Bill and I shot our first footage at Pennhurst State School and Hospital this weekend, through the kindness of site co-owner Jim Barnes. This shot is of the interior of Assembly Hall, the auditorium where Pennhurst residents once watched movies and plays and performed in talent shows. As you can see, the movie screen has been vandalized and the organ and pew benches overturned and smashed. Trash, including empty beer bottles, attests to the fact that the campus is now a favorite nighttime party spot.

It's more than a shame to see this kind of senseless vandalism—it's shocking. What would make a person want to break into a historic building, especially one with such a tragic past, and destroy things? What sickness would make you that criminally insensible? Have we as a society become so callous that this kind of activity is considered to be "fun?" I shudder to think.

The Pennhurst Preservation & Memorial Association is working to create a memorial and museum honoring the thousands of men, women and children with developmental disabilities who spent their lives segregated from rest of society on this Spring City campus. Visit their Web site to learn more about one of America's most shameful moments. Our treatment of those members of society deemed "different" is a brutal reminder that institutions like this one should never be allowed to recur.