EPISODE 58 - The Horror of Willowbrook

In this weeks episode, Kate and I discuss the horrific abuse that went on at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island and how it only came to light after an ex employee contacted a local reported and snuck him inside the building.
Geraldo Revira's expose shocked the nation when the true horror was aired on TV but despite this it remained open for another 7 years.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Where the blab go Shit. Betty Butter bought some butter but she said the butter's bitter. If I put in my batter it will make my batter bitter, but a bit of better butter will make my better. Oh, but a bit of better butter will make my batter better. So towards Betty Butter's bought a bit of better butter. That sounds like a really hard one. Betty Butter bought some butter but she said the bit is oh fuck it.

Speaker 1: 0:42

You're the one that's introduced this. I'm determined. Betty Butter bought some butter but she said the butter's bitter. If I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will make my batter better. So towards, betty Butter bought a bit of better butter. Oh, fuck you, you're brain working. Oh my god, it felt like it shut down altogether.

Speaker 2: 1:09

It was like just focus on this.

Speaker 1: 1:11

Don't worry about breathing or heartbeat, just do this. Concentrate on Betty Butter's better butter. You did a great job. That was a really good one.

Speaker 1: 1:24

My random blam pertains to the episode. So for those that don't know, willow Brook was a. It was classified as a state school but actually it was kind of an asylum. So my random blam is that doctors used to give malaria to mental patients. They used to infect them with malaria on purpose, regardless of consent. They didn't know they was being infected, they didn't know why, and it was to try and cure syphilis. So syphilis is R-uh-huh, the age old cure. Syphilis back in the 18th century was thought to create mental health problems, wasn't it? If you're infected, with syphilis.

Speaker 1: 2:17

It causes you to go a bit mental. So they, yeah, honestly the syphilis. The doctors used to give mental patients malaria to try and cure it. And did it? No, no, 15% treated with malaria died from malaria. Oh, brilliant, well done Docs. Yeah, not great. So yeah, that's my little bit of random fact for everybody. Nice, that was a good blam, informative blam. Aha, I try.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Random blams Done. Well, you had a little harmonised on that bit a little bit there, didn't we? Yeah, 100 blams Done. Nice, I've got a shout out. Yay, I've got a shout out. Shout out, woop, woop. Right, my shout out is to Libby. And Libby that just a shout out, just because she got in touch with us just to say how much she loved the podcast. And it came at a time where I was up with Cesar right, it was like three o'clock in the morning and I was just sitting outside of his cage just kind of trying to settle him down and I got a notification come up to say that somebody had messaged the perplexed Instagram and it was Libby. And it says hi guys, love your podcast. Can't believe it's been a year already. And then she says that she just finished listening to the phone hoax, the strip search, phone hoax one.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Oh yeah, that was brilliant and it reminded her of a different episode, like a different story, and that story I will cover, so I won't tell you what it is because it's absolutely mental. But yeah, it came at three o'clock in the morning and I replied straight away and obviously it wasn't three o'clock where she was and she is residing in Brisbane. Oh, no, oh that's so far. So I really made my morning because I was up with Cesar and I was really tired and then I got that lovely message. So thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 4:28

Libby oh, that's really nice. That's really nice Read it again.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Read it again. Hi guys love your podcast. Can't believe it's been a year already. Oh, that's so nice. So she's been listening a year, maybe all the way through.

Speaker 2: 4:45

Oh, great job Libby, thanks Libby.

Speaker 1: 4:47

She said keep up the great work, can't wait for the next episode. Yay, here it is Morning, morning, morning, morning, morning morning. Oh gosh, isn't it just ridiculous? Oh well, I'll say it's brutal outside. It's like minus two here at the moment, but feels like minus seven, yes, and it feels minus six in the house because we have no heating. Gosh, I'm sat right next to the radiator, so brilliant Listener. Discretion is advised.

Speaker 1: 5:40

This topic touches on outdated and old-fashioned language used to describe disabled people. Where possible, this language has been changed, but will still be included where quoted. This episode also contains mention of rape and mistreatment of children. When you say out of date language, do you? I mean, that's normally our language anyway. I constantly say things new, go. You can't say no, no, this, this is a word that generally was used to describe mentally disabled or physically disabled people and is not a word that we use today. But where it is quoted, I will use it. But just know that no, no malice or no, yeah, it's just meant. Yeah, I just want to tell the story as it was back in in that time. Yeah, and I'm sure our listeners know that, like we're idiots sometimes and we get it wrong, so sorry, okay Learning.

