<i>[tense music]</i> <i>LAURA: I had come home on a Friday afternoon.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>I receive this envelope in the mail...</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>And there’s no return address on it or anything.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> It was September 12th, a day that I will never forget. “Dear, Ms. Kearins, the workplace is not “a safe environment. “They are being severely abused by the day staff. Do what you have to do to help your sister.” <i>My worst nightmares...</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>Were confirmed.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>[solemn music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>[melancholy music]</i> <i>BEN: In late 2018, I heard about a lawsuit,</i> a civil rights lawsuit that had been filed in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, which I cover. <i>The lawsuit alleged that at a group home</i> <i>on Union Avenue in the Bronx,</i> <i>physical abuse and neglect of the residents was rampant.</i> The home was a place for about 24 people with developmental disabilities. Many could not speak. Many had the minds of children but were in their 50s and 60s. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>You know, this was clearly a highly vulnerable segment</i> <i>of our population,</i> and the idea that there was abuse going on and other forms of mistreatment, you know, was troubling. <i>But as I began my reporting and began to dig deeper,</i> <i>I realized there was a much darker history</i> <i>to this case and what came before,</i> and it made me think, you know, was history repeating itself again? <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>[tense music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>In the early stages of my reporting,</i> <i>I interviewed a woman who lives in the Bronx</i> <i>whose sister, who—</i> <i>and we only referred to by initials “D.K.”—</i> has been living at the Union Avenue home for many years. <i>One thing you realize is that most people don’t have contact</i> <i>with this community of people who have such disabilities.</i> Hello, there. - How are you, Ben? BEN: How are you? <i>And so it was very interesting</i> to listen to families talk about them and how important they are in that family and really how important they are in society. <i>LAURA: I’m five years older than my sister.</i> She was approximately 18 months old when she became ill... BEN: Yeah. - With seizures. <i>She would come out of one and go into one,</i> <i>and that was just, like, constant</i> <i>for—for six weeks straight,</i> which of course damaged her brain. <i>I remember my mother picking her up and just screaming,</i> <i>“My child is dying. My child is dying.”</i> BEN: And what did doctors tell your parents at the time? - That, you know, she would just be mentally retarded. She would never be normal. BEN: Hmm. - She would never be a normal child. - How old was she when she was finally placed at Union Avenue? <i>LAURA: She would have been about 20.</i> BEN: She has therefore been there three decades, 30 years— - 25 years. <i>We would go there on weekends.</i> <i>She would still come home on weekends,</i> <i>and we did think it was a good fit.</i> She’s just a child in an adult body, you know, and a very lovable one, a very lovable one. <i>[solemn music]</i> <i>BEN: Laura had seen bruises</i> <i>on her sister at Union Avenue.</i> <i>She was terrified of what that might mean.</i> <i>You know, it could have been accidental,</i> <i>but she had nobody that she knew</i> who could actually tell her what was happening. <i>And then in the fall or the late summer of 2014,</i> <i>she received an anonymous letter.</i> <i>It was clearly by somebody who worked in the group home.</i> <i>LAURA: “Dear Ms. Kearins,</i> <i>“enclosed this envelope, you will find a letter,</i> <i>“and the people who is mentioned are still</i> <i>“abusing your sister...</i> “pulls your sister’s hair and spits in her face, “gave her the bruise that was under her eye. <i>“They also denies her food.</i> “Do what you have to do to help your sister. I’m afraid of what might happen to me and the good staff.” <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>Just started crying, just crying hysterically,</i> and I—I wanted so badly to call my father. But the next day was his birthday, and I didn’t want to upset him. I just wanted to get somebody... you know, and—and... <i>♪ ♪</i> Physically harm somebody for hurting my baby sister. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: The allegations from this whistleblower</i> were that more than a dozen of the residents of the group home had been victims of abuse. <i>A letter was sent to Laura and two other families</i> <i>and also to a New York state official,</i> and it got the ball rolling. <i>REPORTER: A growing scandal at a group home</i> <i>for mentally challenged adults in the Bronx...