NYCLU Sues to Allow Families to Visit the Gravesites of their Loved Ones on Hart Island - December 3, 2014
Plaintiff Rosaria Cortes Lusero’s stillborn daughter was buried on Hart Island in 1995 after a doctor’s botched attempt to reposition the baby in her mother’s womb instead resulted in the umbilical cord wrapping around the child’s neck.
After Cortes Lucero underwent the trauma of delivering a baby she knew to be dead, hospital staff told her that the city would bury her daughter on an island and that she would be able to visit the grave. She was given no further information on where exactly her daughter would be buried or how she could visit her grave.
“I had the hospital staff take a photo of my dead daughter, one that I keep with me to this day, with the understanding that I would be able to pay proper respects upon her burial,” Cortes Lusero said. “To this day it pains me deeply that I have been unable to honor the baby girl I never got to raise.”
It wasn’t until June 2013 when Cortes Lusero’s adult daughter, plaintiff Marie Garcia, began investigating online that they finally learned of the baby’s final resting place on Hart Island. At the same time, Garcia learned that the DOC would not allow her or her mother to visit the island nor the actual gravesite.