May 9, 2025
The Boost News
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Consent Decree that ended the legal battle to improve conditions at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, N.Y. The institution, which warehoused some 5,000 people with intellectual and development disabilities (I/DD) in horrifying and inhumane conditions, wasn’t closed until 1987.
The decree was signed by then-Governor Hugh L. Carey who, not long after, extended similar benefits to all individuals served in the state’s then-Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (OMRDD) system.
RELATED NEWS: Award-Winning ‘Willowbrook’ Documentary Gets NYC Screening
With the very programs meant to include and support people with I/DD in their communities currently under attack and struggling for funds, it’s exactly the right time to remember what happened at the country’s largest institution for people labeled “mental defectives” when it opened in the early 1940s.
The Boost has pulled together some important links and information to commemorate the anniversary, starting with the profoundly disturbing 1972 WABC-TV Geraldo Rivera documentary that blew open the doors and led to the lawsuit that improved conditions.
The report starts with footage from a visit Robert Kennedy made to Willowbrook in 1965 that was equally and profoundly disturbing, yet tragically did not lead to any real changes. The state of New York did go on to develop a five-year improvement plan, according to Disability Justice, but “after making minor adjustments, conditions at the institution quickly reverted to the inhumane conditions that had thrust it into public consciousness.”
As Rivera puts it, Kennedy talked about the horrors of what he saw and “somehow we’d all forgotten.”
THE LAWSUIT
The case that followed, New York State Association for Retarded Children v. Carey, “set important precedents for the humane and ethical treatment of people with developmental disabilities living in institutions,” Disability Justice writes on its website.
The consent judgement “created guidelines and requirements for operating the institution and established new standards of care,” and recognized, among other things, that people with developmental disabilities are capable of intellectual, emotional and social growth.
It also declared “as the primary goal of the institution and the New York Department of Mental Hygiene to ‘ready each resident…for life in the community at large’ and called for the placement of Willowbrook residents in less restrictive settings.”
MORE LINKS
Disability Justice: Read more about the lawsuit and what followed.
Revisiting Willowbrook 50 years later with reporter Geraldo Rivera
Below is an anniversary celebration and panel held this week at The College of Staten Island, which is located on the former site of Willowbrook.
College of Staten Island’s History of Willowbrook
Milestones in OMRDD’s History Related to Willowbrook: An excellent timeline of events from Disability Minnesota.