</i> <i>REPORTER: Gruesome, disturbing, and inhumane...</i> <i>REPORTER: The Bronx DA is now investigating,</i> <i>and there could be criminal charges.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: New York state begins an investigation around that time,</i> <i>and then the families filed that civil rights lawsuit</i> <i>in the federal court in Manhattan.</i> <i>[pensive music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>So by the time a civil lawsuit was filed</i> <i>on behalf of three residents,</i> <i>there was a pretty good collection of evidence.</i> <i>I read pages of interviews detailing that abuse was pervasive.</i> <i>Witness statements about people hitting people, slapping people.</i> <i>As I continued reading the documents,</i> I began to see references to abuse of people that went beyond the three who had filed the lawsuit. <i>And a particular one set of initials I kept seeing—</i> <i>we’re not gonna use her full name.</i> <i>I’ll refer to her as “M.”</i> <i>Over and over, I would see references to her</i> <i>being seen with bruises on her body.</i> <i>This particular woman</i> <i>seemed to have been really brutalized,</i> <i>far more than anyone else I was seeing,</i> and I really wanted to learn more about her. <i>So after a lot of research and digging,</i> <i>I finally did find two sisters</i> <i>of “M” in New York City.</i> - I took a trip to Union. They show me the whole place, that—the people that work there, you know, and I was—it looked okay. BEN: How’d you feel? - I felt comfortable, a little worried, but, you know, but comfortable, ‘cause I couldn’t— I was working. I can’t take care of her. BEN: In 2014, when there were some news stories about problems at the Union Avenue, do you remember reading or hearing anything about that on TV? SANDRA: Yes, I—I remember, because I started receiving, from the justice system, papers saying that there were some problems in Union Avenue that has been, you know, some abuse with some of the... BEN: Right. - People there. I went there, but they say, “No problem with ‘M’.” BEN: Meaning she was not a victim? - Uh-huh. BEN: Okay. - She was not a victim. BEN: Okay. <i>[somber music]</i> <i>Some state records I’ve seen indicate</i> <i>that the state did alert Sandra</i> <i>to what was going on in Union Avenue to “M.”</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>The sisters, though, seemed genuinely surprised</i> when I brought them the allegations that I had learned about in my reporting. These are copies of the questions and answers when the justice center interviewed employees at Union Avenue. So...the questions is, ”‘M’ would have bruises on her breast, “on her stomach, on her buttocks. Have you ever discovered them?” “This has been years. “At one time, she, meaning ‘M,’ used to have “big, purple bruises here in the stomach... Looked like a big, purple blotch.” And then the questioner says some people that they’ve already talked to have described it as a foot mark, like somebody had stepped on her or kicked her. - Mm. - What’s it makes you feel like when you’re seeing these allegations? HILDA: I feel like going over there to the group home and beating everybody to see how it feels. It makes me angry. BEN: Yeah. - And you know, you’re supposed to be taking care of my sister, and look at what’s happening. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>Why are they beating— why is this happening?</i> <i>They don’t know how to speak for themself,</i> <i>how to protect themself,</i> <i>and—and I wanna make sure that they get the service</i> <i>that they were promised</i> after they came out of Willowbrook. - Willowbrook. I knew that word. I-I-I remember Willowbrook. It was a notorious institution from the 1970s. <i>As I was reading the depositions,</i> <i>I kept seeing Willowbrook...</i> <i>and references to the Willowbrook class.</i> <i>Finally, it was like a hammer on the head.</i> <i>I finally realized some of those</i> <i>who had been at Willowbrook</i> <i>had been abused at Union Avenue,</i> and that stopped me in my tracks. <i>[dramatic music]</i> <i>GERALDO: What we found and documented here</i> <i>is a disgrace to all of us.</i> <i>This place isn’t a school.</i> <i>It’s a dark corner where we throw children</i> <i>who aren’t pretty to look at.</i> The doctor had warned me that it would be bad. It was horrible. <i>[dramatic music]</i> - In spite of the dramatic discoveries in medicine, the number of mentally retarded is increasing. <i>Every year, 126,000 children are born who are</i> <i>or who will become retarded.</i> - Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s and even into the ‘80s, New York state warehoused thousands of developmentally disabled— back then, it was called “profoundly retarded”— <i>children, babies, and adults.