The horrors inflicted on hundreds of boys at a notorious juvenile detention center in Florida's Panhandle are still painful for survivors to recount years later: Forced labor. Brutal whippings. Sexual abuse.
For more than 15 years, the survivors of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, now elderly, have been visiting the state Capitol in Tallahassee to share their deep, painful memories and plead with politicians for justice for them and the dozens of boys who died at the school.
The victims, many of whom were Black, received an official apology in 2017. On Friday, Florida took another step. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that creates a $20 million program to provide financial compensation to victims who endured abuse or neglect by the state. DeSantis signed the bill behind closed doors, the governor's office announced late Friday.
The compensation program will allow claims from survivors who were “incarcerated” at Dozier and suffered “mental, physical and sexual abuse by school personnel” between 1940 and 1975. Survivors can also apply if they were sent to Florida Boys' School of Okeechobee, also known as Okeechobee School, which opened in 1955 to alleviate overcrowding at Dozier.
The deadline for applications is Dec. 31. Approved applicants will each receive equal funding and waive their right to seek further compensation from the state related to their time working at the school.
The Florida Legislature unanimously approved the program this year, and at an emotional state Senate committee hearing in February, several survivors testified and some lawmakers appeared lost for words.
“The pain is with me every day,” said Richard Huntley, director of Black Boys at Dozier Correctional School, who said he was beaten so hard at age 11 that he felt like he was falling out of his body. “I'm 77 now and the pain is with me every day. There's nothing I can do.”
Dozier School opened in rural Marianna in 1900 as the Florida State Correctional Facility. The school housed children as young as five years old who had committed crimes or other offenses, such as truancy or being “incorrigible.” Initially, girls were housed there, but from 1913 onwards they were sent to a separate juvenile facility for girls only. Due to Jim Crow laws in Florida, Dozier was divided into two campuses, one for white boys and one for black boys, until 1968.
Reports of abuse began soon after Dodger opened and led to decades of state investigations and congressional hearings, but the abuse continued.
The state didn't close Dozier until 2011, by which time former students had begun speaking publicly about being forced to do field work and suffering beatings and repeated whippings.
Beginning in 2012, a team of forensic anthropologists from the University of South Florida has been excavating parts of Dozier's 1,400-acre campus, searching for the remains of boys whose deaths were often listed as “unknown” or “accidental.” (Eight boys are believed to have died after being locked in their rooms in a 1914 fire; others died in a flu epidemic, and others were runaways who were shot.) The excavations focused on Boot Hill, a documented cemetery on the black side of the campus during the segregated period.
Survey teams found 55 unmarked graves where more than 100 people are believed to have died.
The horrifying truth about the torture of children at Dodger formed the basis of author Colson Whitehead's novel, “The Nickel Boys,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019. In 2022, anthropologist Erin Kimmerle, who led the Dodger excavation, published a gruesome investigative report titled “We Carry Their Bones.” Last year, author Tananarive Dew dedicated her novel, “The Reformatory,” to her great-uncle, who died at Dodger in 1937 at age 15.
