a snake pad and that the children live in built I think all of us are at Paul and uh I think it's just a long overdue that something be done about it how long have you been at Willowbrook yeah how is it living on the ward that you live this Grace the attendants of trying their best but the staff is just too small to do anything more than just try and keep the place clean when there's only one person to take care of 30 or 40 nothing good can possibly happen no Rehabilitation no training nothing the attendants are as much the victim of the conditions here as the patients are [Music] my problem with telling the story 50 years later is that I'm like Pavlov's dog I I react and I get flashed back to that to the obscene the torture of the of the residents the inmates there something so so utterly terrible that it was almost unbelievable this was a secret Enclave the system had set up a way that would not allow any Ordinary People to see what was going on inside these brick buildings I was given this key on that first day of work pretty heavy steel key as you can see I was told to go to a certain building and I went there and I opened one door it was very heavy metal door turn the key opened it and I worked a couple of steps and I had to open a second door I was directed down to the end of the hall there was another steel door in 19 years of age I basically said to myself hmm what have I gotten myself into who is locked behind three steel doors pushed the door open and when I walked in on the other side of the door with 40 toddlers and why in God's name were they locked behind three still doors when I applied for my job I I was really never taken to the to any of the wards they just accepted my application and they told me when I would start and then I went to building six which was my building and uh building supervisor opened the door to the day room and there was the chaos you have no idea what was inside no idea the savagery the the squalor the the illness the the infectiousness the violence that was just the norm every day it had a stink to it that got into your clothes and into your skin uh how uh how unattended uh it was hell on Earth why would you continue to allow people to share a bath bathrooms with no doors on the stalls when you know 100 of them get Hepatitis within six months of entering and when the incidence of the intestinal parasites and worms was incredibly High my name is thinking about cookies and can I used to grow up on the floor and they are get down [Music] oh man [Music] another another mind you this is only 50 years ago that we're not talking about the Dark Ages we are still responsible we're not talking about great grandparents and you know ancient history this is our world our universe has happened in our universe on our watch it's mind-blowing [Music] well Willowbrook has a long history obviously on this site it actually was first chartered 75 years ago and in the charter it was described as a school for the education of what they then termed mental defectives what we now would say probably would be people with intellectual or developmental disabilities so it started out with this goal of educating and training people and much of the coverage that you might see in the newspapers then was designed to encourage people to see this as a good option for their children but very quickly through underfunding and understaffing it became really quite unlivable at its height it had about three times as many people living in its Wards as the place was designed to accommodate I would get calls for example at the beginning that say to me uh you know somebody's acting out you need to sign straight jacket order you need to sign a Thorazine shot to cool them down and I didn't understand what was going on here at first really was it took me a year to really see and figure out the evil you know the Relentless cruelty that was built into this system to maintain the status quo lack of privacy and that many of the people were at that time because of the budget cuts there weren't enough changes of clothing to go around so there was nudity chaos nobody nobody came into these buildings not the director of this place nobody came into those buildings they were sealed off you know as as coffins they were living coffins for devalued people the younger sister of a previous resident of Willowbrook who lived here for 10 years before he died in 1968. he actually became a bit of a family secret I was told that I didn't visit because I didn't want to go at the age of three I believe my mother never went because it was too painful doctors social workers and the belief at that time was in a situation like this your best bet is to drop your child off and they will get cared for and to move on with your life and that is what my parents tried to do my mother never ever forgave herself ever when you worked here if you continued to work here you started to have you had it to become a little bit impervious you had to be able to deal with this I always say that we became a little bit institutionalized because this was such a surreal thing but if I left who was going to come I mean I felt I could do something maybe I could change what was happening on a daily basis my brother died on July 4th 1968 I was always under the impression that his death was due to some type of trauma um he what I was told subsequently was that he had perforated his stomach and the assumption was based upon what I had learned in secrecy by reading you know bits and pieces was that he probably had been either abused by caregivers or that there had been some kind of traumatic event you know with another Resident I was just a year older than my brother Louis Rivera who was placed in Willowbrook state school at the age of five my mother would undress my brother as a way of assessing was he gaining weight were there any bruises