Certain records from the tens of thousands of people with mental, intellectual and developmental disabilities who have lived at Massachusetts institutions could become public under a proposal included in Gov. Maura Healey’s spending bill for the end of this fiscal year.
This change is one that advocates have been pushing for, spurred by the remaining family members of people who lived in these state institutions — and in some cases, died there. David Scott told GBH News last year that he’s been trying to obtain records from his brother John, who spent most of his short life in The Walter E. Fernald State School in Waltham before dying in 1973 at age 17. He suspects his brother was mistreated there.
“That’s my brother. They have no right in my eyes to hold his records from his family,” he said in 2024…