Speaker 1: 6:46

So today's episode is about the Willowbrook State School and I came across this because I said to you that I want to do a ghosty story and I want to find a ghost story. So I was looking up at insane asylums and the hauntings and things. I was looking up different stories and then I came across this story and this story kind of took over my world for a little bit. I called the ghosty horror ones to the back and I concentrated on this one. So here you go, here it is. So I know the Willowbrook Like that. When you said you were doing that episode it was familiar. Yeah, it probably. It probably will be to a few people.

Speaker 2: 7:31

Hmm, okay.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Yep, in 1938, plans were drawn up to build a facility to house children suffering with intellectual disabilities in Staten Island. And this was at a time where there was absolutely no support for parents or for children, and children were often being misdiagnosed as mentally disabled and they were just kind of housed in these asylums or state schools. But in 1942, instead of opening up for its intended purpose, the facility was actually renamed the Holleran General Hospital and it was used to care for wounded soldiers. But once the war ended, there was kind of a bit of a debate about whether the hospital should remain open to care for disabled veterans or whether it should reopen as its original intended purpose, as a school to house children suffering with intellectual disabilities. And I wonder how different things would have been for thousands of children and adults had the decision been made in favor of the veterans. Hmm, however, new York Governor Thomas Dewey argued that there were this is a quote thousands of children in the state who are mentally and physically defective and feeble minded, who never can become members of society, who needed to be cared for with a high degree of tenderness and affection.

Speaker 1: 9:03

And so in 1947, the Willowbrook State School was officially opened and accepted its first lot of patients, and it first accepted 20. And these were patients that were transferred from other similar institutes that were over capacity. Yeah, willowbrook was built on 380 acres of land oh, it's a massive, massive place and it was meant to be able to hold a maximum of 4,000 patients, which is huge anyways. 4,000 patients is a lot. But by 1955, willowbrook was at full capacity. In 1960, a separate ward was built to specifically house babies and infants, so it was no longer for children and adults. You know babies and infants were going to these. So what?

Speaker 2: 9:55

do you need to put babies?

Speaker 1: 9:56

in there. Well, parents kind of agonized over the decision of whether to send their children into Willowbrook. But it just wasn't any support for families. So parents were actually urged to send their children to Willowbrook. It was the best thing for the child. You know, at Willowbrook they had the facilities there to care for them. Some parents gave up their children, willingly and indefinitely. These children was just sent there and forgotten about. If they had siblings, the siblings were told that sometimes that their brother or sister or whoever it was that went to the asylum had died. So they were just kind of left there and forgotten about. Other parents gave their children up with the hope that actually they were getting a better life and they were going to get the help and support that they needed.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Visitation by parents was allowed. Some children even went home on the weekend to see their families, and other children were just left in the Institute with no one but the staff to care for them. Parents soon started to complain about the condition of their children when they went to see them. One mother described seeing her two year old daughter on her first visit. So she hadn't been there long, it was her first visit there and she said her daughter had matted hair and sticky fingers so she hadn't been cleaned or anything. And when she complained to the top of Willowbrook she was met with a real bluntness, like a real rudeness, and she was told all right, if you're not happy with the care that your daughter's received, and just take her out. But parents couldn't just do that because they couldn't care for them.

Speaker 1: 11:45

So, she kind of was in between a rock and a hard place. Other parents noticed also that when their children came home for the weekend they were like a shell of their former self. They were joyless and some described them as almost shell shocked.

Speaker 1: 12:04

Like traumatised didn't it, yeah, completely traumatised. And the true events that were going on behind these closed doors was only fully revealed to parents and the public in 1972, when a former physician at Willowbrook, who had been fired for trying to improve conditions, met in secret with a reporter and that reporter was Geraldo Rivera and with the help of the physician, he and a camera crew were able to sneak into building six unannounced, and what he witnessed and what he exposed shocked the entire country, and this is just a small clip that I'm going to play you from the expose that was released following his visit.

