Exposing the Unspoken Tragedy of the Fernald School : RADIATION Tested on Children

Behind the brick walls of the Fernald State School in Massachusetts, thousands of children, many poor, disabled, or simply unwanted, were warehoused for decades under the guise of “care” and “education.” Inside, they endured overcrowding, abuse, neglect, and secret radiation experiments in which boys were fed radioactive oatmeal and tracked like lab animals, all so researchers and corporate sponsors could collect data they never consented to give. The school marketed itself as a place of opportunity, but for many of the children trapped there, Fernald was a closed world of humiliation and exploitation that only much later would be exposed as a hidden crime scene masquerading as a classroom.