I found this recording of the Channel 3 public affairs program They Need Love, They Get Angry, They Bleed which
was originally broadcast on January 29, 1973.
I thought the WTIC alumni might be interested in viewing it.
.
CREDITS
Don Burkhart, photography
Ralph Cruse, lighting
Alastair MacDonald, lighting
Bruce Murray, lighting
Randy Scalise, sound
Allen Allshouse, film editor
John Sablon, reporter
Brad Davis, reporter
Jack Guckin, director
Dick Ahles, producer
This unabashedly critical investigation
of the Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded was prompted by a
class-action lawsuit filed against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
when a patient died there. Some reforms were attempted after
that, but the school's reputation remained deplorable. It was
finally closed in 1992.
One resident's father, who in the lawsuit accused Belchertown of
allowing his son to be repeatedly sexually assaulted, was a professor
of exercise science at UMass Amherst named Benjamin Ricci.
In his retirement, he wrote a personal account of his experience in his
2004 book Crimes Against
Humanity: A Historical Perspective in which he outlined
still-angry claims that at least one Massachusetts official attempted
to prevent the program from being received there.
After asserting that Boston stations refused to broadcast it, he went
on to write:
Deputy Mental Health Commissioner Wilfred Bloomberg... took it open
himself to somehow prevent the premiere telecasting of the
documentary... He boldly announced his plan to "prevent' WTIC president
Leonard Patricelli from releasing it over the border into
Massachusetts. The deputy commissioner threatened "dire
consequences..." He was "determined" to prevent the television
waves from the Hartford, Connecticut station from penetrating the
Massachusetts air space.
Upon learning of the [scheduled] televising of the documentary ...
[Bloomberg] participated in [an}... attempt of threatening to seek an
injunction to prevent WTIC-TV from televising the documentary.
On March 9, 1973, [WTIC played it in the Massachusetts] House of
Representatives ... to more than one hundred legislators of the one
hundred eighty member house... Said several legislators, "now we
will be forced to clean up the mess [at Belchertown]."
The program was rerun at least once by Channel 3 as WTIC-TV (on April
20, 1973). As WFSB, Channel 3 broadcast it at least one other
time on July 25, 1976. The 1976 Hartford Courant listing
describes it as a "prize-winning documentary," but I have been unable
to determine which award(s) it may have received.
More than forty years later, the program remains disturbing and
therefore somewhat difficult to watch from an emotional
standpoint. That is forcefully driven home as the program
concludes with shots of an objectively creepy merry-go-round that
incongruously operated on the school property.
Nevertheless, I think this is a great example of the bold work Channel
3 endeavored to deliver in those years as well as a reminder of what
local television once dared to do. Would you consider sharing the
link with the alumni group?
Yours truly,
Doug Bertel, one of alumnus Dick Bertel's children