were there any marks that's how families tried to monitor the care because we weren't allowed to ask any questions my little girl was was two years old and we never knew where the children's Club who fed them the first visit I had to cut her hair because it was mattered the director sent me a letter and told me if I didn't like it it'd take off so I got on the bus that next day I came out to Willowbrook I sat down all day long until about four o'clock secretaries say we're closing there you got to leave us I'm not going into play ain't funny he decided to beat Rick he didn't even look up at me I said well get someone to take the letter I'll sign it I'll take out I said before I take her out I'm gonna call the news media and that's when he asked me did I want a cup of coffee [Laughter] the beginnings of advocacy before Geraldo Rivera's expose there was a young reporter Jane Curtin who went to Willowbrook and actually did a series of Articles exposing the conditions she was joined by Eric Arts who was a photojournalist who took some powerful photographs of the horrific conditions there so Jane really was the first to really bring public awareness to what was happening at Willowbrook I got to know then Mike Wilkins and Bill bronston they contacted me and told me that there was something that would that I should see that they thought that I would be able to write about it they had faith I think in my perspective on things they walked me through the front door I mean I was with people who were Taking Chances but there had been no prior exposure so there were no alarm Bells so it was just three people going through the through the front door nobody really believed it we when Jane Curtin did her articles in the Staten Island Advance there were a couple of still photos but still no nobody believed it and we were sort of we were being denounced from pulpits and and other politicians not believing us and they were thinking we were just radicals bad-mouthing an institution that was doing its best the first thing I began to do was to bring the families inside to show them why their kids were being destroyed why every time they come their kid would be more and more damaged more and more injured bill broster and I quickly uh observed and concluded that uh the most Progressive uh element in that institution was the parents that led to meetings where I began to set up seminars for the families in order to understand why they had to get their kids out of here the parents got involved they got organized they got confident because their meetings were really big we had a meeting of um one Sunday with a large group of parents the director Dr Jack Hammond was invited he was asked to take a public stand against the conditions where there weren't enough clothes there wasn't enough staff he refused he said I've been in this business for a long time and it won't work they ejected him from the meeting at that point um and the that was a Sunday and that following Monday there was a memorandum circulated through the institution saying that no employee was allowed to attend a meeting of the parents organization but the next Sunday I did attend and so did I'm sure so did Bill um and then we were promptly given our pink slips [Music] foreign the supervisor in building six a nice guy but it was his job to hand me my pink slip and tell me I was fired and I was pretty stunned and his hand was shaking and in his anxiety forgot to take pass for the key and I've been remember that I had it so I got home and and there it was and so of course it made me think because one of my thoughts was man if people just knew if they just knew about this place and I could see it for themselves nobody would put up with it and so I slept on it and the next day I called Geraldo I happen to know him from before well Mike called me at one point and said that he had just been fired from Willowbrook I said what's Willowbrook it sounded so nice that lyrical name the Willowbrook I thought it was like a country club he said he had just been fired and that the conditions there were so appalling that he thought it would be a great story for us to tell uh and I listened I had no experience at all with either institutions or with the developmentally disabled so I was utterly unprepared for the reality of Willowbrook I I was horrified I was appalled it was uh it was beyond belief how how horrible it was how filthy it was it was it's hell on Earth it was really I mean I was experienced person you know a very Urban uh very Savvy did all kinds of you know drug abuse stories and you know I was a tough guy but when I saw Willowbrook it was uh it was something that seared my soul [Music] the administrators had a a cold or uh academic excusing in a way as thinking that we were naive that there was something that we were missing and I think that my ignorance was my strength in the sense that I looked I said are you kidding me I mean yep children unattended and smeared with their own feces and wailing under the sinks their pants down around their ankles eating slop I mean what is it that I don't understand more and more I got back to the eyewitness Newsroom and there were a barrage of calls from New York State officials angrily denouncing our trespassing and threatening lawsuits and without authorization violated the privacy of the of the residents but give nobody for you anywhere there was no privacy anyway very eloquently stated they lived you know everything all communal so to his credit Al Primo the director of eyewitness news and the assignment editors said okay they suspended judgment the film came back from the lab they saw the film everyone's spine stiffened and they said we're gonna go with this story it changed the world but even Bernard with his tragically eloquent plea for help doesn't really understand that what Willowbrook needs isn't