Across Massachusetts, there are thousands of unmarked graves holding people who lived and died in the state institutions that housed people with mental, intellectual and developmental disabilities beginning in the mid-1800s. Many of the residents are buried in cemeteries that are deteriorating and unmaintained.
And because of how the state handles records from those facilities, thousands of family members don’t know where their loved one is buried. Like David Scott, whose brother John died at age 17 at the Fernald School in Waltham. Scott and his siblings spent 50 years not knowing where his brother’s remains were.
The findings about unmarked graves are part of a newly released report from the Massachusetts Special Commission on State Institutions, which investigated how the state has mishandled decades of public records relating to disabled residents who lived in state institutions…