Voices from Pennhurst: Testimonies and Memories
The true history of Pennhurst is told not just through documents and court records, but through the voices of those who lived and worked there. These testimonies preserve the human experience behind the statistics and legal rulings. They remind us that Pennhurst was not just an institution—it was the lived reality for thousands of human beings who deserved dignity, rights, and opportunity.
Survivor Testimonies
"After that long ride up there, it was just horrible. That was very scary. Very, very frightening. I was crying that I would never see them again, my family or my sisters. We went out into this big institution that I didn't know anything about. I saw Pennhurst for the first time. When you come down on the main road you see this big thing up at Pennhurst, the water tower, coming in to Pennhurst. Things looked different to me - because it wasn't like a house that I lived in. I'm out here in this gray institution with three thousand people that live in it."[1]
"I cried that, 'My mommy's gone; my daddy's gone. I will never see my sisters again or my brother or anybody. I'm here for life.' I thought that, 'Here I am. I'm here and there's nothing that nobody can do...I put myself there; I got myself into all this mischief and trouble and that's why I was here, to try to better myself.'"[1]
"Nighttime was the worst, with few guards on duty and predators free to roam the halls at will."[2]
"They called me retarded because they only looked at me... they didn't see the real me."[3]
In a later recording, Roland revealed: "I've been knowing that I had AIDS for 4 years and I was a child at [Pennhurst]...I had been sexually abused by attendants up there and that's what's happened that's how I picked it up. I was no more than five or eight years old. I couldn't understand why this loud stuff go on like this."[1a]
"Please do not send anyone, any child or adults back in institution because it's no place for them."[1a]
"My mother was a poor housekeeper and I was put in a dark room and she went to work. A social worker came in there, she found me. I was sick as a dog in there. She took me, they took my mother and sister to court and they took me away from her and I was put up there September '42."[1a]
"I always treated it rotten up there. I don't know why. I really don't know why."[1a]
"I don't want to go back. I don't miss that place no sir. They'll never get me in another one."[1a]
"My father, he almost suffocated me with a pillow. Before he died he asked for my forgiveness and I gave it to him. Then my mother put me up at Pennhurst. I had a falling temper and was unruly. I was told that I'll be institutionalized for the rest of my life. My mother she said that you have to be put away somewhere, that I can't handle you no more. That's all she said."[1a]
"There were some people that came and got me and took me up to Pennhurst. That was very scary, very very frightening."[1a]
"One time one of the nurses was badgering me and I told her 'Miss [name], you better stop badgering me.' She said 'or what?' I said 'You keep on badgering me you're going to be wearing that bucket.' Let me tell you, she kept on badgering. I picked up the bucket and threw it right on her. She never bothered me after that. That's a true factor."[1a]
Years later: "I found my mother, it took me a year to do it. I took a red rose down to her. I said 'mother this is Patina.' She said 'I remember you Patina but I'm sorry for what I did to you.' I said 'mother that's the past, this is the future. You look at the future not the past.'"[1a]
"At night that's when things start to happen also. Things, they would had sex with me and they wanted me to have sex with them. Very scary. I tried to push him away, he couldn't get up, he's too strong. People using, using me. They do the same thing over after the attendants leave."[1a]
"I think that I'll never get out."[1a]
"I used to work out here, do janitorial work at superintendent's house. First thing I made the coffee for him and I scrub his bathroom and did other things. All they did was make money while we done the work. Sitting in the office smoking cigarettes while they got paid. That's what they were doing. I got no thanks for it."[1a]
Husband: "In 1969 a fine fellow got us together and we walked over the car, away. He used to come to see me. We used to go to the canteen. Back then the boys and girls weren't allowed together but anyway, everybody found out about it. I really wanted to, I really wanted it, I did."[1a]
Wife: "Caseworkers said we would never make it for a marriage, that we were wrong for each other, that I'll be sorry if I get married. I wasn't sorry at all."[1a]
Husband: "Without her, well forget it."[1a]
When asked by reporters what he would most like in the world, Johnny gave a heartbreaking reply: he simply wanted "home." Many residents had no memories of life outside Pennhurst's walls. Johnny's articulate responses challenged assumptions about institutional residents' capabilities and desires, revealing the humanity that the institution sought to suppress.[6]
