Hundreds apply for restitution for abuse suffered at Florida reform schools Hundreds of people who say they suffered physical or sexual abuse at two state-run reform schools in Florida are in line to receive tens of thousands of dollars in restitution from the state, after Florida lawmakers formally apologized for the horrors they endured as children more than 50 years ago.
Ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline, the state of Florida received more than 800 applications for restitution from people held at the Dozier school and its sister school in Okeechobee, Fla., attesting to the mental, physical and sexual abuse they endured at the hands of school personnel.
At its peak in the Jim Crow 1960s, 500 boys were housed at what is now known as the Dozier School for Boys, most of them for minor offenses such as petty theft, truancy or running away from home.
In recent years, hundreds of men have come forward to recount brutal beatings, sexual assaults, deaths and disappearances at the notorious school in the panhandle town of Marianna.
Middleton recalled being beaten six times for infractions that included eating blackberries off a fence and mispronouncing a teacher’s name after being sent to Dozier between 1959 and 1961.