</i> <i>REPORTER: Modern medical skills are helping</i> <i>more mentally retarded infants survive,</i> <i>but the institutions will still have a large job</i> <i>in keeping the severe and profound comfortable.</i> <i>BEN: I’d been told by families</i> <i>that it was something done out of desperation.</i> In many cases, doctors didn’t have any real solution. <i>At the age of eight, “M” was placed</i> <i>at an institution in New York called Willowbrook.</i> <i>SANDRA: My mother, even though she was—had a little doubt,</i> <i>she said, “Okay, you know, it’s better to go to Willowbrook.</i> <i>Gonna be much better, this place, won’t get hurt.”</i> A lot of promises. <i>[uneasy music]</i> <i>BEN: A year after “M” was placed at Willowbrook,</i> <i>in 1965, Robert Kennedy, then a New York senator, visited Willowbrook.</i> - I visited the state institutions for the mentally retarded, and I think at—particularly at Willowbrook, that we have a situation that borders on a—a snake pit. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: Willowbrook, at its most crowded time,</i> <i>it had roughly 6,000 people on these wards,</i> <i>very short-staffed,</i> <i>two to three people dying every week.</i> <i>There were so many people at Willowbrook</i> <i>that it, you know, barely was noticed.</i> <i>And all through this period of time,</i> “M” was there, for 16 years, from 1964 to 1980. <i>[desolate music]</i> <i>I learned in my reporting</i> <i>as many as a third of the residents</i> <i>at Union Avenue had been at Willowbrook,</i> <i>I believe six or seven at one point.</i> <i>Even Laura’s sister had been at Willowbrook</i> <i>and then taken out within a very short period of time,</i> <i>as soon as her parents discovered the conditions there.</i> LAURA: The first thing I rem—I remember walking in the door is the smell. I just—I can never get rid of that—that— in my head, the smell. Um, my sister was in, like, one of these crib cages. <i>It was just the kind of place that you wanted to get out of</i> <i>as quickly as you possibly could.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>NAVIGATION VOICE: Continue on I-278 East for two miles.</i> <i>BEN: So among the interviews I also set out to do</i> was to try to find people who had worked at Willowbrook. <i>There were a couple doctors</i> <i>who played very important roles</i> helping to organize parents to try to protest the conditions at Willowbrook in the ‘60s and ‘70s. MIKE: These buildings, as I recall, were at the very end of Willowbrook. <i>BEN: One of those doctors, named Mike Wilkins,</i> <i>played a pretty important role</i> in helping expose Willowbrook to the world. - It went from being a warehouse where there was no programming to being, like, the clear-cut abuse and neglect, not enough people to clean them and feed them and dress them, kids running around naked, and still admitting people. <i>[tense music]</i> <i>I got fired for continuing to work with the parents.</i> <i>I emptied my office, and I went home.</i> And I realized when I got home, I had my key in my pocket. <i>I said, “Wow.”</i> I woke up the next day, and I had made up my mind that I was gonna just call ‘em. I said, “What the hell?” - I first heard of this big place with the pretty-sounding name because of a call I received from a member of the Willowbrook staff, a Dr. Michael Wilkins. The doctor had warned me that it would be bad. It was horrible. <i>[grave music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>There was one attendant for perhaps</i> <i>50 severely and profoundly retarded children.</i> <i>Children lying on the floor,</i> <i>naked and smeared with their own feces.</i> <i>They were making a pitiful sound,</i> <i>a kind of mournful wail</i> <i>that it’s impossible for me to forget.</i> <i>[muffled yelping]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: The Geraldo Rivera piece aired in January of 1972,</i> <i>and it became a very important period of time.</i> <i>REPORTER: More than 5,000 patients are crowded into 30 buildings.</i> <i>[dramatic music]</i> <i>MAN: I want something done.</i> Now, if the state can’t do anything, I’m asking the federal government to do something. <i>GERALDO: How is it living on the ward that you live?</i> - Disgrace. - It’s a disgrace? - Yes. <i>BEN: Within just months,</i> <i>the New York Civil Liberties Union</i> <i>and the New York Legal Aid Society</i> <i>each filed class-action lawsuits.</i> <i>There was a trial and court hearings.</i> <i>It took more than a decade, but Willowbrook was closed,</i> <i>and many of its residents were moved across the state into group homes</i> <i>like the one on Union Avenue in the Bronx.</i> <i>MIKE: That’s the big legacy of everything that happened,</i> <i>because it made change happen</i> <i>for a lot of people in a lot of states.