"At Pennhurst, I was told when to eat, when to sleep, when to wake up. Now I make my own breakfast. I choose what to wear. I have friends who visit because they want to, not because it's their job. This is living."[7]
While Terri Lee Halderman herself could not speak to her experiences due to her disability, her body spoke volumes. When her parents noticed unexplained bruises during a weekend visit home, they refused to accept institutional explanations. Their courage in challenging Pennhurst—and their willingness to fight for their daughter and all residents—transformed disability rights law and led directly to the institution's closure.[8]
Staff Perspectives
"I was a young reporter about 28 years old. I ran into a guy who did public relations for the mainline Junior Chamber of Commerce and this guy was telling me about this hell hole. I told him if one tenth of what he told me was true I'd do a story."[9]
"There was a lot of crying, there was an awful lot of tears on a daily basis, there was a lot of moaning and groaning. It affected me, it affected my crew to the point where one cameraman after three days said 'I'm not walking in there again. I cannot go back and watch this again.' I lost a sound man the next day, I had to replace them. It was very difficult for us because we weren't used to it. We weren't used to seeing pain and agony every day. We weren't used to seeing people not care about other people."[1a]
"You go into a gigantic room, there are 80 metal cribs with children in there from 6 months old to maybe 5 years old. Half of them are shackled, everyone is soiled with feces and there are two people, two attendants taking care of them. They're locked in a cage and the only reason those people were not out of that cage was because they couldn't walk. And they could not walk because there was no one in there to put a mattress on the floor so they can learn how to crawl and then walk. So they were confined for years without the ability to walk, their legs were that thick around the thighs."[1a]
In interviews conducted during his investigation, Baldini found that many staff members expressed profound relief at finally having someone listen to their concerns. They told him: "Like god I've been trying to get somebody to listen to me all these years and no one was listening." These employees had carried immense guilt, sick of implementing treatments they knew were wrong but powerless to change the system.[9]
Baldini deliberately avoided blaming individual workers, instead pointing to systemic failures and societal neglect. He urged viewers to contact their state legislators and demand change, demonstrating the persuasive power of the media to shape public opinion while offering an implicit criticism of government policy.[10]
By the last night's broadcast, Baldini himself was physically and emotionally exhausted, and his viewing audience was left to ponder how this could be happening in Pennsylvania and America.[10]
"I had no experience whatsoever, no experience at all. So I just went up to Pennhurst and filled out an application. I didn't quite know what I was getting into. As far as dealing actually with the clients, there wasn't that much training. You just went in there more like green and you figured it out as you went."[1a]
"I remember we went to one ward and it was bath day. That was a shock. They had, it was all men and I mean that was quite a shock my first day. It was something like 'oh my God you know what did I get into.'"[1a]
"There were a lot of days when I worked at Pennhurst that I didn't want to go and there were a lot of days when I was afraid to go to work. But you needed a job and you went, you know."[1a]
"One woman, she took a deck brush and hit her over the head and split her head up from here all the way up to here. They had a nerve to ask me to take her. I said if I take her I want to go down and tell them who did it because this is a crime. And that woman didn't have a chance. Later she died in the hospital and I took her, cleaned her up and everything and then I took her down to the morgue."[1a]
"I don't think anybody knows how many people died and were buried at Pennhurst. Most of the graves are unmarked."[1a]
"We used to get up at 6:00 in the morning and at 6:30 I'd be at work in the morning, at 6:30 and work the whole day through. I worked in the barber shop at Pennhurst, used to roll around and shave patients' faces and cut hair. We had to hold people down, low-function people couldn't keep still."[1a]
"I took care of seizure patients as well as giving enemas. I used to have to bathe the patients there too and when a couple of them died I had to take them, wash them and clean them up and everything and then I would wrap them up in a sheet, tie their feet and tie their hands together and then wrap them in the sheet and then take them down to the morgue."[1a]