Speaker 2: 12:49

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, dr Michael Wilkins. The doctor told me he'd just been fired because he'd been urging parents with children in one of the buildings building number six to organize so they could more effectively demand improved conditions for their children. The doctor invited me to see the conditions he was talking about. So unannounced and unexpected by the school administration, we toured building number six. The doctor had warned me that it would be bad, it was horrible. There was one attendant for perhaps 50 severely and profoundly retarded children buying on the floor, naked and smeared with their own feces. They were making a pitiful sound, a kind of mournful wail, that it's impossible for me to forget. 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.

Speaker 1: 13:49

So today I'm going to tell you the true events of what actually happened behind these closed doors. Willowbrook was doomed to fail from the start. The sheer size of the institute meant that there could never be any personal care for individuals. It spanned 380 acres and it was a huge building. And this huge building was separated into different buildings that housed different patients. So, for example, building six housed the children, building 19 housed men. So there was so many different buildings but there wasn't even any individual rooms for sleeping. There was no closed off personal space for anybody. It was a completely open ward and open building. There was no living conditions or anything. At the centre of the building was the central plant which provided heat and electricity to all the other buildings, and all of the buildings were connected by an underground steam tunnel, and that becomes important later. So Willowbrook was already at capacity by 1955. And in the following years it would soon surpass 6,000 patients. So well, over, so over capacity.

Speaker 1: 15:10

And I found an article written by Dr Krugman, who was a pediatric doctor that worked at Willowbrook, and I'll mention him later on in the episode because he's very important. But this is a quote directly from that article and what he said the overcrowded conditions in the building makes care, treatment, supervision and possible training of the patients difficult, if not impossible. When the patients are up and in the day rooms, they are crowded together, soiling, attacking each other, abusing themselves and destroying their clothing At night. In many of the dormitories, the beds must be placed together in order to provide sufficient space for all patients. Therefore, except for one narrow aisle, it is virtually necessary to climb over beds in order to reach the children. So it was rammed for the patients Absolutely rammed.

Speaker 1: 16:02

So what I've got in my head, like the picture I've got in my head, is Auschwitz. It very has been likened to that.

Speaker 1: 16:10

Everyone being squashed in and dirty and underfed and if you do, actually, you can watch the expose and there are photos and if you do look at them they are very much concentration camp. It is kind of what it looks like. So not only was Willowbrook seriously over capacity, he was also massively understaffed when the state of New York went through an economic retrenchment. A hiring freeze had been put on Willowbrook State School and other similar institutes and in the months following this economic retrenchment it's almost like a budget cut. Willowbrook lost 600 employees and the budget was cut by a further 50 million in the following months, and Willowbrook lost another 200 employees.

Speaker 2: 16:59

Oh goodness.

Speaker 1: 17:00

The ratio went from four patients to one staff member to 30 or 40 patients to one staff member. Feeding time per patient went from 20 to 30 minutes to two or three minutes and the food was just like mush. It wasn't even proper food, it was just like white sloppy. It looked a bit like porridge. It wasn't even like really food and most of the patients at Willowbrook required feeding. Of the 6,000 patients at Willowbrook, 77% were severely or profoundly disabled, 60% were not toilet trained, 39% were not ambulatory and that means that they either couldn't walk or required assistance walking. 30% had convulsive seizures and 64% were incapable of feeding themselves. And those figures came quoted specifically from that article that I'd written by Dr Krugman that I've just mentioned, but I changed the language slightly. But the figures are astounding. When you think that there's 40, you know if I went in there as a staff member and I had to care for 40 patients trying, you know it's just staggering because the amount of care that these people needed. And when the Geraldo was doing the expose and interviewing the staff that worked there, he asked a question and the question was what are the consequences of only having three minutes to feed patients and the staff member literally just went death by pneumonia, and Willowbrook had the highest rate of pneumonia than any other group that exists in the country. And the death rate at Willowbrook was astonishing.