</i> And thus, you have to edu—empty out not only Willowbrook but all the other institutions for the developmentally disabled in New York state, which was 22— over 22,000 people. <i>BEN: The people who were at Willowbrook at the time,</i> <i>who’ve become known as the “Willowbrook class,”</i> <i>numbered close to 6,000.</i> <i>And the court orders make clear that they have</i> <i>the constitutional right to protection from harm</i> and the right to high-quality services for the rest of their lives. <i>There are still about 2,200 of them still alive,</i> <i>mostly living in group homes around New York state.</i> <i>Just in the last year alone, there have been hundreds of examples</i> of reported cases of physical abuse, neglect, and other mistreatment just of members of the Willowbrook class. <i>In some respects, they just stand for</i> <i>thousands more people who were never at Willowbrook,</i> <i>who all deserve protection from harm also.</i> <i>They had special protections,</i> <i>and—and they raised the bar for everybody,</i> but it hasn’t been met. <i>[tense music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: When the courts ordered that Willowbrook</i> <i>ultimately be closed and the people all be moved</i> <i>into group homes, much smaller residences</i> <i>around New York state,</i> the dream had been that this would help those people. <i>And so when I’m discovering that there are people</i> <i>at Union Avenue now who had been at Willowbrook</i> <i>and who were in the midst of being abused and neglected,</i> needless to say that that was troubling. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>The lawyer I met with to talk about</i> <i>the original lawsuit against Union Avenue...</i> <i>[elevator beeps] VOICEOVER P.A.: Tenth floor.</i> <i>BEN: Is named Ilann Maazel.</i> <i>ILANN: One of the most appalling things about this case</i> is the scope of the abuse. How could so many people commit so much abuse for so many years where not a single person came forward and did anything about it? <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: Ilann used sworn interviews</i> <i>to investigate and try to get as much evidence as he could</i> <i>to help build a case that was gonna go to trial.</i> <i>What was your take of the attitude</i> <i>of the staff members who were deposed,</i> <i>those who were actually accused of abuse?</i> <i>ILANN: Unapologetic, defiant.</i> Let’s just say I didn’t believe everything that they said in their sworn testimony. <i>BEN: By this time, the state had conducted</i> <i>its own investigation</i> <i>and conducted scores of interviews</i> <i>of employees and other witnesses at Union Avenue.</i> <i>ILANN: They substantiated over 30 allegations</i> <i>of abuse and neglect,</i> <i>punching of eyes and pulling of hair.</i> <i>I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen</i> <i>so many substantiated findings of abuse in a single home.</i> <i>None of them was terminated.</i> Many of them today are working in other group homes in the Bronx where they are supposedly taking care of people with disabilities. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: How do you feel about that?</i> <i>LAURA: Angry, very angry,</i> <i>because that was the purpose of filing the lawsuit,</i> to see these people fired, um, that they would never, ever be able to work again with our population of individuals or the elderly or children. Um...yeah, very angry. Very, very angry. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BEN: Hi. Is Patrice there, please?</i> It’s Ben Weiser at <i>The New York Times.</i> Even after the state concluded its investigation and substantiated the allegations of abuse and neglect, <i>not a single one of the staff members could be dismissed.</i> <i>The state tried to fire them, but failed.</i> <i>This was a pattern that we found statewide.</i> We are gonna focus on the cases we wrote about at Union Avenue. <i>The workers are—are represented by a strong union,</i> and the process of arbitration is the result. <i>It allows for an independent arbitrator</i> <i>to rule on the discipline</i> <i>that the state is trying to mete out.