Florida closes controversial boys' school in Marianna

[seafan]

Source: St. Petersburg Times

The state-run school for boys in Marianna, which has eluded closure for more than a century despite being rocked by chronic scandal, is closing June 30, after 111 years of operation.

The state's Department of Juvenile Justice is informing 185 employees of the school's fate this morning and is preparing to move its remaining 63 young detainees to other facilities as it ceases operations at what was once the largest reform school in the country, 60 miles west of the capital.

The notorious program has gone by different names since it was founded in 1900 — Florida Industrial School, Florida School for Boys, Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and, recently, the North Florida Youth Development Center — but one thing has been consistent: boys have gone in damaged and come out destroyed.

In 2008, five men claimed they were beaten bloody by guards in the 1950s and '60s in a wretched cinder-block building called the White House. As word spread their numbers grew into the hundreds. The school was the subject of a St. Petersburg Times series called "For Their Own Good," about how trauma affected the men detained there since the 1940s. ..... The first scandal at the school came in 1903, just three years after it opened. Investigators found children "in irons, just as common criminals." This was no reform school, their report said. This was a prison for children.





Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article1171919.ece

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At long last, this horrible stain on Florida's history and its children's lives has been terminated.

Now, the many victims still suffering can come closer to peace.



Here is the link to the St. Petersburg Times series For Their Own Good.

[Taverner]

1. Was this the place that tortured the boys, and in some cases killed them?

If so I'd love to see that place burn to the ground

[seafan]

2. This is it. It makes you sick to your stomach.

Search of 32 graves ordered at Florida reform school

December 9, 2008

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has ordered an investigation to determine whether the remains of 32 students were buried decades ago in shallow graves on the grounds of a former reform school for boys

The governor's action came at the urging of four former residents of what was known as the Florida School for Boys. The four alleged that students were abused and killed by guards decades ago at the school in Marianna, Florida, just south of the Georgia border

In a letter Crist asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the graves and determine whether any crimes were committed

"Questions remain unanswered as to the identity of the deceased and the origin of these graves," Crist wrote in his letter to the FDLE.

.....

FDLE investigation of Dozier School for Boys fails to find truth, May 24, 2009


How typical.

.....

Grown men, many of whom have struggled to build a life in the wake of Dozier, told reporters life at the North Florida school could include strap whippings in a low concrete white building that left blood on the walls, and sexual abuse in an underground "rape room." Their accounts included witnessing boys trapped inside running clothes dryers, orders to dig child-size graves and friends who disappeared after being hauled off to the "white house."

But FDLE steered clear of much of that emotional testimony — and did not interview one of the key leaders of the White House Boys group. The agency took the most literal interpretation of Crist's charge to investigate the school's unmarked graves. Using official records and newspaper reports, which the agency conceded were incomplete and deteriorated, investigators said it appears that 31 people are buried there, all 31 appear accounted for in written records and no deaths appear to be suspicious.

But the agency didn't exhume any bodies nor utilize ground-penetrating radar to discern if more could be buried there. And while the agency acknowledges the written records made it impossible to ascertain the location of burial sites, it appears little weight was given to the fact that the official records would have been maintained by the alleged torturers themselves. The result is a report that reads more like a possible defense argument for the state than an investigation that considered alternative outcomes.

FDLE said it will continue to investigate allegations of abuse at the school. Crist should make it clear that the agency has broad discretion to take its investigation wherever it may lead. Individual testimonies make it clear that bad things happened at Dozier to many boys. Unfortunately, the FDLE's first report suggests the state needs to dig harder to uncover the truth.

.....

DUer madfloridian compiled numerous articles on this hellhole here and here.


I agree, this place should be burned to the ground.

[closeupready]

3. I believe this is the school that was part of the crime story on 48 Hours where

the Florida kid had been sent there in order to 'make a man out of him' and he came back, as you say, destroyed, and subsequently arranged a hit on his parents, partially in retaliation for having sent him there. Or am I mistaken?

Secrets, Lies and Alibis

http://www.tv.com/video/10536593/48-hours--secrets-lies-and-alibis

EDIT: I think I am confusing this school with a different one, sorry; the one I'm thinking of is in Samoa. (Or was, as I believe it closed.)

[intaglio]

4. K&R

Places like this are cess pits

[nyy1998]

5. Good news....on a side note, is the city name pronouced like the way I think it does? nt

[orangeapple]

6. pronounced "Mary-Anna"

[gratuitous]

7. Not closing until June 30

Another 34 days of hell on earth. But I'm sure that all those interned (or interred) there were really, really, bad, and nobody should shed too many tears over the victims of this state-run gulag. I wonder if anyone will ever be prosecuted for this?

[kenichol]

8. One of ten juveniles is raped their first year...

We have to find some solutions to the violence, especially sexual violence, in our world...but especially in man-created institutions like detention facilities, jails, prisons.