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Florida School for Boys
Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_School_for_Boys
Publisher: Wikipedia
Resource Type: Article
The Florida School for Boys, also known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys (AGDS), was a reform school operated by the state of Florida in the panhandle town of Marianna from January 1, 1900, to June 30, 2011.
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For a time, it was the largest juvenile reform institution in the United States.A second campus was opened in the town of Okeechobee in 1955. Throughout its 111-year history, the school gained a reputation for abuse, beatings, rapes, torture, and even murder of students by staff. Despite periodic investigations, changes of leadership, and promises to improve, the allegations of cruelty and abuse continued. Many of the allegations were confirmed by separate investigations by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2010 and the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in 2011. State authorities closed the school permanently in June 2011. At the time of its closure it was a part of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
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Following revelations from former inmates who had been incarcerated at the school in the 1950s and 1960s, who described themselves as "The White House Boys," the school was the subject of an extensive special report, For Their Own Good, published by the St. Petersburg Times in 2009. Allegations focusing on the 1960s included claims that one room was used for whipping white boys and another for black boys. The whippings were carried out with a 3-foot-long belt made of leather and metal and were thorough enough that the recipients' underwear became embedded in their skin. One inmate said that the punishments were severe but justified; another claimed that he had seen a boy trapped in a running laundry dryer at the school and suspected the boy was killed.
One former inmate claimed that he was punished in the white house eleven times, receiving a total of over 250 lashes. Others alleged that they were whipped until they lost consciousness and that the punishments were made harsher for boys that cried. Some former inmates also claimed that there was a "rape room" at the school where they were sexually abused. The complainants said that some of the victims were as young as nine years old.
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