Speaker 1: 19:03

An estimated 12,000 residents died at Willowbrook from 1950 to 1980. That's approximately 400 a year. Many who came to Willowbrook lived a very short, brutal existence and they died because of neglect, violence, lack of nutrition, medical mismanagement or experimentation. Some simply disappeared and others committed suicide, and police were often called to Willowbrook to investigate abuse allegations. So at least one person a day was dying, pretty much. So they were having like a death every day. Yeah, a death, a disappearance, you know, and I assume some of that has been covered up as well. But when I go through it later, I think that the actual, real figures are probably a lot higher than that. In 1960, when Willowbrook was housing 6,000 patients, there was an outbreak of measles and that killed 60 patients. In 1971, willowbrook recorded 129 deaths, 11 of which were the result of choking, so something that's incredibly. Especially if you're monitoring patients, you know that's a very senseless way to die.

Speaker 1: 20:28

Well, they were probably trying to feed them so fast because they only had like a couple of minutes. They were like shoving food, like gruel in their face and people were like choking on it. But also they were left to their own devices. So if they found something on the floor and put it in their mouth, there was nobody there to stop them. In a newspaper article from 1972, where all these facts were published, there's a small quote in there from a chairman of a New York State mental institution, and this is a direct quote from what he said. One ward worker may have 30 mouths to feed. You can't blame her if one of her charges starts to choke on his food. Oh, literally what he said.

Speaker 1: 21:18

Renee Mechler, she was a young child at Willowbrook and she was both mentally and physically disabled. She resided at Willowbrook State School until her death due to strangulation in 1965. And her death was deemed accidental by the staff of the institution and they said that it occurred because she reportedly slipped through the arm of the chair, causing the restraining device, somewhat like a seatbelt, to work up around her neck. Oh, see what you mean. Yeah, so she would have slid down and it would have stayed where it was. Yeah, so because of the lack of staff members and the lack of supervision. Yeah, it's something that could easily be avoided, or wasn't? Another little boy, robert, who was five, died at Willowbrook and all his family was ever told was that it was due to a traumatic event. And that was all they was told. And, as I said earlier, I can only imagine how many deaths were actually covered up. Yeah, a hepatitis was also rampant at Willowbrook and it was said that 100% of patients would contract hepatitis within six months of being at Willowbrook. Right A respected pediatrician from New York, dr Saul Krugman, who I mentioned earlier, he wanted to determine if there were multiple strains of hepatitis and he wanted to know whether a vaccine could be created to protect against the disease.

Speaker 1: 22:56

And hepatitis at the time was killing a lot of people and during World War II it affected over 50,000 troops, so it was quite a problem. So Dr Krugman thought that it was vital to find a vaccine for the disease, and he knew the perfect place for his experiments. So in 1956, dr Krugman and his partner, joan Giles, decided to take advantage of the hepatitis outbreak at Willowbrook and they used the children as test dummies. Basically, they began by injecting some children with the live virus in order to infect them and then try and create a vaccine. And they also wanted to test the children's immune systems to see how well their bodies dealt with coming into contact with hepatitis. So what they would do was they would use the feces of other infected children and they would mix it into a chocolate milkshake and then they would make the children drink it. Oh no, and you've got to remember as well that these children were just being fed slop and they never received any attention. So for the children to be handed a chocolate milkshake would have been like an absolute dream, and also a lot of these children couldn't feed themselves. So this chocolate milkshake was being practically force fed, whether they wanted it or not. And as part of the experiment, dr Krugman would actually reinfect children that had recently recovered. So he would infect them, treat them, and then they would just get over being poorly, and then he would reinfect them. And that was to see whether their immune system you know, whether they'd built up antibodies, so whether they remained immune to it or whether they needed further treatment.

Speaker 1: 24:58

Some parents were completely unaware that their children were being used as test subjects, and other parents willingly agreed to it, and this was at a time, as I said already, that Willowbrook was completely over capacity. So parents with severely disabled children on the waiting list were kind of at their wit's end and they were struggling to cope. So when the opportunity came to kind of bump them up the list, a lot of parents actually took that opportunity. One parent said that she felt coerced and that she felt that she would be denied help if she didn't agree to allow her child to be experimented on. So Krugman told parents that Willowbrook was already infected with hepatitis, so whether they agreed to the experiment or not, their child would contract hepatitis, which in a way was true. I said 100% of patients did contract hepatitis. So he was doing it in a more controlled way. He thought his reasoning was they're going to get it anyways.

