Join us as we tackle The Lost Girls of Willowbrook, Ellen Marie Wiseman’s powerful, heartbreaking, and complex novel about young people institutionalized in a New York “school” that was anything but. Senator Robert Kennedy once called Willowbrook a “snake pit.” Ellen talks about how children were essentially warehoused for years in this understaffed, overcrowded, filthy, and corrupt facility. Urban legends swirled around this place - especially about some of the (possibly murderous) staff members. We talk about the historical treatment of people with special needs or mental health issues, and what we’ve learned over the decades. Are we doing better? How do we stand up to injustice? The underlying facts about Willowbrook were first brought to light when Geraldo Rivera did an expose in 1972 - and it STILL took more than fourteen years for this facility to be shut down. Why didn’t anyone go to jail? We talk about justice - and hope.
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