For ex-Willowbrook residents, fight never ends
Site of infamous
institution, now College of Staten Island campus, is toured and
material is archived
Staten Island Advance - May 11, 2005
Bernard Carabello vows to keep fighting to improve services for
people with developmental disabilities and mental illness.
The fight is personal.
As a resident of the infamous Willowbrook State School, Carabello
faced regular beatings with belt buckles, extension cords and
whatever else was handy for a period of 18 years -- after his
cerebral palsy was misdiagnosed as mental retardation at the age of
3.
"I want people to remember, because it could happen again," he told
an audience of 50 yesterday at the College of Staten Island. "We
cannot do this ever again to another human being."
The occasion was the archiving of material relating to Willowbrook,
which was closed in 1987, including Carabello's medical records and
his unpublished autobiography.
Carabello's contribution is part of a full-scale effort by CSI to
document the history of the facility, which stood where the college
is now.
Diana McCourt donated documentation of the work done by parents and
advocates to close Willowbrook.
Her daughter, Nina, was a plaintiff in the suit against New York
that resulted in the Willowbrook Consent Decree, which triggered
nationwide reforms concerning housing and care of those with mental
and physical disabilities.
Nina was one of the patients subjected to covert hepatitis
experiments conducted at Willowbrook. Although she was lucky enough
to have been given a placebo instead of the virus, Mrs. McCourt said
Nina was locked up at all times and wracked with tremors brought on
by heavy doses of tranquilizers.
"I hope these archives help people understand that we had no choice
and no other support, especially for the most afflicted," she said.
"I think it will be very healing to a lot of families to learn what
happened."
CSI president Dr. Marlene Springer said the archives also will serve
as a resource for CSI students and people around the country
researching developmental disabilities and mental illness.
Dr. Springer added that documents had been pledged by Geraldo
Rivera, who thrust Willowbrook into the national spotlight in 1972,
after the deplorable conditions at the school were exposed by
Advance reporter Jane Kurtin in the early 1970s.
Former Assemblywoman Elizabeth Connelly, an advocate for the
developmentally disabled and a member of the archiving committee,
already has turned over her papers, said Dr. Springer.
Mrs. Connelly said that, in her legislative experience dating from
1973, many problems got only lip service. But not so the significant
changes that were effected in the treatment of people with
developmental disabilities,
"In the face of rising oil prices, we were looking to solar and wind
power, as we are today," she said. "But we can never talk that way
about changes in health services, because they've been done."
While both Carabello and Nina McCourt now live in their own
Manhattan apartments, and Carabello no longer has to get cold water
out of a toilet bowl shared by about 60 others, there is still work
to be done, he said.
"Just because people have moved to small community houses doesn't
mean they're not in institutions," he said. "Fifteen people in a
home is still an institution."
By Ben Eben Newhouse
Reprinted here with permission from the
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