The Willowbrook Wars: Bringing the Mentally Disabled into the Community
The Willowbrook Wars is a dramatic and illuminating account of the effort to close down a scandal-ridden institution and return its 5,400 handicapped residents to communities in New York. The wars began in 1972 with Geraldo Rivera's televised raid on the Willowbrook State School. They continued for three years in a federal courtroom, with civil libertarian lawyers persuading a conservative and conscience-stricken judge to expand the rights of the disabled, and they culminated in a 1975...
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In this work, originally published in 1984 by Harper & Row, David Rothman (social medicine, Columbia University) and Sheila Rothman (public health, Columbia University) offer an account of the effort to close down a scandal-ridden institution and return its 5,400 handicapped residents to communities in New York. The authors take readers behind the scenes during the 1975-1982 legal and bureaucratic "war" to shed light on the role of the judiciary in the case, the fate of the residents, and the potential for social justice. In their new afterword, the authors bring the story up to date, describing the results of the institution's closing in 1987 and the experience of integrating the residents into communities. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
\ From the Publisher“The Rothmans deserve commendation… for taking some chances and for illustrating some of the realities that underlie contemporary public policy.” —Edward Berkowitz, The Journal of American History\ \