more money more money would certainly help at least the kids would have clothes and they'd be cleaner than they are now but they'd still basically be human vegetables in a detention Camp what we need is a new approach we have to change the way we care for our mentally [ __ ] we ask for change we demand change [Music] the question was what was the solution to this place they wanted to fix it of course they wanted to pour another few millions of dollars into this place because they didn't have another alternative Paradigm in their head and our job was to stop them from fixing this place and to shut it down [Music] we went into the federal court in order to try and get an emergency intervention the lawyers brought in the top leaders in the United States to talk about what quality services for people with special needs look like their testimony was just amazing it was the first time that the reality of habilitation Services of individualized developmental Services was articulated in a court situation and so as the trial went on finally the judge decided to get up off of his bench and come and take a look and that closed the deal once he saw it once he walked through it no matter what they did to clean it up and they tried to clean it up the expose really led to major changes in the disability system in this country and various laws were passed which were designed to protect people with disabilities in 1975 alone three significant laws were enacted leading up to the passage of the civil rights for institutionalized persons act which protects the rights of people with disabilities and institutional facilities followed by the official closure of will Brook in 1987. Paving the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 . did I take you back into Willowbrook you never went back yeah I I wish that I never did [Music] so after Bernard left Willowbrook he went on to become a civil rights activist for people with developmental disabilities and really was a driving force behind the creation of the Statewide self-advocacy Association of New York state or sainies as it's called so he went on to do some great things after he left Willowbrook we're not there yet but we're getting there with all the advocacy parents efficacy self-advocates on Sandy's and because of banana cambello it's all started because of him and we're grateful you know we got a moment ago this could go on forever until we change our attitude about people who put the problems [Music] Bernard is he went on to have a career in advocacy where would he have been if he'd ever met Wilkins in Bronson he became a symbol a symbol of a potential realized Willowbrook affected the entire world it is it is the ground zero for disability rights what I saw my brother was a desire to live a desire to experience the world as we know it that was deprived and denied of him by virtue of the institutionalization that he was subject to I think it's also important to remember that where that there were probably thousands of children who never survived being here and they need to be remembered too the cost is a human cost and being robbed of that potential in one's life is just a tragedy we would never want to see repeated again there's no way to go ahead without remembering what happened in the past because it gives us Direction it tells us we have learned this lesson it is a duality for me with Willowbrook I think back about some of the saddest things that I saw here and then I think about the fact that this little boy Josh that learned to work when he was eight only because there was no one helping him that he took his first steps to me and when you grow up in an institution we we stunt that that Curiosity so I think about the sadness of it but I think about Josh walking towards me and how that filled me those images that we saw in Geraldo Rivera's expose or in the photographs by Eric Arts that appeared in Staten Island Advance the images that make us hurt that's not that whole person that is that person in that historical moment it's important to remember that these are people with voices and dreams and hopes the very first word that comes to mind is the one that came to mind for decades which is shame for me it was a source of great shame that this happened to um to my brother um over the years and especially now there's I I don't really feel shame anymore I actually especially today I'm extremely grateful I'm just grateful for um the work that was done by Geraldo Rivera by the activist Physicians and parents and unfortunately my family did not benefit from that it was too late for us but not too late for so many others [Music] uh when the doctors told me 50 years ago to tell me about this expose that needed airing on television Jane curtin's farm work at the advance to advance that story of course I had no idea that 50 years later 35 years after the closing of this terrible institution we would be gathered here celebrating the progress guarding against deterioration and budget cuts and so forth but the world has changed for the developmentally disabled they have come out of The Shadow [Applause] [Music] the ribbon cutting today of opening the mild is a formal action of remembering the past to protect the future for now it's about people's walking on this mile walking on this property and starting to really critically think and take steps and they can take personal actions to make sure that this never happens again be the change that you want to see that's exciting to me to see what has been built on the ashes of that the Phoenix that has risen from those ashes and that's the Legacy [Music] thank you [Music] thank you thank you [Music] [Music]

Channel: NYS Council on Developmental Disabilities

Views: 168,970

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Id: ev80qEtp2u4

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023