Willowbrook State School

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Willowbrook State School
http//www.raymondsroom.com/images/willowbrook_bw.
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• Elizabeth Cappola

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History

• Built in the late 1930s
• Was a state-supported institution for mentally
  retarded children
• They did not receive their first patients until
  after WWII
• During WWII, Willowbrook was used as a veterans
  hospital for injured soldiers.

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History continued

• Willowbrook became famous in the 1960s for an
  unethical medical study that was being conducted
  there.
• A combination of rising placements, budget cuts,
  ignorance, arrogance, and indifference, created
  notorious conditions at Willowbrook.

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• In 1965, Willowbrook held over 6,000 patients but
  was built to hold only 4,000.
• Senator Robert Kennedy was calling Willowbrook a
  snake pit yet public involvement was limited
  and conditions worsened.
• It wasnt until the early 1970s that further
  abuses were uncovered at the school and soon
  became the stimulus for new civil rights
  legislation

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• In November 1971, The Staten Island Advance
  published a series of articles detailing the
  horrible conditions at the school.
• In 1972 , Geraldo Rivera began a series of
  programs that shook the conscience of New York
  State and the nation and inspired parents and
  others to take legal action.

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Hepatitis Studies

• Hepatitis was well known epidemic at Willowbrook.
• Researchers thought that since Willowbrook
  provided a quarantine and that most patients had
  already contracted the virus that there was no
  need to worry about.
• This lead to a highly controversial medical study
  between 1963-1966.
• The study was controversial because healthy
  children were intentionally being injected with
  the virus that causes the disease.
• The study was designed to gain an understanding
  of the disease and to prevent and combat it.

Dr. Krugman
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Hepatitis cont

• If Willowbrook was a hell for residents, it was a
  paradise for the researchers. On these disease
  ridden wards, the line between treatment and
  experimentation seemed to vanish.
• The subjects, all children, were deliberately
  infected with the hepatitis virus.
• Early subjects were fed extracts of stools from
  infected individuals.
• Later subjects received injections of more
  purified virus preparations

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• Investigators defended by saying that the
  children would be better off being infected under
  careful controlled research conditions because
  they would be infected anyway.
• Between 1955 and 1957, Willowbrook had about 350
  cases of hepatitis among he residents an 76 among
  the staff. These were only the observable, acute
  cases of patients with jaundice the number of
  milder, sub clinical cases are still greater.
• One way that researchers had received their
  subjects was through parental consent. The
  Willowbrook director at the time, Dr. H.H. Berman
  would send letter to the parents of those
  patients that were on waiting lists. The letter
  simply stated that they were researching a
  possible hepatitis prevention and that some of
  the subjects would be introduced to the virus
  along with the gamma globulin (although only some
  would receive this). They would enclose a
  permission form for the parents to sign and that
  is how their children were admitted.

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Other abuses

• Paula born severely brain damaged her parents
  placed her in Willowbrook. Very disillusioned by
  slight progress, they never asked why they could
  not see Paulas ward. When the attendants would
  bring Paula to see her parents, they would take
  her to the washroom and clean her up and place
  new clothes on her. One summer day they noticed
  not only bruises but also large bite marks
  covering her body. After turning 12, Paula was
  moved to Building 76. Her parents recall the
  waiting room smelling of urine and could only
  imagine what the smell of the ward was. She would
  arrive bruised so often that her parents
  eventually stopped asking questions.

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More abuse

• Stevie had been bruised and slashed. Stevie had
  lost an eye due to a fight he had with another
  resident. His father recalls the events. I saw
  Stevie with a swollen face with one eye closed. I
  asked the supervisor What happened to Stevie
  she said He must have gotten in a fight with
  some of the kids I asked if Stevie had seen a
  doctor and the nurse replied That is part of his
  sickness, that is why he keeps his eye closed. I
  let it go for a week then wrote a letter to Dr.
  Hammond and he replied that he would be seeing a
  doctor. Stevie did not see a doctor for another 2
  weeks and by that time it was to late to save his
  eye.

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Geraldo Rivera

• In 1972, Geraldo invaded Willowbrook with the
  help of staff physician Bill Bronston and
  Willowbrook doctor Michael Wilkins, who had both
  been trying to improve conditions of Willowbrook.
  Bronston and Wilkins were both fired by
  Willowbrook because they had been urging parents
  to organize so they can demand improvements for
  their childs living conditions.
• Geraldo gained entry using a stolen key and
  documented the brutal and horrific living
  conditions of its disabled residents, which
  included several mentally retarded children. The
  report led to an immediate government inquiry and
  won Geraldo the Peabody Award.

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Willowbrook Consent Creed

• This resulted in a class action law suit being
  filed against the State of New York in federal
  court on March 17, 1972. A settlement in the case
  was reached on May 5,1975 , mandating reforms at
  the site, but several years would elapse before
  all of the violations were corrected.
• April 30,1975, the Willowbrook Consent Creed was
  signed. This committed New York State to improve
  community placement for the now designated
  "Willowbrook class
• Under the terms of the agreement, by 1981
  Willowbrook will house no more than 250 patients,
  all from Staten Island. The cornerstone of the
  consent decree is that the state would be
  required to spend 2 million to create 200 places
  for Willowbrook transferees in hostels, halfway
  houses, group houses, and sheltered workshops.
  The consent decree also provides for the creation
  of a Willowbrook Review Panel to oversee the
  implementation of the orders and standards.

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References

• http//www.mncdd.org/extra/wbrook/willowbrook.html
  
• http//willowbrookstateschool.blogspot.com/2006/11
  /history-of-willowbrook-state-school.html
• http//www.nndb.com/people/308/000022242/
• http//www.mnddc.org/parallels/five/5b/4.html
• http//www.library.csi.cuny.edu/archives/consent.h
  tm
• Rothman, David, and Sheila M. Rothman. The
  Willowbrook Wars. New York Aldine Transaction,
  2005.
• Noll, Steven, and James Trent. Mental Retardation
  in America A Historical Reader (The History of
  Disability). London NYU Press, 2004.
• Video http//www.foxnews.com/video-search/m/21708
  387/hell_on_earth.htm