Willowbrook State School
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Willowbrook State School was a state-supported institution for children with mental retardation (mentally retarded) located in central Staten Island in New York City. The school gained notoriety in the 1960s for an unethical medical study conducted there, and in the 1970s further abuses uncovered at the school were the stimulus for new civil rights legislation. The school was closed in 1987, and the former grounds were redeveloped extensively to serve as the campus of the College of Staten Island.
The institution has sometimes been misidentified as a state hospital for criminally insane adults; one example of this can be found in the 1999 novel Pins by Jim Provenzano.
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[edit] History
[edit] Construction
In 1938, plans were formulated to build a facility for children with mental retardation on a 375 acres (1.5 km²) site in the Willowbrook section of the Staten Island. Construction was completed in 1942, but instead of opening for its original purpose, it was converted into a United States Army hospital and named Halloran General Hospital, after the late Colonel Paul Stacey Halloran. After the war, proposals were introduced to turn the site over to the Veterans Administration, but in October, 1947 the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene opened its facility there as originally planned, and the institution was named Willowbrook State School.
[edit] Hepatitis Studies
Throughout the first decade of its operation, outbreaks of hepatitis were common at the school, and this led to a highly controversial medical study being conducted there between 1963 and 1966, in which healthy children were intentionally innoculated, orally and by injection, with the virus that causes the disease, then monitored to gauge the effects of gamma globulin in combating it. A public outcry forced the study to be discontinued.
[edit] More Scandals and Abuses
Further problems dogged the institution: In early 1972, Geraldo Rivera, then a reporter for television station WABC in New York, conducted a series of investigations at Willowbrook (on the heels of a previous series of articles in the Staten Island Advance and Staten Island Register newspapers), uncovering a host of deplorable conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate sanitary facilities, and physical abuse of residents by members of the school's staff. This resulted in a class-action lawsuit 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. The publicity generated by the case was a major contributing factor to the passage of a federal law, called the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.
[edit] Closing the School
In 1983, the State of New York announced plans to close Willowbrook, which had been renamed the Staten Island Developmental Center in 1974. By the end of March 1986, the number of residents housed there had dwindled to 250 (down from 5,000 at the height of the scandal exposed by Rivera), and the last children left the grounds on September 17, 1987.
After the developmental center closed, the site became the focus of intense local debate about what should be done with the property. In 1989 a portion of the land was acquired by the City of New York, with the intent of using it to establish a new campus for the College of Staten Island, and the new campus opened at Willowbrook in 1993 (at the same time, one of CSI's two other existing campuses, located in the island's Sunnyside neighborhood, was closed and that site became the home of a new high school, Michael Petrides). At 0.8 km² (204 acres), this campus is the largest maintained by the City University of New York.
The remaining 0.7 km² (171 acres) of the state school's original property, at the south end, is still under the administration of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, which maintains a facility there called the Institute For Basic Research.
[edit] See also
- New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton
- Walter E. Fernald State School
- Developmental disability
- Geraldo Rivera
[edit] References
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State of New York Psychiatric hospitals |
|---|---|
| Adult\Children Facilities |
Capital District Psychiatric Center (Albany) | Elmira Psychiatric Center | Greater Binghamton Health Center | Hutchings Psychiatric Center (Syracuse) | Mohawk Valley Psychiatric Center (Utica) | Rochester Psychiatric Center | South Beach Psychiatric Center (Staten Island) | St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center (Ogdensburg) | |
| Adult Facilities |
Bronx Psychiatric Center | Buffalo Psychiatric Center | Creedmoor Psychiatric Center (Queens Village) | Hudson River Psychiatric Center (Poughkeepsie) | Kingsboro Psychiatric Center (Brooklyn) | Manhattan Psychiatric Center | Pilgrim Psychiatric Center (Brentwood) | Rockland Psychiatric Center (Orangeburg) | Washington Heights Community Mental Health Center (Washington Heights) |
| Children's Facilities |
Bronx Children's Psychiatric Center | Brooklyn Children's Psychiatric Center | Queens Children's Psychiatric Center (Bellerose) | Rockland Children's Psychiatric Center | Sagamore Children's Psychiatric Center (Dix Hills) | Western NY Children's Psychiatric Center (West Seneca) | |
| Forensic Facilities |
Central New York Psychiatric Center (Marcy) | Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center (Ward's Island) | Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center (New Hampton) | Rochester Regional Forensic Unit |
| Research Facilities |
Nathan S. Kline Institute (Orangeburg) | New York Psychiatric Institute (New York City) |
| Closed Facilities |
Asylum on Blackwell's Island (New York City) | Bloomington Lunatic Asylum (Morningside Heights) | Central Islip Psychiatric Center (Central Islip) | Dannemora State Hospital (Dannemora) Now know as Clinton Correctional Facility | Gowanda State Hospital (Collins) | Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center (Dover Plains) | Kings Park Psychiatric Center (Kings Park) | Letchworth Village Home for the Feeble Minded and Epileptics (Thiells) | Long Island Developmental Center (Melville) | Manhattan Children's Psychiatric Center | Matteawan State Hospital (Matteawan) Now known as Fishkill Correctional Facility | Middletown Psychiatric Center (Middletown) | Mohansic State Hospital (Yorktown Heights) | Newville State Hospital (Newville) | New York Asylum for Idiots (Syracuse) | Utica State Hospital | (Utica) | Western New York Institution for Deaf-Mutes (Rochester) | Willard State Hospital (Willard) | Willowbrook State School (Staten Island) Institution for children with mental retardation |
| Sanatorium |
Loomis Sanatorium (Liberty) | Interpines Sanatorium (Goshen) |
