Honk News – Numerous individuals claiming to have experienced physical or sexual abuse at two state-operated reform schools in Florida are set to receive substantial financial compensation from the state following a formal apology from Florida lawmakers for the traumatic experiences they faced as children over five decades ago.
During the height of the Jim Crow era in the 1960s, the institution that is now recognized as the Dozier School for Boys accommodated 500 boys, the majority of whom were there for minor infractions like petty theft, truancy, or escaping from home.
For over a century, the school welcomed orphaned and abandoned children.
In the past few years, numerous individuals have stepped forward to share harrowing experiences of violence, sexual abuse, fatalities, and vanishings at the infamous institution located in the panhandle town of Marianna.
Almost 100 boys lost their lives at Dozier from 1900 to 1973, with some succumbing to gunshot wounds or blunt force injuries. Several of the young men’s remains were returned to their families.
Some individuals were laid to rest in graves without markers, which researchers have only just discovered.
As the December 31 deadline approaches, Florida has received over 800 applications for restitution from individuals who were subjected to mental, physical, and sexual abuse while at the Dozier school and its counterpart in Okeechobee, Fla.
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In the previous year, state legislators designated $20 million to be distributed equally among the surviving victims of the schools.
Bryant Middleton was one of the individuals who addressed the public in 2017 when legislators officially recognized the abuse.
Middleton remembered facing punishment on six occasions for offenses such as picking blackberries from a fence and mispronouncing a teacher’s name during his time at Dozier from 1959 to 1961.
“I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime. A lot of brutality, a lot of horror, a lot of death,” said Middleton, who served more than 20 years in the Army, including combat in Vietnam. “I would rather be sent back into the jungles of Vietnam than to spend one single day at the Florida School for Boys.”
Claims of mistreatment have loomed over the Dozier school since its inception in 1900, with accounts of children being restrained to the walls in shackles.
During his visit in 1968, then-Gov. Claude Kirk discovered the facility in a state of neglect, featuring leaking ceilings, wall damage, inadequate heating for the winter months, and buckets serving as makeshift toilets.
“If one of your kids were kept in such circumstances,” Kirk said then, “you’d be up there with rifles.”
In 2011, officials in Florida shut down Dozier after state and federal investigations, along with reports, revealed the abuses that occurred there.
The new film “Nickel Boys” pays tribute to the resilience of those who suffered at the schools, as they continue to await restitution. This adaptation draws from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Whitehead stated that Dozier inspired the book, which he aims to use to bring attention to ensure that the victims and their narratives remain remembered.