25th Anniversary Marked This Week: The End Of A Nightmare At Willowbrook

The house that stands at 251-40 Gaskell Road in Little Neck is not an official landmark. But maybe this house should be. Although it doesnt look much different from the other suburban-style homes in the area, a revolution took place there in the mid-70s.
During that period residents picketed the house for months to protest its becoming the first group home for children who are mentally-retarded in the state of New York. The residents went to court to stop the group home.
But there were other community residents who had a very different belief concerning the use of that home. Victoria Schneps, a Bayside resident, had a daughter, Lara, who lived in the Willowbrook State School, an institution for the mentally retarded on Staten Island, the only place available in the metropolitan area for her care. One day she walked into the ward where her daughter was living, and saw one woman attempting to feed 50 profoundly retarded helpless children. She picked up Lara, took her home and began to crusade for alternate care for her daughter and children like her.
The word "Willowbrook" became synonymous with snakepit institutional care. State Senator William Conklin in the 1060s had toured the facility and publicly reported on the vile stench and the crude conditions in the facility. Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 made an unannounced visit and reported that the "wards were less comfortable and cheerful than the cage in which we put animals in the zoo."
Temporary improvements were made including a million-dollar infant rehabilitation center.
Mrs. Schneps, who co-founded an organization of concerned friends in Bayside and members of the parents organization at Willowbrook began marching and picketing for better care and return of the funds that had been deeply cut by budget constraints during the Rockefeller era.
But it was when a young TV reporter for WABC, Geraldo Rivera, who went with his cameras unannounced into Willowbrook, exposed the horror of the place for all to see. His scenes of naked children, unattended and playing with their own excrement, feeding themselves soup with their fingers, crying and wailing in unattended and overcrowded prison-like hallways shocked the nation. Rivera kept up the reporting and Schneps became an activist to close the facility and create a humane alternative. Schneps members of the Working Organization for Retarded Children and Adults (WORC) was televised protesting. Parents, including the Schneps sued the state in federal court and won a landmark decision and in 1975, Governor Hugh Carey, in one of his first decisions, signed the Willowbrook Consent Judgment promising to drastically change the way people who are mentally retarded are cared for.
The lawsuit enabled WORC to open the house on Gaskell Road in 1977 with the aid of a $62,500 grant from the One-to-One Foundation set up by Geraldo Rivera. A concert at Madison Square Garden by John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped to raise the funds. WORC raised the remainder of $120,000 to purchase the house and its half acre of property. Since the other residences and apartments have been established in Queens and across the state.
Last week, the 25th anniversary of the Willowbrook Consent Judgment was marked with a celebration of this historic landmark in social justice. The event was held at the College of Staten Island, the site of the once infamous Willowbrook. Many of those who had been the pioneers in the original battle were there. Everyone from Governor Pataki, former Governor Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, parents of children who once lived there and those involved in the original lawsuit were there and as they joined in meeting the quarter-century of a great victory, they could not help but still feel the haunting memories contained within the stone walls of the once nightmarish institution.
Postscript
The Willowbrook controversy also made some journalistic history. Geraldo Riveras expos caught the attention of the nation and Rivera rose from a local reporter to become a national reporter and talk show host. Rivera has remained active in the cause of the mentally retarded and this week he hosted the annual Geraldo Rivera Golf Outing which raises funds for WORC to continue its work with group homes (see page 22).
Victoria Schneps, profoundly changed by her experience in the Willowbrook battle, realized the power of the press in being able to bring about community change. As a result she started The Queens Courier, this community weekly newspaper 15 years ago this year.
The victory at Willowbrook altered, hopefully forever, the way the mentally retarded can live their lives. Lara, the little girl whose short life helped establish the rights of mentally retarded people throughout this nation passed away in 1985.