that should hang their heads.

Charlie Crist to his credit did call for the exhumations. Scott and Bondi appear to be riding on his coattails.

on the goings on with this hellhole. Did they actually remove the plaque?

I assume it is still there. I often wonder who wanted it removed and why?

Beyond sickening.

It is fine on Firefox.

There are a lot of people that need to answer for there actions and most importantly there inaction.

And it crosses party lines.

This is NOT a Democratic vs. Republican story.

it suggests many of the issues I advocate for (homelessness, poverty, food stamps, welfare, SSI) will never move out of "park" because they are always identified with the socialist left. I have never seen anyone come out and say "these are issues that cross party lines". Yet several comments here have made that assertion.

Sorry for the derail. Just having a sad moment, because one would think starvation would cross party lines, too, but this is the first time I have ever seen such a comment on DU.

I said yesterday every single staffer belongs in jail. I'll add to that list every State employee/official/elected representative who was any part of the responsibility chain for this (including all the Governors who presided over it).
Their sentences to be commensurate with the total sentences served by the boys affected. (Hint, they are still serving those sentences!!!)

graves?

How could Florida let this drag out so long? It's shameful.

different boys, with all the same descriptions. Yet Florida says there was no evidence.

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/for-their-own-good-a-st-petersburg-times-special-report-on-child-abuse-at/992939

...Over his shoulder, he could see that the man only had one arm.

... He remembered how the one-armed man would swing from down low, and how the strap would hit the ceiling, and how you could time the pain.

...Most of the men recalled being beaten by two staffers: R.W. Hatton and the one-armed man, Troy Tidwell. At least three men described being sexually abused by other guards in an underground room they called the rape room

....When Troy Warren heard of the cemetery, his mind went back to his stay at the school. He says he and another boy were ordered to dig three holes behind the chow hall. They were to dig at night. Tidwell and another guard told them to make the holes 4 feet deep, and as long as a boy.


....After I saw these straps — long ones, thick ones, short ones — they reminded me of razor straps on the side of barber chairs. . . . I knew something horrible was going to happen to me. I was taken into a room and placed on a small bed about 3 ft wide, maybe 5 or 6 feet long. The bed was near the floor and had a filthy mattress on it. I was told to hold on to the end of the bed and not move or cry out. And then I remember the sound of something cutting the air, followed by a pain I can't describe. The most horrible pain a human being can imagine. It hurt so terribly bad. I would try and move to get up from the bed. God, Please make them stop beating me. But they beat me and beat me so bad.
He wrote of being beaten by the one-armed man.
I can't write anymore about this. God make them stop.


Just before Ed slipped away, he scribbled a note for his wife and children, a last will and testament on notebook paper. He had two dying wishes.
The first was to transfer the Elvis songs he had recorded from cassette to compact disc. The other was to tell people how he had been abused at the Florida School for boys.

Yet they were still in denial. I guess they are afraid of lawsuits. I imagine they should be.

FBI: Frank Baker The Attorney Hired By Jackson County to Stop the Dig for Bodies At Dozier School for Boys Marianna Fl Indicted By DOJ on Bank Fraud Charges.

http://cheatersflorida.wordpress.com/category/dozier-school-for-boys-marianna-fl/

Sid Riley Publisher of Jackson County Times Said Bad Publicity From Bodies Dug Up at Dozier School Will Hamper Tourism in Marianna

Before any else was thinking about it.

an embarrassment of cruel rubes in service of the very wealthy.

It is comforting to think this is exceptional. But I don't think it is realistic to think so.

-- Mal

Would be unusual for it to be an isolated incident.

From Tidwell's deposition. It sounds so weird.

them?

" hit kids eight to 10 times per infraction with a thick leather strap, but never hard enough to harm them."

florida-boys-school.jpg

This week, the remains of fifty-five bodies were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Florida School for Boys, in the panhandle town of Marianna. The reformatory school, which was operated by the state of Florida, and which closed in 2011, was notorious for its mistreatment of its students. In 1968, Florida’s governor at the time, Claude Kirk, said of the school, “Somebody should have blown the whistle a long time ago.” There have long been allegations of beatings, torture, and sexual abuse there; it now appears that some students were killed. The total number of bodies buried at the school has not been determined, but the forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle, the leader of the exhumation effort, which has been under way since September 2013, has said that it may exceed a hundred.

Some of the children died natural deaths, but the sheer number of bodies suggests that there may have been many killings, a possibility buttressed by eyewitness accounts. Yet Florida’s prosecutors have yet to file a single criminal charge, or even open a criminal investigation. To pass over crimes of this magnitude without investigation seems the very definition of injustice.

There is no statute of limitations for murder and other crimes causing death, which means that there is no legal bar to bringing charges. In Florida, all capital cases have long had no statute of limitations, and when these crimes were allegedly committed forcible rape was punishable by death. But there are challenges to prosecuting old crimes: given how much time has passed, it may be difficult to determine who was responsible for the killings, and many of the suspects, meanwhile, have already died, including the school’s longtime superintendent, Lenox Williams, who died in 2010. Some are still alive, including Troy Tidwell, an instructor at the school, who was accused of abuse in a class-action lawsuit filed by more than two hundred former students in 2009. (Tidwell denies the accusations, and the case was dismissed after a judge ruled that the statute of limitations on the charges had run out.)

In spite of these difficulties, a prosecutor still has many options in a case like this one. Scenes of mass death, like those caused by fires at night clubs in which the exits are blocked, are often prosecuted as cases of involuntary manslaughter. If the wantonly negligent operation of the school led to many deaths, the Florida School of Boys was like a deadly fire in slow motion. In addition, some of the school’s surviving employees and managers could potentially be prosecuted for felony murder—Florida law includes special provisions for deaths that occur during the abuse of minors—or, alternatively, members of the staff could be prosecuted as members of a conspiracy. There may also be fresher claims of obstruction of justice. A law student could probably find more options, let alone a dedicated prosecutor.

Is still legal in Florida schools and many other states. Should be stopped.