Bill Could Uncover Buried Histories Of Institutions Like Fernald

WALTHAM, MA — If passed, new legislation proposed by Sen. Michael Barrett and a Waltham resident, could establish a special commission to unearth the history of state institutions like the Fernald School for people with developmental and mental health issues.

Advocates who testified before legislators on June 21 said progress toward equity and inclusion in the commonwealth depends on a deeper understanding of those who lived through the time in the 19th and 20th centuries when state institutions served as sites for medical experiments involving residents that today are recognized as violations of human rights.

"This commission offers an opportunity for Massachusetts to provide a first of its kind, innovative model for memorialization, for the nation to follow," Arc of Massachusetts Executive Director Maura Sullivan said. "The Disability Commission bill will enable the Commonwealth to study the true history of the era of institutions. We need to learn from that history and honor those who were forgotten."

By the 1970s, thousands of people with developmental or mental health challenges were housed in at least 27 institutions in the commonwealth. The 1970s saw the burgeoning of awareness about civil rights and a spate of lawsuits over the treatment of residents, clients and patients.

What followed were a series of landmark rulings by federal district court judge Joseph Tauro that prompted significant improvements in the care provided, managed and overseen by what is now the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.

Yet comprehensive and consistent records and histories of these institutions are still unavailable, according to advocates.

“We live in a time of historic reckonings,” said state Sen. Mike Barrett, a longtime advocate for people with disabilities. “With respect to Massachusetts citizens with developmental and mental health challenges, and as regards our better understanding of human rights and humane treatment, the past can be a guide, but only if we truly know it. This commission will add impetus to the acknowledgement and restoration of these hidden Massachusetts lives, to the same degree and in the same ways that we're able to know about the lives of everyone else."

The commission idea was inspired by an initiative in Waltham.

In 2019, students and teachers at Waltham's Gann Academy began a research project to write short biographies of 298 people who had lived in state institutions in Waltham and Lexington and who, upon their deaths, were buried in graves marked only with numbers.

“As a person with mental illness who was briefly committed 20 years ago, I am keenly aware that in another time, I would have spent my life in a state asylum instead of having the great privilege to teach at the Harvard Kennedy School,” said Alex Green, the teacher who led the effort at Gann Academy and who is an advocate of the bill. “Not a week passes without a former resident, employee or family member reaching out to me in the desperate hope that they can find answers to the unsettled issues that remain in their lives. Now is the time for a state-supported commission, led by disabled people, to do just that, and I think that it will provide immeasurable benefit to helping understand this history.”

While nearly all the state's large institutions have closed, there has not been a cohesive, systematic effort to excavate their histories. Documents are scattered across state agencies. Former residents have rarely been asked to tell their stories. Family members face a maze of bureaucracy as they try to learn what happened to loved ones, they told legislators.

Pat Vitkus, the wife of the late Donald Vitkus, who was a Vietnam combat veteran born in Waltham and incarcerated at Belchertown State School in the 1950s, said her husband and his son searched for years before they could find out his records.

"And those kinds of things should be readily available to someone who's looking for them," she said. "The people that are going to sit on this commission are vitally important because they’re someone who lived there, a family member. We need these kinds of people to be the eyes and ears for all the people who lived in these institutions. We really haven’t had that before."

According to the bill a commission would aim to:

• Locate or better organize records and documents involving former state institutions and the individuals who lived in them;
• Make the records and documents available to former residents, their family members, and the general public, an effort that would be balanced by the protection of privacy;
• Identify the burial locations of residents who died in the care of the Commonwealth;
• Assess the likelihood of, and possible location of, unmarked graves at the site of former institutions;
• Collect statements and recollections from former residents; and
• Provide a "human rights framework" for understanding and assessing the state's role in running the institutions.

Barrett filed the bill in the Senate and State Representative Sean Garballey filed the bill in the House of Representatives. According to the state website, the bill: S1257 "An Act establishing a commission on the history of state institutions for people with developmental and mental health disabilities in the Commonwealth," was referred to Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery.