1968: The Pennhurst Special Report

This is perhaps the most-important news report in WCAU history: a 1968 special written and reported by Bill that sparked national reform in the mental-health system after a Supreme Court decision.

(Videos contain disturbing images.)
Historic Report On Pennhurst - Part 1
Historic Report On Pennhurst - Part 2
Historic Report On Pennhurst - Part 3
Historic Report On Pennhurst - Part 4
Historic Report On Pennhurst - Finale

"Suffer The Little Children" was a ground-breaking five-part investigative series that showed conditions inside Pennhurst, a local mental hospital in Spring City, Pa.

Baldini wrote and reported the series, which originally aired on "The Big News With John Facenda." Facenda also narrated the last 12 minute segment of the five-part series and interviewed Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

The 35-minute reported is presented in its entirety in the NBC 10 Feedroom.

In 1968, Pennhurst State School and Hospital in Spring City, Pa., was home to more than 2,500 mentally challenged people, but it was a home in name only.

The state-run facility used techniques and had facilities that stunned viewers who saw Baldini's reports.

News 10 cameras were allowed inside the facility, along with Baldini, to interview patients and officials about life at the asylum.

The images are still shocking today and brought publicity to conditions at Pennhurst that led to reforms for the national mental-health system.

In 1973, a patient filed a class-action suit against Pennhurst, which led to State and U.S. Supreme Court rulings establishing the rights of mental-health patients in the government's care.

In the 1980s, the Pennhurst State School and Hospital closed, due to the legal rulings that were, in part, sparked by this investigative report.