Willowbrook: Welcome to Dante's Inferno

In 1952 I recall someone in my Cub Scout group thought it was a good idea to bring Christmas presents to the young people at Willowbrook State Hospital on Staten Island. So dressed in our uniforms and bringing wrapped presents, wrapped by us individually we somehow trekked to the hospital. It was a cold but sunny day in late December and we entered this massive Victorian Structure.

The first thing I sensed was the stench of urine and then the smells increased. In a large room were kids our age, some naked, in the frigid room, filthy and just sitting against the wall, rocking back and forth. At my nine years of age I had not seen the likes. We walked across the hall and the help, its the best I can call them, just sat watching and all were smoking, dropping ashes on the filthy floor. We went through this hall and into a room where there were younger inmates and it was there we presented our presents. Clearly we were no wise men to the manger.

I remember the eyes, the stare into no where, of these kids, my ages, lost, faceless, unkempt. We sang some Christmas songs, I do not recall what they were, and we then smiled, and left. There was no human contact, and in a sense the longer we were there the more we became detached, it was surreal, it was inhuman.

That was the worst Christmas in my life, just thinking over and over about those kids, abandoned, freezing, locked forever in a fortress Hell.

The NY Times relates that some of those inmates may still live, hopefully better tan before. It does appear that the abuse continued. This is what Government can do. This is why, in my opinion, the socialist approaches being promulgated present massive risks. Willowbrook was the level of Hell Dante never got to, or could never write about. Perhaps it did not exist until we had Governments creating it without the help of the Devil.