With Sackler family donations seen as tainted, UConn will redirect funds from longtime beneficiaries at heart of opioid crisis

For three decades, Raymond and Beverly Sackler -- the Greenwich couple whose company Purdue Pharma produced the highly-addictive prescription painkiller OxyContin -- were some of UConn’s most generous benefactors. When Raymond Sackler died in 2017, UConn administrators praised his legacy of generous philanthropy. But last week, his widow Beverly Sackler’s death -- revealed in a filing made by her lawyers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court -- went by with no mention from university officials.

In the span of those two years, the Sacklers’ fortunes -- and their public perception -- have shifted dramatically. Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy last month and faces ongoing litigation from states across the country, including Connecticut, for its role in propelling the opioid crisis.

“With scientific precision Purdue designed, financed and waged a campaign, both pervasive and targeted, to mislead doctors and patients into believing that the new drugs were now safe to treat even minor pain," the State of Connecticut alleged in a May complaint filed against Purdue Pharma and several members of the Sackler family. “In truth, Purdue’s opioids remain so potent that they inevitably overcome the will of many users, leading to addiction, overdose and death.”

With Sackler money now tainted by the opioid epidemic, some of Connecticut’s leading institutions and political leaders have quietly returned or redirected donations in the past year.

UConn faced an internal reckoning over the $4.5 million it received from Raymond and Beverly Sackler between 1985 and 2014, funds which are held in endowment accounts reserved for the specific purposes of the gifts. The donations primarily went toward funding research, student scholarship and faculty positions, including $3.1 million to the School of Medicine and $1.2 million to the School of Fine Arts. All of the most substantial gifts were made prior to 2012, according to UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz.

Over the summer, the UConn Foundation froze spending on about “$200,000 of liquid assets generated by interest from those endowments," Reitz said in a statement Friday. UConn is currently in the process of redirecting those funds toward addiction research and education.

“Returning the money to the Sacklers would not undo the damage of the opioid crisis or punish the family or the company they are associated with. Rather, it would hamper the work of UConn students, researchers and others who have no connection to the issues at hand, have done nothing wrong, and are using the donated money to benefit the public good,” Reitz said in a statement.

The Sacklers were major donors to dozens of cultural institutions and universities around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Royal Academy in London. In Connecticut, members of the family endowed institutions ranging from UConn and Yale to Greenwich Hospital -- and bankrolled the campaigns of many Democratic leaders.

Those organizations and elected officials have begun to discreetly make amends.

Early this year, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes returned about $25,000 in donations -- the total amount he had received from the Sacklers, dating back to at least 2008 -- to members of the family and Purdue Pharma, according to Patrick Malone, Himes’ communications director.

“Right after things came to a head, we made that decision," Malone said. “We didn’t really publicize it, we just returned it."

He added that Himes would not accept future donations from the Sacklers or Purdue Pharma.

In March, in response to public outcry over Purdue Pharma, the Connecticut Democratic Party donated $5,000 to Reliance Health, a nonprofit that provides substance abuse treatment in New London County. The party had received more than $100,000 from members of the Sackler family, dating back to 2002.

“The Sackler donations came to the party over 16 years, the last in 2017, and were spent as received,” Democratic Party chairwoman Nancy Wyman said in a statement Friday. “We donated an amount that we could afford and is appropriate. To donate a larger amount would require fundraising, which doesn’t make sense.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal received two donations from Beverly Sackler, $500 in 2015 and again in 2016, according to deputy press secretary Sam Taylor. In late January, Blumenthal donated $1,000 to the McCall Center for Behavioral Health in Torrington.

Similarly, Rep. Rosa DeLauro -- who received $500 from the Sackler family in 2016 -- made a donation in that amount to the Alliance for Prevention and Wellness, a substance abuse prevention nonprofit that serves the Lower Naugatuck Valley and Greater New Haven.

In 2017, Sen. Chris Murphy donated $10,400 received from Jonathan Sackler to Shatterproof, a national nonprofit that enhances addiction treatment.

In the past year, major institutions across the state have committed to not accepting any futures donations from the Sacklers.

Yale decided earlier this year not to accept any future donations from the Sackler family, according to spokesperson Karen Peart. The university’s Raymond and Beverly Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences was established in 2008.

“Members of the Sackler family have provided gifts over the years to support research at Yale in a number of academic disciplines," she said in a statement. “We are aware of the ongoing efforts, legal and otherwise, aimed at determining potential contributing factors to the epidemic, and we have continued to monitor the outcomes of those efforts.”

Peart declined to say how much money Yale had received in total from the Sacklers over the years and whether any of the money would be returned or redirected.

She added that the Sackler Institute “still exists," though it will eventually operate under the broader umbrella of the university’s programs in Physics, Engineering and Biology.

Greenwich Hospital, which is affiliated with the Yale New Haven Health System, received considerable donations Raymond and Beverly Sackler, including $500,000 in 2014 and $50,000 in 2015.

“We have not recently nor would we accept any future donations from the Sackler family,” Dana Marnane, a vice president for public relations at Greenwich Hospital, said in an email Thursday.

Achievement First, a public charter school network that runs schools in New Haven, Bridgeport, Hartford, Brooklyn, NY and Providence, RI, received significant support from another family member, Jonathan Sackler, who served as a trustee of the organization. The organization accepted its last donation from the Sackler family in the 2017-2018 year, according to a spokesperson.

“Achievement First has decided not to seek further funding from the Sackler family or any of their affiliated foundations," co-CEO and president Dacia Toll said in a statement in June. "We are grateful for the generous philanthropy from all of our donors, including Jon Sackler. This support has made it possible for thousands of students to receive the education they need and deserve. ”

At UConn, officials concluded that none of the funds related to research in opioids, pain management, or the marketing of prescription opioids.

The only remaining Sackler funds which will not be redirected toward addiction research are those which support regenerative engineering work in a lab at UConn Health. The funds pay for the salaries of staff members whose positions would otherwise be cut.

Reitz said that there was no indication that any additional Sackler donations were forthcoming, but added that a decision regarding future gifts would occur on a case-by-case basis.

“It would need to be for a good and worthy cause,” she said in a statement.

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