Abandoned Asylum - Pennhurst: The Shame of Pennsylvania

To best introduce Pennhurst State School and Hospital, we offer a single quotation from the 1968 documentary "Suffer the Little Children", an exposé by Bill Baldini, about the deplorable conditions under which the asylum operated. When one patient was asked by the interviewer what he would like most in the world, if he could have anything he could imagine, the sad and withdrawn reply was simply, "To get out of Pennhurst."

This state-funded school and hospital center was at the heart of the human rights movement that revolutionized this country's approach to healthcare for the mentally and physically handicapped and, by extension, our views on the value of human life. Pennhurst was one of the most striking examples of the maltreatment that was characteristic of such institutions - at one point, papers labeled it "The Shame of Pennsylvania". Reading accounts of the abuse and neglect endured by patients at these hospitals can often be sickening; In the case of Pennhurst, the lives of the residents were recorded on video by documentary filmmakers as well. To see and hear the hopelessness of these people can be very trying; Many of them were abandoned by all who knew them, as forlorn as the facility itself would come to be decades later...

The full story can be found here -
http://antiquityechoes.blogspot.com/2013/02/pennhurst-shame-of-nation.html
The footage and audio clip in this video are from the exposé
"Suffer the Little Children", by Bill Baldini

Music - "White Phosphorus Angels" by Worrytrain

Видео Abandoned Asylum - Pennhurst: The Shame of Pennsylvania канала Antiquity Echoes