Speaker 1: 26:05

So I might as well take advantage of that, but also these children that were being experimented on. They'd actually they create a new ward for them. So parents, when they were sort of being coerced into giving their child up for this experimentation, they were told that they would be kept on the newer, fresher ward and that actually there was more staff to care for them if they did become poorly. This experiment lasted 14 years. What 14 years? Can you imagine how many 14 years this experiment went on? So that's ridiculous. Yeah, I know it was ridiculous. It just went completely unnoticed or you know, the ethics around this experiment were horrendous and it would never have been allowed had people you know, fully known about it. Giving a shit, yeah, giving a shit, yeah, During this experiment, Dr Krugman was able to identify that there are actually two different types of hepatitis and we have hepatitis A and we have hepatitis B.

Speaker 1: 27:12

And I told you his ethics were, you know, not there at all, no, non-existent, and some people actually said that he did a great job and they kind of revered his work. I bet the patients that were being fed shit don't feel like that. It's all very well for people to go, yeah, but he made great advancements in, you know, medicine and that, but at what risk had they been able to speak up for themselves? I'm sure a lot of people would have. Patients would have contested it.

Speaker 1: 27:48

Yeah, and by 1965, parents and staff at Willowbrook were trying to do anything that they could to expose what was going on, to try and get more funding and to try and get help for the children that were there. And it wasn't just Willowbrook, but institutions full stop had like no funding. There was a lot of institutions that kind of had these sort of standards. But eventually their efforts paid off and it was brought to the attention of Senator Robert Kennedy and himself and a film crew went into Willowbrook and reported on what they saw. This is in 1965.

Speaker 1: 28:27

Robert Kennedy said and this is a direct quote I visited the state institution for the mentally retarded and I think particularly at Willowbrook we have a situation that borders on a snake pit and that the children live 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. So despite this being aired on TV and despite the outrage of the people and despite recommendations being made to change the facility, nothing changed at Willowbrook until seven years later Were people still sending their kids there, Absolutely Okay, I think it's very difficult. Because it's difficult, because you can't put yourself in that time in that place being a parent, I get it, but you also don't get it. Yeah, but I also don't because you think if someone had said it's a snake pit, you know kids are not being cared for, they're being mistreated, Cages and no.

Speaker 1: 29:40

Yeah you'd just be like, no matter how bad it gets, I don't want my child to go through that. Yeah, I don't know, I wasn't there, yeah. So a lot of these children, the parents willingly gave them up and they just kind of went there and that was it. But a few years after the Robert Kennedy interview in 1965, a reporter, jane Curtin, was the first reporter to actually write a story about Willowbrook and she actually visited Willowbrook in order to cover a demonstration that social workers and parents of patients had organised. So these social workers and parents had organised a demonstration to get better funding and to get help and whatever else, and Jane Curtin wanted to write an article about it. So she needed to get inside the building and there were two social workers that actually kind of sneaked her inside and Jane actually wrote quite a few articles about Willowbrook. And here is one of the titles. One of the titles literally says Willowbrook Inside the Cages, and another one was called Willowbrook If they make trouble, cage them. And that's exactly what happened at Willowbrook If they make trouble, cage them, yep.

Speaker 1: 31:17

So despite the outrage again that these articles caused, nothing changed. Nothing changed until 1972 when the pediatrician who was he'd been given his pink slip so he'd been part of these demonstrations and he'd been trying to rally up parents to say we need more funding, we need more help. So some of the staff there, absolutely you know it's very difficult because I watched a lot of interviews and the staff were like on my first day there it was horrendous. I got given a massive metal key and told to go and open the door and she said I opened the door and then I walked down this corridor and there was another giant metal door. So he opened the door and I walked further down and there was another giant metal door and she thought to herself what could possibly be behind three locked metal doors? And she said when she opened the last door, there was 40 odd infants behind this room. And then she went on to say that she worked there for like 17 years or something.

