One of those people was Migdalia.

The group home

In 1980, Migdalia was sent to live with her mother and thrived at home for more than 20 years, relatives said. She was friendly and cooperative, and responded to people who were familiar to her.

After Migdalia’s mother died in 2004, she was placed in the Bronx group home. It was there that, a decade later, a whistle-blower contacted state officials and relatives with accusations of abuse and neglect.

The state found evidence that about a dozen residents at the group home had been mistreated. Of them, five, including Migdalia, were Willowbrook alumni.

[On “The Weekly”: Children endured inhumane treatment at an institution. Decades later, they were abused in a group home.]

Willowbrook alumni were supposed to be protected

Many of the 2,300 Willowbrook alumni alive today still endure mistreatment, a New York Times investigation found. Last year alone, there were 97 allegations of physical abuse against alumni, according to internal state records.

The Times’s Benjamin Weiser found that in one case in 2019, for example, a woman in a Long Island group home had part of her finger amputated after it became caught in a wheelchair wheel. An employee had failed to ensure the woman’s hands were in her lap.

A new beginning for Migdalia

New York State recently gave up control of the Bronx group home as part of a settlement with three families who had sued, alleging that their relatives were abused. A nonprofit provider now runs the group home and said it had hired all new workers.