A state institution exposed extreme neglect and research abuse.
Children lived in conditions no society should have allowed.
Willowbrook State School in New York housed children and adults with intellectual disabilities. It became infamous for overcrowding, neglect and abuse.
Journalistic exposure in the 1970s showed conditions that shocked the public.
Children lived in degrading conditions. Hepatitis research at Willowbrook involved deliberately infecting children under consent practices that are now widely condemned.
The scandal showed how institutionalised disabled children could be treated as less worthy of protection.
Willowbrook is not just an American scandal. It is a warning about closed systems.
When people are hidden away and families are disempowered, abuse can become normal.