Bryan Parcival News Today

For years the Massachusetts State Police kept material for criminal cases at the old Fernald school, including graphic evidence for homicide investigations and at least one unsolved murder, accessible to any trespasser.

The future of the former Fernald school, the country’s first public institution of its kind to care for people with disabilities, is now up to fierce debate from city residents and those who once lived there.

The federal government is conducting a civil rights investigation involving Massachusetts' Department of Developmental Services over a patient privacy breach at the shuttered Walter E. Fernald State School in Waltham.

A decade after the city bought the property from the state, the legacy of the Fernald School is at the center of a fraught debate.

State officials say public records laws prevent them from sharing the vast troves of documents on former residents, even with immediate family members. Yet a handful of states have found ways to do precisely that.

The institution for ‘feeble-minded boys’ named for my great-great-grandfather closed in 2014. Why are confidential and sensitive patient records strewn all over the abandoned campus?