Inquiry urged into remains buried at school for boys

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Monday, 12.08.08
Inquiry urged into remains buried at school for boys

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE -- Convinced the 32 unmarked graves at the Florida School for Boys in Marianna are the bodies of boys abused and killed decades ago there, four former residents of the school are demanding the governor and state and federal attorneys investigate.

The four men, all of whom suffered from brutal beatings while students at the Marianna-based school for delinquent boys in the late 1950s, sent letters to Gov. Charlie Crist, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney general alleging that the boys were victims of state-sponsored hate crimes and murder.

Their goal, they said, is for ''every last child, Caucasian, Hispanic and African-American who disappeared from the Florida School for Boys accounted for and, whatever relatives he may have, be given peace at last,'' said Michael O'McCarthy, 66, who resided at the school in 1958-59.

The men learned of the graves six weeks ago when the Department of Juvenile Justice invited five of the men back to the school to dedicate a plaque outside the white cinder-block building where they were beaten, known as the White House, and to close it down forever.

The graves were on what officials used to call ''the colored side'' of the school and the men now believe they remain unmarked ''to hide the nature of those children's deaths,'' O'McCarthy said.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/486/story/804492.html

[XemaSab]

1. That is really horrible

I hope those poor boys are at peace, and their killers are brought to justice! :cry:

[AllentownJake]

2. Their killers are most likely dead

They'd be in their mid 80's to 100s. There might be a few around but there probably in nursing homes.

[tomreedtoon]

3. The finest Florida educational facility, and they're complaining?

At least they were honest enough to kill the kids outright, instead of torturing them until graduation like most teachers and leaving them suffering for life. Better than hypocrisy.

[happygoluckytoyou]

4. LOOK... up in the sky.... its a bird... its a plane....ITS Detective Lilly Rush ! ! !

[Heywood J]

5. It's things like this that make me glad

I don't live in Florida. There, people get the chair for expressing what I'm feeling right now, but not for things like burning children to death in a clothes dryer.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Men recall abuse, torture by guards at old Florida reform school

Posted on Wednesday, 10.22.08
ARTHUR G. DOZIER SCHOOL FOR BOYS
Men recall abuse, torture by guards at old Florida reform school
In a place where they were beaten and tortured as young boys, five men, all in their 60s, recounted the pain and suffering at Florida's oldest reform school.
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
[e-mail]

MARIANNA -- It had been a half-century since 66-year-old Richard Colon had been inside the white-washed cinderblock building where, he says, reform school guards beat him mercilessly with a leather/metal whip.

As uniformed employees of the Florida Department of Justice listened -- some of them with mouths-agape -- the memories of Colon's 1958 confinement at the school came flooding back in a torrent as his frail, five-foot-five, 149-pound body trembled and quaked, his wooden cane tapping on the asphalt.

''Jesus, God, what's happening to me,'' he recalled of the third or fourth lash, when the pain started to register. In all, he said, he was delivered 45 blows inside the 35-square-foot room.

``There was a boom, and it just kept coming, and the pain elevated itself with each lick.

``Get ready for the next one. Get ready for the next one. Here it comes again. Boom! Gasping for air. Gasping for air. Get ready. Get ready. Another one is coming.''

BREAKING DOWN

In an instant, Colon, who built a multimillion dollar electrical contracting company in Baltimore, began sobbing. Roger Kiser, another White House alum, rose from his chair and held Colon until he could regain his composure.

A squat, unadorned building on the grounds of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys -- Florida's oldest reform school -- the White House is where five now middle-aged men say they were beaten ferociously for infractions such as cursing, smoking, earning poor grades or running away. One man says he was beaten for being around other boys who discussed running away.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/735879.html

[Judi Lynn]

7. Reform school alumni recount severe beatings, rapes

Posted on Sunday, 10.19.08
JUVENILE JUSTICE
Reform school alumni recount severe beatings, rapes
Half a century ago, victims say, vicious beatings and rapes ruled the day at Florida State Reform School.

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
[e-mail]

MARIANNA -- The Florida State Reform School -- more dungeon than deliverance for much of its 108-year history -- has kept chilling secrets hidden behind red-brick walls and a razor wire fence amid the gently rolling hills of rural North Florida.

Established by state lawmakers in 1897 as a high-minded experiment where ''young offenders, separated from the vicious, may receive careful, physical, intellectual and moral training,'' the reformatory instead became a Dickensian nightmare.

Three years after the facility opened, kids were found chained in irons. A 1914 fire took six young lives while guards ''were in town upon some pleasure bent,'' records say. And in the 1980s, advocates sued to stop the state from shackling and hogtying children there.

On Tuesday, about a half-dozen alumni will return to what is now called the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys to confront the most painful chapter of their troubled lives.

The White House Boys, as a group of grown men now call themselves -- kept one of the institution's most shameful secrets for half a century: what was done to them inside a squat, dark, cinder-block building called The White House.

There, they say, guards beat them ferociously with a lash, some dozens of times. Some men say they also were sexually abused in a crawl space below the dining hall they call the ``rape room.''

State juvenile justice administrators, who have not denied the allegations, will dedicate a memorial to the suffering of The White House Boys -- who found one another through the Internet -- at a formal ceremony at the Marianna campus Tuesday.

They number in the hundreds, perhaps even thousands.

REVISITING HISTORY

In recent weeks, in a bid to improve transparency, administrators have lifted the veil of secrecy that surrounded Dozier and programs like it, allowing The Miami Herald to review century-old records and tour the remote campus.

Robert Straley, 64, a Clearwater man who sells novelties at city events and music festivals throughout the South, still recalls vividly what happened to him in the white stucco cracker house in March 1963.

The instrument of his torment was a long leather strap -- like the kind used in old-fashioned barber shops, except that part of it was made of sheet metal.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/front-page/story/732105.html

[Judi Lynn]

8. Kick.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: