DeSantis OKs $20 million to go to victims at Dozier, Okeechobee boys schools

Gov. Ron DeSantis Friday OK'd a process for hundreds of elderly men known as the White House Boys to apply for reparations for beatings and rapes they endured as children while in state custody.

The governor signed the Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation bill (HB 21), according to state Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, one of the bill's backers.

The measure provides $20 million to distribute among an estimated 400 survivors for "physical, mental, or sexual abuse" that occurred between 1940 and 1975 at the two facilities that have since been closed.

"I want to thank the governor and the Senate and House leadership for (bringing) closure in a small way to these men who've been coming to Tallahassee for decades, telling their stories," Rouson said in a phone interview on Friday.

"Money will never compensate them for the actual harm that they suffered and witnessed, but it'll go a long way towards closure and I'm finally glad that we have a law in place to create the process of them being able to (make a) claim for their damages," added Rouson, who had worked on the bill for years.

As men, White House Boys told their story

Investigators had concluded that nearly 100 boys died at Dozier, located in Marianna, between 1900 and 1973. University of South Florida archaeologists spent four years exhuming remains from 55 unmarked graves in overgrown woods on the abandoned campus.

The Florida Legislature formally apologized to survivors of the abuse seven years ago, but attempts to provide compensation repeatedly failed until this year.

Apology accepted: Dozier School for Boys survivors want state to pay

Ground penetrating radar used: Search for bodies will continue at Dozier School for Boys after initial test turns up nothing

“They kept putting stumbling blocks in front of us, but we didn’t give up,” said retired Army Ranger Capt. Bryan Middleton, just after the measure passed the Senate in March. “They beat our asses but, in the end, we beat them. That’s all. This (is) one of the greatest feelings.”

Middleton was held at Dozier 1959-61. He became a Vietnam War Purple Heart recipient and in retirement teamed up with fellow victim Jerry Cooper and others to form the White House Boys Survivors Organization, named after the building where the abuse occurred. They organized in 2005 to seek recognition and justice for the abuse.

“What they did to us would make you sick to the stomach,” Cooper, who died in 2022, told the USA TODAY Network-Florida in a 2020 interview.

Cooper, a star quarterback, said a Dozier official lashed him with a strap 136 times and threatened him with five years in prison if he did not submit to play football for the Dozier school. The night he died, his spouse Babs told of a nightmare he had.

“He was back in that bed (with that) strap,” yelling the name of the man who had beaten him 61 years before, she said in 2023, when memorial sculptures were dedicated to the victims at the Dozier site.

About 400 eligible for compensation for Dozier abuse

There’s an estimated 400 men eligible for money from the school victim compensation program. Time is now of the essence, however: Former Dozier School and Okeechobee School students must submit a notarized compensation application no later than Dec. 31.

Rouson carried the compensation bill for eight years. For six of those years, now state Sen. Traci Davis, D-Jacksonville, carried it when she was in the House.

Before the start of the 2024 legislative session, Rouson said the psychological injury the men endured as students in state custody is still with them, calling them "the walking dead."

On the Senate floor, he told fellow lawmakers support for the compensation bill gives “credence to the voices of children whose screams of terror went unheard.”

After the compensation bill passed out of the Legislature, Davis said the money does not heal the pain the boys endured or erase the mistakes the state made, "But it does help to be able to get the resources and help you need at 70 or 80 years of age to end your days better than they started.”

More: White House Boys thankful for Dozier memorial but continue to search for justice

Jim Rosica contributed reporting. James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahassee.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: DeSantis signs bill to pay victims of abuse at Florida schools