Bill Bronston and Friends: Pennhurst – Ed Goldman

Ed Goldman: Let me just add a little bit since I was involved in the Pennhurst issue. The Pennhurst class action suit is and was the longest federal class action suit in the history of the United States.

Gene Eisner: That was the one in Pennsylvania.

Bill Bronston MD: Twenty years.

Ed Goldman: Ray Broderick was the initial judge. What I always remembered from it is his rationale was that people were placed there for treatment and education. Absent that, it's incarceration. It wasn't dehumanization. It wasn't all the rest of this. Is you cannot voluntarily put people in a place for a purpose and then not do the purpose. And what you saw is what I saw at Pennhurst.

But a very interesting parallel. It's almost… I don't know if everyone knows the hundredth monkey syndrome? Things just seem to happen. My expose was in '68 in Philadelphia where I snuck a reporter from the CBS local outlet for exactly the same reasons you had, he wouldn't believe what I told him I saw and smelled.

Dr. David Goode: Is that Suffer the Little Children?

Ed Goldman: Yes.

Dr. David Goode: I have a copy of that.

Ed Goldman: Do you really?

Dr. David Goode: Yeah.

Ed Goldman: In fact, Bill Baldini is still at that station and just received an award from the mayor of all things for 40 years of service in Philadelphia. But Bill when he came out, like you, like all, like anyone would see that stuff, he could not then forget about it.