As Florida state Attorney General Pam Bondi's office continues the push to allow archeologists to dig up additional gravesites at the Arthur G. Dozier School For Boys in Marianna, family members whose sons and brothers died at the now-closed campus have been allowing their cheeks to be swabbed for DNA in the hopes of identifying relatives' remains among the graves.
In 2009, the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) several articles about the Dozier School For Boys and the hellacious abuse carried out on the juveniles entrusted to the facility. (See note at the end of this blog.)
In May, the Times reported that University of South Florida researchers would "request a permit...to exhume bodies from more than 50 unmarked graves" at the facility. UFS archeology students helped to uncover the graves.
U.S. Senator Bill Nelson has also been instrumental to bringing the torture of juveniles to light. He is quoted in a March 27 Times article as saying, "...[T]here are a lot of questions we want answers to [regarding Dozier School]."
I hope the answers come. I wish they could bring peace and closure.
Note: When my mother, younger siblings and I moved to Florida in 1971, my brother was an energetic 10-year-old. While he was a handful, constantly grounded for minor infractions (something most of us have had to be while growing up), he didn't act out or get into serious trouble until after a stint at the Dozier School. His main reason for being there? He was simply a hyperactive 10-year-old boy who had recently moved half-way across the country, leaving friends and some extended family back in New York. Would he have had the myriad of problems and anti-social behavior he exhibited after coming home from Dozier, and continuing until his death at age 46 in 2007, had he not gone to Arthur G. Dozier School For Boys? I'd like to think not, as when he came back, his entire demeanor had changed. We'd see occasional glimpses of the sweet Greg periodically, but the demons he encountered while in Marianna were hard to unload. This article from the Tampa Bay Times tells how Greg was not the only one there for minor infractions...or none at all.
