Ellen Marie Wiseman (The Lost Girls of Willowbrook) is on the radar!

Join us as we tackle The Lost Daughters of Willowbrook, Ellen Marie Wiseman's powerful, heartbreaking, and complex novel about young people institutionalized in a New York "school" that was anything but. Senator Robert Kennedy once called Willowbrook a “snake pit.” Ellen recounts how children were warehoused for years in this understaffed, overcrowded, dirty and corrupt facility. Urban legends swirled around this place – particularly about some of the (possibly murderous) staff members. We talk about the historical treatment of people with special needs or mental health issues and what we've learned over the decades. Are we doing better? How to resist injustice? The facts behind Willowbrook first came to light when Geraldo Rivera gave an expose in 1972 – and it STILL took over fourteen years for this facility to be closed. Why didn't anyone go to jail? We are talking about justice – and hope.