"You should see how much medicine those patients got. It was a mess. Thorazine, Mellaril. If you spoke up, you acted out, you fought, you didn't do what you were told, you ended up with a drug or drugs. Almost everybody was on Thorazine. Some of the side effects include what are called extrapyramidal side effects which are involuntary movements that look like seizure activity but are not. Well you get doped up from it, that's what happened there."[1a]
"My girlfriend and I went over and she played accordion and we went to what they called the vegetable bins and the crib babies that had never had visitors or entertainment or anything. We would choose those places. We would sing to them. They couldn't talk, they couldn't do anything, just laid there, nothing. But their eyes would change and it was so beautiful."[1a]
Family Perspectives
When Terri Lee Halderman's parents noticed unexplained bruises during a weekend visit home, they made the courageous decision to challenge the institution in court. Their willingness to fight for their daughter—and by extension, all Pennhurst residents—transformed disability rights law and led directly to the institution's eventual closure. They refused to be silenced or placated, insisting on accountability and justice.[8]
Many families faced agonizing decisions about institutionalization. Medical professionals and social workers of the era often advised parents to place their disabled children in institutions and "move on with their lives," assuring them it was "for the best." Distance, poverty, and lack of transportation kept many families from regular visits. Some parents never saw their children again after admission. As documented in court testimony, families were often unaware of "the type of home to which they and the courts had committed their loved ones."[13]
Roland Johnson was born into a large African American family in South Philadelphia. As a young child, he moved with his family to North Cleveland Street in North Philadelphia. In adolescence, Johnson began to display increasingly troubling behaviors and habitual truancy. He was assessed as unsuitable for public school. Uncertain of how to manage their son's defiance, Johnson's parents took him to several physicians, who recommended he be institutionalized immediately at Pennhurst. When he first saw the sprawling 1,200-acre compound with more than 3,500 residents, he started to cry.[2]
Contemporary Witnesses and Documentarians
Since Pennhurst's closure, numerous documentarians, historians, and former staff have explored the abandoned campus and worked to preserve the site's historical significance. Their accounts consistently describe an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss that permeates the buildings—a testament to the trauma experienced within those walls.
"Baldini's sparse narrative and compelling film footage documented the wanton neglect, indignity, and mistreatment of society's most vulnerable citizens—individuals with intellectual disabilities—who were incarcerated without their consent. Images of half-clothed children and young adults wandering aimlessly in overcrowded day rooms were accompanied by a cacophony of sounds, assaulting the senses at each turn."[10]
"The broadcast was a foundational moment in the burgeoning disability civil rights movement, said to be America's most undervalued freedom struggle. Baldini's work shattered Philadelphians' and other Americans' easy complacency and blind indifference to what had been occurring for decades behind institutional walls far removed from public scrutiny."[10]
Voices of Advocacy and Change
"Roland [Johnson] was an effective advocate speaking before committees of the legislature, at press conferences, and conventions. He spoke forcefully, sensitively and with dignity. Roland said that we can all learn from one another. With his book he can continue to teach us."[14]
"When [Roland Johnson] talked, somehow, it carried more weight than the paid advocates I dealt with. He was so fervent in his beliefs and so skilled in talking about the people he cared so much about...Roland's story mirrors the amazing changes in this country in the past fifty years for people with mental retardation."[14]
"Roland Johnson was a friend and a hero of mine. He was a great pioneer of the frontier of human being. Read his book."[14]
Preserving Memory and Seeking Justice
The testimonies collected here represent only a fraction of the thousands of stories from Pennhurst. Many residents never had the opportunity to share their experiences—they died at the institution, unable to speak for themselves or advocate for change. Others carry trauma too deep to articulate even decades later.
The Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance works to ensure these voices are not forgotten. They advocate for a proper memorial at the site to honor those who lived and died there, opposing the commercialization of suffering through haunted attractions.[15]
"They called me retarded because they only looked at me... they didn't see the real me."
— Roland Johnson
These voices remind us why Pennhurst must never be forgotten, and why such institutions must never exist again.