For abuse at Florida’s Dozier school, no sum — not even $20 million — can compensate | Opinion
The state Senate unanimously approved a plan Monday to compensate the survivors of the waking nightmare known as Florida’s Dozier School for Boys.
Compensate? Somehow that seems like an inadequate concept in a case where children in a state-run (now long closed) reform school were raped, beaten and tortured — abuse that went on for decades, from 1940 to 1975. Some kids simply didn’t make it out alive.
How exactly do we go about compensating for that?
Dozier is notorious, and rightfully so. As the abuse there became widely known, it caused international shock. A Pulitzer Prize-winning book was written by author Colson Whitehead about the “White House Boys” — a reference to the white house on school property where the abuse often took place. They’ve been traveling to Tallahassee for years trying to get the state to fully own up to the wrongs perpetuated in its name.
A documentary filmmaker has been recording their dogged efforts. Reporters, including those at the Miami Herald, have been writing about Dozier for years as the awful details of what happened there emerged.
Imagine the courage it took for the survivors to testify in Tallahassee about the terrible experience of being sent to Dozier, where dreadful things happened — boiling water was poured on them, they were beaten with a leather strap, they feared being raped by staff members at night.
There have been half-measures to make amends in the past. In 2017, lawmakers allotted $1.2 million for reburials and memorials for Dozier victims. An official state apology was issued, too. Weak tea, that stuff, when you balance it against what the survivors testified about.
Now, it seems, there will be money. A lot of it. Though lawmakers have been at odds for years about compensation, this Legislature decided to set aside a big sum — $20 million — for former students who attended the boys school in Marianna or the Okeechobee School, another state reform school that was created to take the overflow from Dozier.
Senate bill sponsor Darryl Rouson (D-St. Petersburg), has repeatedly filed legislation seeking to create a fund for the school’s victims in the past but it never got anywhere until now.
There probably aren’t that many former students to claim the money — 300 to 400, by some estimates. Those who attended the vote Monday were in their 60s, 70s and 80s. They hugged each other and cried when the measure passed. It now goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature.
No doubt some of those tears were for those who couldn’t be there. Some in their group have died during the many years it has taken for Florida to reach this point. And then there are the others: Investigators found remains of dozens of students buried at the site of the school. Some former students have never been located at all. How many tears for them, children branded as “incorrigible” — who then had to pay for that label with their lives?
In 2011, the Dozier school was shuttered — after 111 years of operation.
There will be safeguards for handing out the money, assuming this measure is finally approved. The state will want reasonable proof of attendance during those years, among other things.
But this isn’t new territory. In 1994, Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a bill to create a fund for victims of the Rosewood massacre, an attack in which white Floridians burned down a predominantly Black town and drove residents out.
Richard Huntley, 77, from Orlando, told the News Service that he was at Dozier from 1957 to 1959. He was sent there when he was 11. He’s been advocating for the victims for a decade and a half.
The money, he said, “won’t heal everything and make you forget everything, but at least we can say we won.”
Last month, as the compensation plan was working its way through the Legislature, he vowed: “I will bring all of my dead brothers on my shoulders; if I’m raised up they will be first. I promise I will do my best that they will never be forgotten again.”
Compensation. It’s the right thing to do. It’s been a long time coming. And it’s about all we can do, as a state. But, in this case, there’s really no sum — not even $20 million — that can adequately do the job.
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