Some victims of notorious reform schools in Florida will be eligible for compensation

JACKSON COUNTY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP/Gray News) - A new Florida law will compensate some victims who were abused at two reform schools.

On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill HB 21, also known as the “Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program,” which was was passed by the Florida Senate in March.

It sets aside $20 million for victims at now-shuttered Dozier School for Boys and Florida School for Boys in Okeechobee, or Okeechobee School. It also creates a process for the former students to make claims for the decades of abuse victims endured at the school.

At the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, many students were reportedly beaten, raped and some even killed.

The Dozier school was in use from 1900 to 2011, and nearly 100 boys have been documented to have died there, the University of South Florida said.

Researchers from the University of South Florida have identified an estimated 50 burials through the use of ground-penetrating radar at the campus burial ground.

“White crosses commemorate 31 burials and were placed in the general area of the cemetery in the 1990s, decades following the actual deaths. Very little documentation about the history of the cemetery or who is buried there, including exact locations of individual burials, is known,” researchers said.

The Okeechobee School, which was first opened to alleviate crowding at the Dozier School, also had a reputation for abuse and death, the bill said, with some students “dying under questionable circumstances. Two of them being a 13-year-old boy found floating face down in the school’s sewage tank, and a teen shot dead during an alleged escape attempt.”

The Okeechobee facility was in use until December 2020, LakeONews.com reported.

The compensation bill is set to take effect on July 1. and the Department of Legal Affairs will set up a website to facilitate applications to the Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program.

According to the bill analysis, to receive compensation, “an application must be made by a living person who was confined to the Dozier School for Boys or the Okeechobee School” between 1940 and 1975.

The application must include the applicant’s name, date of birth, mailing address, telephone number, and, if available, electronic mail address; as well as the name of the school in which the applicant was confined and the approximate dates they were held at the school.

Reasonable proof of the applicant’s confinement and the abuse they suffered at the school must also be submitted, which may include a notarized statement, the bill stated.

Applications must be submitted by Dec. 31.

Once a person is compensated under this bill, they are ineligible for any further compensation related to their confinement at these reform schools.

The bill also authorizes the Commissioner of Education to award a standard high school diploma to a person compensated under this program if the person has not completed high school graduation requirements.

There are estimated to be about 400 living survivors of these schools, according to a report in the Florida Phoenix.

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