Inside America’s Largest, Yet Horrific, Mental Institution, Located On Staten Island
If you’re fascinated by stories of abandoned and rundown hospitals or asylums, this one will surely stick with you.
The story of Willowbrook State School, the institution that held thousands of tortured children, which took far too long to close down, is quite harrowing but important to revisit in order to understand America’s complicated healthcare history.
Willowbrook was a large facility in Staten Island, New York. It was originally built as a facility for disabled children in 1942 but was instead first used as a United States Army hospital for those who fought in World War II.
After the war ended, the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene and New York Governor Thomas Dewey reopened the facility for its original purpose in 1947 and named it Willowbrook State School.
Governor Dewey claimed the facility would home mentally and physically disabled children who he argued would never be able to be functioning members of society.
Willowbrook State School only took in 20 patients from other institutions after opening. But by 1955, it was at full capacity with 4,000 patients. Despite the surplus of patients, Willowbrook was severely understaffed.
It is almost impossible to describe the horrible conditions of Willowbrook. Mentally disabled children were left alone to roam throughout their wards, often naked, without access to a bathroom. There was hardly any supervision, and it was as if the patients were left to rot.
Willowbrook claimed to be a school and offer an education to its patients, but only a handful of more well-behaved patients would get to go to school, and they were only taught for about two hours a day.
There were also terrible issues regarding hepatitis at Willowbrook. Throughout the first ten years of its being open, 90% of the patients would get sick with hepatitis as soon as they arrived at the facility.
quietbits – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
There were hardly any efforts made to stop the spread of hepatitis, and all those infected had to suffer. There was also a horrible measles outbreak in 1960, which killed 60 patients. Despite its 4,000-patient capacity, by 1965, Willowbrook had over 6,200 patients, making it one of America’s largest yet most horrific mental institutions.
Multiple reporters and politicians visited Willowbrook and spoke out about the conditions, including Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1965.
Yet somehow, the calls for action went ignored until 1972, when investigative reporter Geraldo Rivera was invited by a former employee at Willowbrook to expose its conditions.
The employee gave Geraldo a key to the facility. Along with a camera crew, he filmed the gruesome inside of Willowbrook and aired the footage as part of a special on WABC-TV, which finally allowed the public to see what was happening.
Two months after Geraldo’s feature aired, residents of Staten Island filed a lawsuit against Willowbrook.
More horrific information came out about the facility as time went on, including the uncovering of New York University Dr. Saul Krugman’s unethical human experiments on hepatitis at Willowbrook.
The lawsuit was finally won in 1975 when a judge signed the Willowbrook Consent Decree, which meant the state of New York was committed to finding better living conditions for those at Willowbrook.
In 1983, the state finally announced it would be closing Willowbrook State School for good. The last of its patients left the facility by 1987.
The Willowbrook story inspired the passing of several policies and laws, like the Education For All Handicapped Children Act and the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.
Since Willowbrook’s closing, more documentaries and television specials have been made on what happened there so that we never forget.
The Willowbrook buildings are now a part of the College of Staten Island. They are surrounded by a memorial walking trail named the Willowbrook Mile, put in place by the school and the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities in honor of its former patients.
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