Willowbrook: The Last Disgrace

Narrator: There was one attendant for perhaps 50 severely and profoundly retarded children. Lying on the floor, naked and smeared with their own feces, they were making a pitiful sound, a kind of mournful wail that it is impossible for me to forget. This is what is 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.

Narrator asking question of doctor: We've just seen something that's probably the most horrible thing I've ever seen in my life. Is that typical of ward life?

Doctor: Yes, there are 5300 patients at Willowbrook, which is the largest institution for the mentally retarded in the world. The ones that we saw were the most severely and profoundly retarded. There are thousands there like that, not going to school, sitting on the ward all day, not being talked to by anyone, only one or two or three people to take care of 70 people on the ward.