Speaker 1: 32:24

So in your head you think why would you be part of that? Yeah, so actually some people wanted to try and make a difference. Yeah, I get that Were there. Some people wanted to do what they could to make a small difference to that child's life. Yeah, I mean it would probably be worse if she said you know, I thought, oh God, that's disgusting. I'm never going to work here and walked out because it's like then these infants have got no one on their side. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 32:57

So this pediatrician had been making a bit of a stink trying to get help and funding and whatever else, and he'd been given his pink slip and told you know, you've got two weeks or whatever. So he then went to Geraldo Rivera and gave him the key and snuck him in. What Geraldo actually did is he aired that footage and at first, when he sneaked in with his camera crew, when he got back, they have to process the film on whatever else. And he said that the high rups at Willowbrook was constantly calling the office saying you can't, you can't, you know you trespass, you can't do this, you can't expose this, blah, blah, blah. And they was like all right, we won't, we won't play these videos, you know. But then when the videos came back and people watched them, they all went no, we're absolutely going to play these videos. And so they.

Speaker 1: 33:55

A documentary about an expose came out, good, and this expose showed the children naked on hard cold flooring, smeared with their own feces and rocking back and forth, and some of the children were clothed but they were in like just filthy rags. They weren't clothing Because there was no funding for clothes and staff members said that the children, the patients, would sit and rip their clothing, so then there was no money to replace them. So they were even naked or they had rags on. The children received no attention from staff, no stimulation or communication at all. From day to day, all of the patients at Willowbrook were treated exactly the same, but their varying differences in medical needs. They were all treated exactly the same. Children that misbehaved were put in straight jackets or cages and forgotten about. They were unable to move or feed themselves until literally somebody remembered that they were there. Staff washed the children with the same rags that they used to clean the floors and there was feces on the smeared across the floors, across the walls. The floor was completely everywhere.

Speaker 1: 35:20

Trauma was very, very high on the wards at Willowbrook, especially in Ward 19 where there was 70 or more mentally and physically disabled adults, and they were just left unattended and they were fighting, fighting themselves, fighting each other, fighting over things, and mental, physical and sexual abuse was rampant at Willowbrook, from staff to patients, from patients to patients. It was just diabolical. And during Geraldo's expose he interviewed a gentleman called Bernard and he was a 21-year-old patient with cerebral palsy and he'd been at Willowbrook for 18 years. Oh my goodness. And Bernard's intellect was sharp, but because of his cerebral palsy he just spoke a bit slower and he moved around a bit slow. He just wasn't able to move around as much as other people. But from birth he had been misdiagnosed as mentally disabled, so he'd been housed at Willowbrook and so he was able to fully explain the conditions at Willowbrook and he called it a disgrace and he said I got beaten with sticks and belt buckles, I got my head kicked into the wall by staff.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Most of the kids sat in the day room naked with no clothes on. There was a lot of sexual abuse going on, from staff to residents also. And shockingly, despite that expose coming out in 1972, willowbrook didn't officially close its doors until 1987. It feels so recent. It's so recent, so recent when I was looking up about the different insane asylums and the hauntings and things like that. Some of them, I read, had closed in like 1999.

Speaker 1: 37:21

And that's just so recent. It's so weird, isn't it? It's so closed-minded of us to think that things like this are not still going on in this town Do all happen in?

Speaker 1: 37:32

Absolutely so. A year after Geraldo's expose, a Harvard student wrote an article about his summer job at a ward in Willowbrook. He said every day that he was there. He witnessed the situation more or less identical to the one Geraldo had found. So none of nothing had changed since that expose a year later.

Speaker 1: 38:01

And the student, along with 300 other people around his age, were hired as recreational aids without any interview, without any background checks, and they were hired just for the purpose of making Willowbrook appear as if the patient-to-staff ratio was better. So it went from 30 or 40 to one to nine to one, but that still didn't change things at Willowbrook. On his first day, the student said that he saw 45 adolescents huddled into a room and they were given no structure and little companionship, moaning and screaming, rocking back and forth, stinking of urine and feces. And it turns out Willowbrook had a track record for hiring people without conducting formal interviews or background checks. In 1966, a man going by the name Frank Brucette started working at Willowbrook as an orderly, and there was absolutely no way of telling how much horror he inflicted on the patients at Willowbrook, because Frank Brucette was actually Andre Rand. Oh, and for those that have listened to episode 45, the Urban Legends episode, you might be slightly familiar with Andre Rand.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Yes.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Andre Rand is a serial killer and he is thought to have inspired the legend of Cropsey. The legend of Cropsey is basically a children's horror story told by parents on Staten Island to their children, and it was kind of one of those. You know, don't go into cars with strangers, cropsey will get you. Yeah, do as you're told, or Cropsey will come for you and take you away. Yeah, absolutely. Andre Rand worked at Willowbrook from 1966 to 1968. And not a lot is known about his time there. But what I can tell you, and what you can probably figure out for yourself, is that in 1969 he was arrested and convicted of sexual abuse and sentenced to four years in prison Four years, jeez. And once he was out in 1972, he was suspected of the murder of five-year-old Alice Pereira, but he was never charged due to lack of evidence.

