From the News Service of Florida: Victims of abuse decades ago at state-run reform schools will be able to begin applying next week for a share of $20 million in compensation, according to Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office.
Lawmakers this year passed a measure to create the compensation program, with Moody’s office responsible for the application process. The program is designed to provide reparations for the brutality that children and adolescents endured at the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna and the Okeechobee School in South Florida.
State Rep. Michelle Salzman sponsored the legislation, and attorney Troy Rafferty and the Levin Papantonio law firm lobbied for its passage.
The application will be available to download on Sept. 23, Kylie Mason, a spokeswoman for Moody, said in an email Monday. The program will compensate people who were at the reform schools between 1940 and 1975 and “who were subjected to mental, physical or sexual abuse perpetrated by school personnel.”
Moody’s office was required to set up a process to “accept, review, and approve or deny applications for the payment of compensation.”
The money will be divided evenly between eligible applicants. A three-page draft of the application released last month included checkboxes indicating the type of abuse suffered — such as physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse and corporal punishment — as well as a blank space to provide a “brief description of the physical, mental, or sexual abuse you were forced to endure while confined” at the schools.
That mirrors part of the new law that created the compensation program and outlined eligibility for compensation. Applicants also have to provide records proving they attended the schools during the relevant years, and the applications must be notarized. The law gave people until Dec. 31 to apply.
The money must be distributed by the end of June, Joe Spataro, an associate deputy attorney general, said during a rulemaking hearing in August. Applications will be available at Moody’s website, https://www.myfloridalegal.com/DozierSchool.