Geraldo Rivera reflects on Willowbrook investigation 54 years later

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Now to one of the most important stories we've ever done in the history of Eyewitness News. Our investigation into the institution on Staten Island known as Willowbrook. It was a place of horrors for people living with disabilities. Most of them young people.

[00:00:13]54 years ago WABC-TV reporter Geraldo Rivera was given a key to Willowbrook by a doctor who was furious by what was happening. And as soon much of America would see what the doctor and Geraldo saw. Rivera tomorrow night is getting an award for that reporting. Eyewitness News anchor Bill Ritter talked to Geraldo about this important discovery at Willowbrook and very much a defining moment for Geraldo personally.

[00:00:41]>> There's no question we're going to see that. You got to hear it from him.

[00:00:44]Willowbrook was such a wretched and horror horror horrific place devoid of humanity really. And it was terrible.

[00:00:51]Young people didn't have a chance there.

[00:00:53]Geraldo Rivera one of the most iconic reporters in TV history broke the stories and told the world what was really going on inside Willowbrook. As you're about to see the impact has stayed with Geraldo so powerfully for all of these years. And a warning some of this old video is pretty tough to watch.

[00:01:14]Welcome back to Eyewitness News.

[00:01:16]>> Great to be here.

[00:01:17]It's different than it was back when you were there right? Much higher tech. I know the story is still so deep inside you. It's been 53 years since Willowbrook and what you did.

[00:01:28]And yet >> 53 when we talk about this it was as if you talk about it like it was yesterday.

[00:01:34]Oh I live this story in my dreams. I do in my nightmares. It's something that sticks with you. It's part of who I am.

[00:01:42]It's you know it's it's in my mind I carry the nightmare of it and the upside the happy ending. It was called Willowbrook on Staten Island. I often think about you going into Willowbrook. And a lot of people the younger people may not have known about this. A doctor who was horrified by what he saw happening to the people the young people inside there. And he said to you here here's my key. Go in the middle of the night with your photographer and tell the world what's happening.

[00:02:15]I mean it's unbelievable. It would not happen today. You saved kids.

[00:02:20]I like to think that that generation the Willowbrook the original Willowbrook generation that it was they their stories their parents who saved future generations from living that awful awful hell. How they were treated is something that is very hard to reconcile when you think that it was in New York City. Here's New York City the center of progressive life in the world arguably. And right in the in the city itself in Staten Island you had a situation which was as bad as anything in the third world or the or even the fourth world. It was really so wretched and so horrible. How could it have happened? We have to make sure it never happens again. You said to me once on my tomb I want it to mention something about Willowbrook where we stopped this madness. And nothing else that I've I hope that that is how I am remembered.

[00:03:14]It is amazing how much society now recognizes that the disabled have rights. For example everybody walks down the sidewalk in New York these days. There's a ramp when you get to the street. That ramp never existed before. It was getting those curbs cut. You know the sidewalk ramps.

[00:03:32]That's one of a hundred different rights now that the disabled have today that they didn't have then.

[00:03:40]Thank you for Willowbrook. And and the fact that the it's become the name of the grim institution has become kind of a catchphrase for what media can do to make the world a better place. What the news media can do to make the world a better place.

[00:03:58]Something very profound from him right?

[00:03:59]>> Profound half century as well for Geraldo and what he did back then.

[00:04:04]Tomorrow night he gets the president's award from CUNY whose college on Staten Island is now taking some of the space where Willowbrook once held all those poor kids.

[00:04:16]But no more. Congratulations to Geraldo for what he's done including the work here for Eyewitness News and for all families of those kids. And now people outlive their parents before then. I know this because for my parents the kids does not does not they don't outweigh the parents. Yeah.

[00:04:37]Because they die very early on. Yeah well it's just the power of reporting. I mean that's what I saw. I mean he was just so courageous and so too was the doctor. Yeah. You know for giving him that key. Yeah it would have never happened today as you mentioned.

[00:04:49]>> If he hadn't I'm not so sure big companies would have let him go inside there. And air the footage. Yes exactly.

[00:04:55]And and it it changed America. It really did. Changed America for the better. For the better. For the better. Okay Bill thanks so much.