Speaker 1: 40:31

In 1977, andre was the main suspect in the disappearance of 18-year-old Audrey, who suffered from schizophrenia and she had spent herself a lot of time at different institutes. In 1978, ethel Atwell, who was 42, was last seen on the grounds of Willowbrook State School where she worked. So she'd gone to school, parked up, got out of the car and went round to walk to Ward 19 and had disappeared. Also in 1978, shin Lee, who was 44, was a nurse at Willowbrook and she went missing under exactly the same circumstances as Ethel Atwell. She had gone to go from one building to the next building and disappeared, and her body was found buried in a shallow grave on the grounds of Willowbrook.

Speaker 1: 41:24

In 1981, holly Anne Hughes, who was seven, disappeared and witnesses saw her with Andre and reported seeing her in his car, and he actually was charged for her kidnapping 20 years later, but never with her murder, because there wasn't enough evidence. In 1983, 11-year-old Tyra East Jackson disappeared from an area near where Andre used as a campsite, and in 1987, this is the most well-known one 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger, who was born with Downsudrum, went missing and she was found in a shallow grave on the grounds of Willowbrook as well. And that becomes important because actually Andre Rand used to live in the underground tunnels at Willowbrook. After he left or fired or whatever else, and then he was convicted and released, he actually resided in the underground tunnels while he was there, so there was absolutely no way of knowing. You can only imagine what he'd done while he was working there.

Speaker 1: 42:33

Which is horrendous. Even after the decision was made to close down Willowbrook, the abuse of the patients didn't end there. Some of them had lived at Willowbrook for pretty much their entire life and they had no idea of the outside world and there was no way of them coping or functioning, and some were housed at other institutes. So they just went from one snake pit to another. Some went back to family members and some had no family to go to, so they actually remained at Willowbrook after it closed down as well, and they also lived in the tunnels that connected each building. A lot of survivors were non-verbal and they will never be able to tell what horrors or the horrific abuse that they suffered, but I have managed to find a few, and one survivor said it was like a badly run kennel for humans, and this is actually a story from one of the survivor's family members. I think it was his sister and she said conditions were so bad at Willowbrook that he her brother he was the patient once tried to escape by jumping out of a window, having injured his ankle. He didn't get far before security guards caught him. He told them all he wanted was a hot meal and he remembered another time a fellow patient got a hold of a razor blade and slashed him across his face with no interception and, he said, blood shot out of his right cheek. And this is actually a story that I found of a woman called Betty who lived at Willowbrook throughout her childhood and as a lesson. As a baby it was clear to her family that she wasn't hitting milestones and was severely behind her peers and her mother actually wanted nothing to do with her and her father had left, so she actually was passed around different family members Until she was three and her actual grandparents decided that Willowbrook would be the best place for her and she was left abandoned and never visited. And this next section is quoted straight from an article called 50 years since the last disgrace. A former Willowbrook resident remembers, and it's by Joanna Elatar, and this is a quote.

Speaker 1: 44:57

Okay, betty was subjected to beatings and sexual abuse by staff as well as by some of the older patients, and she had almost no medical attention there unless she was bleeding from an injury. If the staff thought that a child was difficult, the child was either put in a straight jacket all the time or placed in isolation in small cells called the pit. Betty was placed in isolation a few times for being a troublemaker, as the nurses called her. She was left in a cell 24 hours a day with only a cloth, diaper and nothing else, not even a blanket, and very little food or water. One was afraid of the pit, betty said. As Betty aged, she was moved to another building where there were girls and women over the age of 14.

Speaker 1: 45:41

The beatings, sexual abuse and punishments continued in the new building. Betty, like many of the girls and women, was sterilized against her will. She said that they were told that retards can't have babies. The nurses had no patience for any residents and they often beat them. The residents were always bruised and some had cigarette burns. When it was meal time they received some kind of mushy substance that was often drugged with heavy tranquilizers.

