This story is part of a series about Willowbrook State School, which became a national symbol of the cruel warehousing of developmentally disabled children and adults during the 20th Century. The institution, which began housing the developmentally disabled population in the 1930s, was a place where the borough’s most vulnerable residents were abused, starved and neglected. Staten Island Advance reporter Jane Kurtin, along with photographer Eric Aerts, documented these horrors, which led to drastic changes over time in the way developmentally disabled people are treated in the U.S.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A young photographer in the early 1970s, the late Eric Aerts captured the first images that exposed the cruel treatment of developmentally-disabled people at the former Willowbrook State School.
Together with former Staten Island Advance reporter Jane Kurtin, Aerts in 1971 walked through the doors of Willowbrook State School and photographed shocking images of children and adults with special needs who were were kept in cages, unclothed, starved and used as science experiments.
Aerts, who died in 2021 after a long battle with liver cancer, photographed children sitting in rooms and on couches -- some with their hands over their ears, some staring into space and others only clothed with underwear. He photographed rows of beds in a hospital-like setting with children and adults left to lie there with little medical attention. Through the lense of his camera, Aerts exposed how the 5,300 residents of Willowbrook State School were essentially imprisoned, and left unattended with little engagement from staff.
“I was always fascinated with my father’s photos. He was always very artistic. He sculpted and was a painter,” said Ericson Aerts of his dad’s work.
“When I was a kid he built a dark room in our basem*nt and he’d do all his own developing there. We don’t see that kind of photographic work anymore. But as a kid I remember the smell of the chemicals and him down in the darkroom with the red light on,” he added, noting his father also taught photography at Notre Dame Academy.
He said his dad’s commercial photography work, which included freelancing for the Advance, was “a time capsule of the 1970s.”
“My father had a knack for capturing things. He saw stuff and he was brilliant at capturing it. So those moments you’ll see there in those photos [from Wilowbrook State School] really captured what was happening there,” said Aerts, noting his father was also a restauranteur, owning the former Montezuma’s eatery in St. George.
SHOCKING IMAGES
Aerts shocking images, along with Kurtin’s series of stories exposed the horrors that occurred at Willowbrook State School.
The pair told and showed the world the unthinkable: how adults and children institutionalized at Willowbrook were knowingly injected with the virus that causes hepatitis for a medical study. Some were forced to eat feces from other residents who were infected with the disease.
Soon after the world learned of the atrocities that occurred inside Willowbrook State School, widespread public outrage prompted the New York Civil Liberties Union to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of school’s 5,300 residents against the state and then-Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller.
The resulting federal court agreement, called the Willowbrook Consent Decree, laid the groundwork for national reform in the care, education and housing of people with developmental disabilities.
In 1975, a federal judge ordered the school’s population be reduced to 250, with the remaining residents transferred to more humane environments, such as group homes. Eventually, Willowbrook, then called the Staten Island Developmental Center, closed in 1987. The City University of New York acquired the property in 1989, and refurbished the many brick buildings for use as part of the campus for the College of Staten Island (CSI).
WILLOWBROOK MILE
More than a decade ago, CSI, along with the Staten Island Developmental Disabilities Council, the Institute for Basic Research (IBR), and the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) began a project to establish a memorial walking trail: The Willowbrook Mile. “The Mile is designed to preserve the site’s history, and to create a visionary presence that commemorates the social justice and deinstitutionalization movement to ensure the rights of all persons to live with dignity and thrive in their communities,” says CSI Today.
CSI EXHIBIT
Aerts photos have been compiled into an exhibit: “Eric Aerts: Photography Inside the Cages,” which will be on display at CSI from Sept. 19 to Oct. 20.
MORE IN THE SERIES:
‘I saw something awful so I wrote about it’: Advance reporter details her groundbreaking exposé of Willowbrook State School
Willowbrook Mile: She’ll walk it in celebration of dignity that developmentally disabled deserve
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