House and Senate committees on Tuesday approved bills that would create a compensation program for victims of abuse at the state’s now-closed Dozier School for Boys in Marianna and another reform school in Okeechobee County.
Dozier School for Boys
For more than a decade, victims have told their stories to lawmakers about the abuse and beatings that they suffered. The difference this time is the Levin Papantonio Rafferty law firm got involved.
In May 2022, I traveled with Troy Rafferty, Mike Papantonio, and their legal team to Marianna and toured the abandoned buildings with survivors of the “reform” school. The men were part of a group that called themselves “The White House Boys.”
The term refers to a small white building next to the school’s cafeteria, where boys were, beaten, tortured, and abused.
One survivor shared, “I worked in the kitchen and what they would do is they’d come over to the kitchen, tell Mr. Edinfield to get three of us to go over and hold the child down.”
He continued, “So we’d hold five and six- and seven-year-old children down…And when the beating was over, we went back to the kitchen and went back to work.”
Read more about my interviews here.
What Passed
The House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee approved the measures (HB 21 and SB 24), sponsored by Rep. Michelle Salzman, R-Pensacola, Rep. Kiyan Michael, R-Jacksonville, and Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg.
The bills would create a compensation program that would be administered by the Attorney General’s Office. It would apply to living people who were abused between 1940 and 1975 while students at the schools. The bills do not detail amounts of money, saying they would be “subject to appropriation” from the Legislature.
Dig Deeper: University of South Florida forensic anthropologists leading an excavation of Dozier property found human remains in 55 unmarked graves, “some with gunshot wounds or signs of blunt force trauma.” Lawmakers in 2017 formally apologized to victims of the abuse.
A memorial was dedicated at Marianna in January 2023.
source: The News Source of Florida
