On February 2, 1972, WABC-TV Channel 7 New York airs a documentary by investigative reporter Geraldo Rivera revealing intense overcrowding, dangerous conditions and frequent abuse of patients at Willowbrook State School, a facility on Staten Island housing roughly 5,000 children and adults with developmental disabilities.
When New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy visited Willowbrook in 1965, he compared it to a “snake pit,” with residents “living in filth and dirt, their clothing in rags, in rooms less comfortable and cheerful than the cages in which we put animals in a zoo.” The state of New York developed a five-year improvement plan, but conditions quickly deteriorated by the early 1970s.
The Staten Island Advance series published an investigative series on Willowbrook in 1971. According to a February 1972 New York Times article, Dr. Michael Wilkins, an ousted Willowbrook staff member and whistleblower, also began granting facility access to local TV channels and, eventually, Rivera. In his WABC-TV story—titled “Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace”—Rivera filmed patients in “uncontrolled conditions” at the state-run institution.
The documentary drew widespread attention, appalling viewers and sparking a national outcry. There was roughly one attendant for every 50 children, many of whom sat unclothed in the ward throughout the day. As the Times recounted, the only sound picked up by Rivera’s technicians “was something of an eerie communal wail.” Rivera said in his voice-over narration, “This is what it looked like. This is what it sounded like. But how can I tell you about the way it smelled? It smelled of filth, it smelled of disease, and it smelled of death.”
Parents of Willowbrook residents filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on March 17, 1972. Alleging the institution violated the constitutional rights of its residents, they pointed to issues ranging from the indefinite confinement of residents to overcrowding to inadequate clothing and meals. The case went to trial in October 1974 and was settled in April 1975, prompting U.S. District Court Judge Orrin G. Judd to issue the Willowbrook Consent Judgment. It established new standards of care and improved facility operations.
Willowbrook closed its doors in 1987, but the impact of Rivera’s exposé was far-reaching. Public outrage over conditions at Willowbrook and similar state-run institutions spurred the enactment of federal legislation, including the Protection and Advocacy System in the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (1975); the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975); and the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.
These laws helped lay the foundation for the later passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), a U.S. Civil Rights law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities.
