Connecticut must answer for its treatment of people with disabilities

Connecticut, which parades itself as a beacon of progress, hides a shameful reality. In 2023, a non-verbal resident of Southbury Training School—a Connecticut state facility for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities—was taken to a local hospital with mysterious bruising and a broken arm. Two staff members were arrested in connection with the 79-year-old’s unexplained injuries and charged with intentional cruelty as well as failure to report abuse. This is not the first incident of its kind at Southbury Training School. The institution was built in the late 1930s and has long been the center of controversy and criticism. Southbury Training School has not accepted new admissions since 1986, meaning all 97 current residents have been there for at least 39 years, with one individual spending the last 82 years institutionalized at the facility. 

It can be hard to imagine the scale of institutions like Southbury, whose remaining buildings have begun crumbling into the landscape of what STS Director Kathy Hanewicz describes as “some of the most beautiful property in the state of Connecticut.” After visiting Southbury, I would not describe the property as beautiful. Instead, it is foreboding, a prominent reminder of the horrors of institutionalization and the American eugenics movement. A once sprawling campus spanning 1600 acres, Southbury Training School now operates out of 30 buildings on a piece of land 1/4 of its original size. 

Speaking of the institution’s mission, Hanewicz stated “It was thought to be an all-inclusive integrated community where people lived there, and the families came on campus. […] The community came in, and people went out.” But, she admitted, “it was a different lived experience.” 

While state officials offer a nostalgic recollection of events, this narrative is contrary to the history of the institution. Southbury was never meant to be an “integrated community.” Like other facilities of its time, Southbury’s construction was informed by the “colony model” of institutionalization. These institutions were eugenic projects, focused on warehousing vulnerable individuals, exploiting their labor and depriving them of dignity and humane treatment. For another local example of Connecticut’s dark history of institutionalization, look no further than UConn’s “Depot Campus,” once the site of the former Mansfield Training School. 

Dr. Jim Conroy—who conducted the longitudinal study on the closure of Mansfield Training School—recalled his visit to the Southbury institution in an interview, stating “I told my parents I saw 3,000 American citizens living in a place where we wouldn’t put our dog for the weekend.” 

While there has been a large public shift in attitudes toward institutionalization, Southbury seems stuck in the past, reminiscent of a time when institutions were seen as “the only option” for many people with disabilities. On my own recent visit to Southbury Training School, I was surprised and angered when I witnessed elderly disabled adults being spoken to as if they were children or animals. 

Conroy explained, “What we did in institutions was overcrowd, understaff, and underpay…And I am fearful that we are repeating the exact same pattern in our community support systems now.” This warning could not be timelier, as the Trump administration threatens protections for people with disabilities and invokes dehumanizing, eugenicist talking points at what seems like every available opportunity. 

Governor Ned Lamont has been a staunch supporter of Southbury’s continued operation, stressing that “these are senior people who spent their whole life in this facility or most of their lives, so you’ve got to be very cautious and humane about what happens next.” Concerns of destabilization and trauma are understandable and even sympathetic, yet Lamont seems to ignore the trauma that is ingrained in and endemic to the institutional setting. Connecticut has had decades to divest from the institutional model and now quietly waits for us to forget its failure to do so. 

To responsibly push back against ableist violence, we must recognize that it never stopped. Ninety-seven of our neighbors remain isolated in Southbury Training School, where they have been kept since childhood. For many of these residents, whose ages range from 60 to 91, their only route out of the institution is death.  

We must refuse to believe that this is an acceptable reality. By treating disability institutions as unavoidable and benign, we become complicit. By ignoring our collective responsibility to each other, we allow injustice to happen again and again.