Speaker 1: 46:10

Some residents were chained to their beds or were left in carts if they were unable to move on their own. The sleeping area was overcrowded and filthy. A bath literally meant being hosed down with cold water, and it was only once or twice a month. The toilets overflowed because the plumbing was never fixed. The unsanitary conditions made many residents very sick and some died. There was once an incident where a boy was scolded in the shower as punishment by a staff member. She said that it was normal for people to just disappear or die. Nobody looked into their deaths because they either had families that never asked about them or visited them or the family had specifically wanted no contact from Willowbrook. Some patients had all of their teeth pulled if they bit someone once, and many were lobotomized.

Speaker 1: 46:57

Oh God, once Willowbrook closed down, betty was moved to a group home at around 20 and the group home was only slightly better than Willowbrook. She said she received better meals but still was regularly beaten and abused. She eventually ran away from the home and she ended up living on the streets. This is a similar story to a lot of the other residents at Willowbrook. Once it closed down, there was no aftercare either. While she was on the streets she was often raped and taken advantage of due to her obvious disabilities. She was only rescued when a social worker befriended Betty and managed to track down a living on and she went and stayed with her. But Betty said that the on was awful to her. The on only took Betty because she thought she was getting a free maid, but because Betty was disabled she couldn't do what the aunt wanted to do. Even after all the horrific stuff that she'd endured at Willowbrook, it just didn't stop. She still couldn't catch a break. There were approximately 2,300 Willowbrook survivors still alive today and, although there's absolutely no forgiving what happened at the Institute, it did pave way for more laws and legislations for the betterment of disabled people.

Speaker 1: 48:18

That is probably the only good that came out of it the only good. I just can't even imagine these people being in that Institute for so many years and having that cruelty on a daily basis, 24-7. Yeah, it's horrendous, honestly, if you see the footage and the photos and things like that, it's very, very out switch like concentration camps. It's horrendous. And, like you say, it closed not massively long ago, which is the scary part. That's hideous. Yeah, it makes me feel quite queasy, yeah, but I am once.

Speaker 1: 49:05

I once I found this story, I was like this is ridiculous. So, yeah, I had to tell it. Thank you, you are welcome, thanks, oh, it's just hideous, Just hideous. And it just makes me wonder why everyone was so cruel. Because I understand, you know, it's just after the war, if everyone's skin, everyone's fighting for food and heat and clothing and like I get that. But it's just, it's, it's just so cruel. I don't understand. You know, it's like these people get saved from like the Institute because the Institute's been shut down, and then they get sent to like a family member, and then the family members are like just as cruel, you know they are just want to serve them. Yeah, you don't serve me. So yeah, it's.

Speaker 1: 50:09

It's really really sad actually to think about. Yeah, it is, it's horrible. And to think about was some patients were only there. They were misdiagnosed. There were some patients there that had diabetes. That's not anything that you can't manage nowadays and it's so sad that they would end up somewhere. You think there's so many people that got diabetes and if advancements hadn't been made, some of those people could have been housed in the Institute's. Exactly the same Yep Up being there, you got diabetes and syphilis.

Speaker 1: 50:41

you'd be injecting with malaria. Right, let me just clear this up. It's diabetes in syphilis. I do not have syphilis, jerks. Jerks, you said it One of our listeners will have diabetes in syphilis and they'll be like, oh me too, syphilis twins. Well, thanks for that. I feel sick. Yeah, sorry, brilliant, see you later, bye, bye. If you have enjoyed listening to our episodes, make sure you rate us and leave us a review, on whatever platform you are listening. We absolutely love hearing from you guys, so you can also help support our show by donating to our Buy Me a Coffee link. We will make sure that you get a massive shout out and a big thank you in our next week's episode. You can also follow us on social media. At Perplex Podcasts, we're on Facebook, instagram and if you want to see more videos and blooper reels, subscribe to our TikTok and YouTube channels. You can also email us your stories at perplexpodcastsatgmailcom and you can find all the relevant links in the episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Bye, bye, oh fuck it, I almost.

Speaker 1: 52:30

Fuck it, I don't want it.