</i> <i>And in this case, the arbitrators felt</i> <i>that there was not justification</i> to fire the people that the state was trying to fire. The justice center did substantiate allegations of abuse against 13 of the employees— abuse or neglect against 13 employees. Why would none be fired? - So the problem is with the evidence. It’s the evidence that the state presented... BEN: Yeah. DENISE: And the arbitrator rules by with the evidence that’s in front, with testimonies, with cases. So if—if all the evidence is presented and the arbitrator says, “I do not feel that they should be terminated,” I have to respect that. BEN: Right. DENISE: It’s a fair process. Sometimes we like what the arbitrator says, sometimes we don’t, but it’s a fair process. We never condone abuse... never, no way, no how. Never. And like I keep on saying, overwhelmingly, the staff, good workers. - Yeah, but as a worker who doesn’t condone abuse, doesn’t it worry you at all— concern you at all— that these workers were then sent to other places in the system? Or do you feel they’ve, in effect, been exonerated by the system? DENISE: I’m not speaking about exoneration. - Okay. - I’m speaking about respect for the arbitrator’s decision. BEN: Uh-huh. - And we have to have that also. <i>[tense music]</i> <i>BEN: One of the questions I had was not only,</i> <i>“Why didn’t people get fired,” but I wanted to know,</i> <i>why didn’t people get charged?</i> We were told at the time that the justice center had worked with the district attorney in the Bronx and had investigated the case. <i>DARCEL: What’s so difficult about cases like these is that</i> you’re talking about victims who most of the time are incapacitated. So unless you have an eyewitness who’s gonna come forward, it’s very, very difficult to, um, prosecute. - I mean, when you say there were no witnesses, what does that mean, since there seemed to have been a few, including the whistleblower? - There weren’t any that were willing to come forward in order to help us present a case. BEN: How interesting. DARCEL: So without, you know, that cooperation, we’re not able to do it. - There was no doubt in your mind there had— things had occurred to people in that building. The question was, what could you prove? - Right, exactly. It’s not whether or not it happened. It’s what could we prove? <i>BEN: The agency that oversees</i> the thousands of group homes in New York state, the OPWDD, which stands for the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, would not give us a sit-down interview to respond to the questions we had, <i>but they told me in emails, abuse of any of the people</i> <i>in their care is unacceptable</i> <i>and that they believe they have in place</i> <i>systems to detect abuse and to respond to it.</i> <i>In late 2019, the state finally settled</i> <i>the Union Avenue lawsuit</i> for $6 million for the three families. <i>There was no admissions of wrongdoing</i> <i>by any of the staff.</i> <i>Ultimately, two of the employees</i> <i>had those findings reversed on appeal.</i> - But there needs to be a serious top-to-down review of treatment of people with disabilities in New York state group homes. <i>It’s the state’s obligation</i> <i>when they take people into these homes</i> <i>to take care of them and to protect them.</i> And they have to do that. [ambient noise] <i>[melancholy music]</i> <i>BEN: One of the interesting aspects</i> <i>of the story of the woman “M” was that</i> <i>after she was transferred out of Willowbrook in 1980,</i> <i>she went home.</i> <i>And “M” lived there for 25 years</i> and was loved and was part of the family. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>And when her mother died suddenly in 2004...</i> <i>Sadly, none of her siblings could take her in,</i> <i>and that’s when they realized</i> <i>they would have to place her in a group home,</i> and the group home that became convenient and the best place, it seemed, was Union Avenue in the Bronx. <i>♪ ♪</i> When you’ve visited in the last four or five years— I know it’s not been frequently, but whenever you come, is she pretty much the same as she is now? I mean, has she changed much over the years, that you remember? No. - No. This is—this is one of the ones— she’s—since she’s been in the group home, this is how she’s been. It’s a bit different when she was staying with my mother. BEN: With your mom. <i>♪ ♪</i> HILDA: I don’t think she’s happy where she’s at. Like, when I was taking her back, last week, inside, she was thinking about it, and she was, like, backing up. But then at the same time, she was thinking, like, “Wait a second. Do I have a choice? This is my home.” <i>BEN: You know, one thing that I have felt</i> <i>in reporting this story, it’s a reminder to me</i> <i>how the courts sort of operate in snapshots of time.</i> <i>I think most people, including myself, had—</i> <i>although I knew about Willowbrook,</i> <i>I hadn’t thought about it very much</i> <i>in recent years at all.</i> And I think most of us, if—if we’ve even heard of it, had forgotten about it. [birds chirping] [indistinct chatter] <i>It’s a reminder that, especially when you’re looking</i> <i>at institutions, you can’t stop looking.</i> <i>You have to keep watching, and you have to keep wondering</i> <i>about the people that they affect,</i> particularly for this group of people who themselves are not part of the conversation. [indistinct chatter] <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>[poignant music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i>