For the boys of the Arthur G. Dozier School, an apology had been a long time coming.
On Tuesday, the Florida Legislature gathered a group of the victims of abuses at the Dozier School in Tallahassee.
After decades of waiting, the Dozier Boys will finally have closure on one of the most horrific chapters in Florida history.
For the Dozier Boys, it feels like yesterday they were holed up at the Marianna-based reform school, victims of physical and sometimes sexual abuse.
The memories still sting.
“What Marianna did to me really hurt me,” said Richard Huntly, who was sent to the reform school when he was 11 years old. “I died in 1959 and I visited the campus where I died in 2013. When I see that church...all the memories came back. When I went back to that campus, I [saw] my funeral all over again.”
Years later, the Florida Legislature is finally taking up a measure to make things right for the victims.
“Those bones are not yet dry,” said Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, who is sponsoring a bill to condemn the acts of violence at the school. “They are yet watered with the tears and testimony of those living, living with the scars both psychological and physical. Today is the next step for this legislature to honor their memory and to declare...that these types of atrocities and tragedies should never occur again.”
House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes said Tuesday was a positive step on the path to healing, both for the victims and for the state of Florida.
“You can’t fix that kind of horror and it’s really a heartfelt apology,” said Corcoran.
On Tuesday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee took up SR 1440, which will finally apologize to the Dozier School boys for “a shameful part of the history of the State of Florida.”
Former boys at the school told Sunshine State News of children they knew who were flogged mercilessly, or kept in solitary confinement at Pierce Hall for months at a time, even though these practices were supposed to have ceased by the time they arrived on campus.
They told of one cottage father (as dorm supervisors were called) who would enter their cottage at night, set up a small desk at the bathroom entrance, and insist on watching the boys expose their nudity while they used the toilet.
Opened in 1900, the school was the country's largest reform institution. It closed in 2011.
In 2012, a group of anthropologists led by the University of South Florida began an excavation process on the school grounds, uncovering over 50 bodies at the school in unmarked graves. The USF report found a total of 100 deaths from 1900 to 1973. Two staff deaths were included in the total.
Last year, the Florida Legislature designated a task force to determine what, exactly, Florida should do with the bodies and what type of memorial should be created to remember the victims.
The issue of figuring out where to put the bodies has been a contentious one. Former attendees of the school disputed assertions the bodies should be buried at Dozier, since some believed it would tarnish their memories.
Ultimately, the state legislature agreed to move some of the bodies to Marianna and set up two memorials -- one in Tallahassee and one in Marianna.
"What happened to these children was unconscionable. It is long past due for an apology and a recognition of wrongs committed,” said Corcoran. “It is even more vital that all of us do all we can to assist the victims still with us and commit, in the names of those departed, to ensure a tragedy like this never happens again."
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
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