Charlie Crist ordered a state investigation into the allegations of abuse, torture and deaths alleged at the school.
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Several years ago, they began telling their stories in newspaper accounts and TV reports.įlorida's former Gov. There are dozens of White House Boys with similar tales of beatings they received at the school in the 1950s and '60s. But that wasn't the place to find it, I'll tell you that right now.Īs incredible as it may sound, Cooper's story is not uncommon. We might have needed help in some respect. one day and took him to the White House where he says they threw him on a bed, tied his feet and began beating him with a leather strap. School staff got him out of bed at 2 a.m. Over the years, a succession of reports and commissions called for reforms, but little changed.Ĭooper says he did his best to stay out of trouble, but after several weeks, he learned about the beatings firsthand. Throughout its history, the school was known for its harsh conditions and brutal treatment. It opened in 1900 as the Florida State Reform School on 1,400 acres west of Tallahassee. The Dozier School for Boys has been known by several names.
But that wasn't the place to find it, I'll tell you that right now." "But we had many, many boys who was there for smoking in school, that were incorrigible. They weren't there for any crime whatsoever," Cooper says. "A lot of orphans were there that did not have places at times and they were sent to Marianna. He witnessed and received brutal beatings by the administration there. Jerry Cooper, now 67, was 16 years old in 1961 when he was sent to what at the time was called the Florida School for Boys. He'd been running away from home and hitchhiking when he was picked up by an AWOL Marine driving a stolen car.
He was sent to what at the time was called the Florida School for Boys in 1961. These were beatings, brutal beatings."Ĭooper is 67 now. "You didn't know when it was coming," says Jerry Cooper, who was sent to the school when he was 16. Some 81 boys are known to have died there, but where their remains are buried is a mystery that researchers are now trying to solve. They have joined together over the years to tell their stories of the violence administered in a small building on the school's grounds they knew as the White House.
Known as the "White House Boys," these 300-some men were sent as boys to the reform school in the small panhandle town of Mariana in the 1950s and 1960s. Over the past decade, hundreds of men have come forward to tell gruesome stories of abuse and terrible beatings they suffered at Florida's Dozier School for Boys, a notorious, state-run institution that closed last year after more than a century. Several men who suffered abuse and severe beatings believe the crosses mark the graves of boys who were killed at the school, victims of punishments that went too far. Dick Colon, one of the White House Boys, walks through grave sites near the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla.