JACKSON COUNTY, Fla. – Out of all the horror stories to come out of Florida, the Dozier School in Marianna might just be among the worst.
The state-operated reform school began in 1900 and was designed to help troubled youth who had been convicted of crimes.
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While these sorts of crimes initially involved heavy charges like theft and murder, state law later included more minor offenses, such as skipping school or “incorrigibility.” Orphans were also placed in the school when no other placements were available.
As a result, the Dozier School (originally called the “Florida State Reform School”) was pushed forth and became the largest reform school of its kind at the time.
However, allegations of abuse at the school sprung up as early as 1903, state officials report.
Some of these cases involved the following accusations:
- Children being chained to walls
- Sexual abuse
- Whippings
- Peonage
- Torture
- Beatings
- “Mysterious deaths”
During its early years, the school saw a lot of turbulence. USF researchers discovered that the school had seven superintendents between 1913 and 1919, along with 28 deaths among the boys.
One of those superintendents was a convicted bank robber, who was fired after one such death. He was held responsible for the deaths of 12 people at the school in 1914.
“Archival records and documented narratives indicate that the State’s reform goal was quickly abandoned, replaced by a system of child labor and corporal punishment,” a Legislative analysis reads. “Even the name of the Dozier School changed, with the reference to ‘reform’ discarded.”
After decades of operation, Florida banned corporal punishment in its reform schools in 1968.
During that same year, then-Gov. Claude Kirk visited the Dozier School and found leaking ceilings, broken walls, “bucket toilets,” crammed bunk beds, overcrowding and a lack of heat during the winter.
Kirk described the school as “a training ground for a life of crime,” adding that “if one of your kids were kept in such circumstances, you’d be up there with rifles.”
Another report the following year uncovered a 16-year-old boy who had been placed in solitary confinement. That teen had eaten a light bulb and slashed his arm repeatedly with a broken light fixture.
“A juvenile court judge noted, after touring the school, that it was so understaffed that children were left alone at night, and ‘sexual perversion’ was common,” a state document said. “Another juvenile court judge who toured the school around this time vowed to never again send any juvenile offenders there.”
After the news broke, calls for reform led to the Dozier School’s administrators being replaced, and a new reform-based program was implemented.
However, the changes didn’t last long.
In 1979, a corrections teacher dropped by the school unannounced after hearing stories about it from residents at the center where he worked. His experience was as follows:
“There, he found a lockup facility at the back of the campus, consisting of a long hallway with metal doors enclosing cells reeking of body odor and urine. A guard informed him that there were children in the cells and, upon asking to meet one, (the teacher) discovered that the cells had bottom slip locks and bolts. One bolt on the cell door the guard intended to open stuck, so the guard had to whack it with a Bible until it loosened and the door could be opened. Inside, (the teacher) found a very thin, small boy with a shaved head and pajama bottoms but no shirt lying on a concrete slab with no mattress. The guard informed (the teacher) that the boy had been in the cell for some time for his own protection, as the other boys were sodomizing him with a broom handle. According to the guard, the boy’s head was shaved because he had been pulling out his own hair.”
Legislative Analysis, SB 21 (2024)
The teacher brought his concerns to his supervisors in Tallahassee, but nothing was done until 1983 when a class-action lawsuit was brought against the state on behalf of students at the Dozier School and two other state-run schools.
The lawsuit was settled before going to court, with the state promising to reduce the population at Dozier School to cut down on the alleged abuses.
But again — the changes didn’t last long.
Those population caps were thrown out in 1994 after teenagers killed two tourists at a rest stop near Monticello, which sparked outrage and hardened public attitudes regarding underage offenders.
That didn’t stop the claims of abuse from continuing to mount, though, and the state began investigating over 300 of these allegations between 2004 and 2009.
Only 17 of these cases were verified, and 33 were determined to have “some indicator of legitimacy.”
However, a 2007 abuse incident was later uploaded to YouTube, leading state officials to crack down on leadership at the Dozier School yet again.
A federal investigation also yielded results in 2011, discovering several “harmful practices,” such as excessive force, extended isolated confinement for minor infractions, and dismissal attitudes toward suicidal behaviors.
That same year, the state finally closed down the Dozier School for good, citing budget constraints as the issue.
Due to the passage of time, state investigators were unable to find physical evidence “to either support or refute” the allegations of physical or sexual abuse. As such, no criminal charges were ever filed.
USF researchers later led an excavation at the “Boot Hill Burial Ground” on the campus (yes, there were enough deaths at the school to warrant a burial ground) between 2012 and 2016, uncovering human remains in 55 unmarked graves. In all, the deaths of nearly 100 boys have been documented.
The research report noted the following:
- A correlation between deaths following escape attempts
- A high number of deaths that happened within the first three months of a dead child’s confinement
- An inconsistency in the issuance of death certificates
- A lack of burial locations being recorded for documented deaths
- A lack of grave markers on the property
- Consistent underreporting of deaths by school administrators
In short: the data indicates that previous administrators at the Dozier School had tried to hide how many children had actually died at the school.
In recent years, hundreds of men who attended the school in the 1950s and 1960s have come out about their experiences, calling themselves the “White House Boys” after a white building at the Dozier School property where many of their abuses reportedly happened.
Now, a bill passed by the state Legislature (HB 21) aims to provide many of these victims with compensation for their suffering.
The bill was sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week. If he approves it, the law will go into effect on July 1.
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