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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMan who flogged the boys at Dozier School, FL says it was "state sanctioned"
Troy Tidwell admits using leather strap but says no law broken.TROY TIDWELL the 'One Armed Man' of Marianna leaves after giving a deposition on Thursday. Tidwell is accused by hundreds of men of physically abusing them as children when they were sentenced to the Florida School for Boys in the 1950s and 60s.
EDMUND D. FOUNTAIN | ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
MARIANNA | They say Troy Tidwell drew blood. They say he dragged the boys to a tiny building on the campus of the Florida School for Boys in Marianna, made them bite a pillow and hit them so hard with a leather strap that they feel it 50 years later.
.....He called it 'spanking,' according to those at his deposition here Thursday. He said it was state-sanctioned discipline, punishment for kids who tried to run away or got caught smoking. He said he hit kids eight to 10 times per infraction with a thick leather strap, but never hard enough to harm them.
State-sanctioned? I can believe that. Look at how many Florida governors, Democratic and Republican alike, ignored the complaints and refused to investigate.....for a century.
More about Tidwell's words on the discipline during his deposition in 2009.
But Tidwell said all discipline was state-approved protocol. They called it Final Disciplinary Action.
'The ultimate issue is: How do you define abuse?' said Masterson. 'He denied that he harmed anybody, but when you have 200 people telling the same story '
The group which calls themselves The White House Boys deserves so much credit for bringing this to light.
Here is their website.
The White House Boys Survivors Corp.
They got enough notice to have a ceremony held and the infamous White House, where the floggings occurred, was closed and sealed shut. A plaque was put up there.
ON EDIT: I found this sickening statement at their website way down the page.
[blockquotegi]Flogging was abolished by Governor
Hardee in 1922 as too brutal a
punishment for hardened convicts. It
would continue on at The Florida School
For Boys until 1968. This is the worst
case of institutional child abuse in the
United States.
Be sure to watch the video at their website. It opens up right away in Firefox, but I could not view it in IE9. Nothing happened. It's an uncomfortable view, but it happened here.
Sealing the building
They witnessed the sealing of the infamous building called The White House, with a plaque that said:
In memory of the children who passed these doors, we acknowledge their tribulations and offer our hope that they have found some measure of peace.
May this building stand as a reminder of the need to remain vigilant in protecting our children as we help them seek a brighter future."
I have never been angrier than when I read that a Democratic state senator before a crowd agreed to have the plaque taken down.
A Florida Democratic state Senator, Al Lawson, denied he had ever heard any complaints.
To his credit he later expressed concern. But here is the worst part. While he was later speaking at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in Marianna, someone in the audience asked that the plaque that was put up to seal the White House be taken down.
He agreed to try to get it taken down. That is to his shame.
In a gathering of articles about the topic it was found how some of the guards actually thought about
Hell's Acres closed after 100 years
Who was hired to work there?
In the past two years, one guard came to work reeking of alcohol and was referred to counseling. Another came in high on cocaine and marijuana. And another admitted to being a habitual drug abuser after he came to work high and was sent to the emergency room.
In 2005, the school hired James Edge. Three years before, the 265-pound man with a snake tattoo on his leg was arrested for domestic battery and violating a protective order. According to his wife's sworn complaint, Edge wrenched her arm behind her back, fracturing her shoulder.
Edge is the same officer involved in the May 2008 scuffle in which a boy's ear was split open. The following month, records show, he bloodied a boy's nose and slammed him against a fence, cutting his thumbs. Then Edge was fired. Officials now say they are investigating his hiring.
Guard Arthur Edmon Jr. posted photos on his MySpace page in which he makes obscene gestures and poses on a cash-covered table (caption: "f--- u haters" . He also posted a homemade rap video of friends dunking a basketball and pointing a gun at the camera.
Guard Frank Bernaldo has a MySpace page that contains sexual images and language and the following biographical nugget: "I like to go hunting but not for animals, only for people who piss me off."
The White House Boys should take some satisfaction in seeing what USF is now doing. Nothing will ever compensate them for what they went through in a school with "state-sanctioned" discipline.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Lochloosa
(16,067 posts)that should hang their heads.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Charlie Crist to his credit did call for the exhumations. Scott and Bondi appear to be riding on his coattails.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)on the goings on with this hellhole. Did they actually remove the plaque?
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)I assume it is still there. I often wonder who wanted it removed and why?
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)Beyond sickening.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)It is fine on Firefox.
Lochloosa
(16,067 posts)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.
daredtowork
(3,732 posts)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.
dickthegrouch
(3,183 posts)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!!!)
jwirr
(39,215 posts)graves?
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)How could Florida let this drag out so long? It's shameful.
riverwalker
(8,694 posts)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.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Yet they were still in denial. I guess they are afraid of lawsuits. I imagine they should be.
riverwalker
(8,694 posts)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/
riverwalker
(8,694 posts)Sid Riley Publisher of Jackson County Times Said Bad Publicity From Bodies Dug Up at Dozier School Will Hamper Tourism in Marianna
Riley expressed concern about how removing of bodies will impact the local economy and that survivors will try to use what may be found to seek "reparations" from the state. "The bad publicity which will ensue during the year or more of time which will be involved will seriously hamper our local tourism development programs, as well as economic development efforts for our county," Riley wrote. "Please do not allow them to engage in this greed motivated waste of money."
Again, I say without the determination of Dr. Erin Kimmerle at USF, this would all be swept under the rug for another 50 years or forever.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Before any else was thinking about it.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)an embarrassment of cruel rubes in service of the very wealthy.
malthaussen
(17,215 posts)It is comforting to think this is exceptional. But I don't think it is realistic to think so.
-- Mal
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Would be unusual for it to be an isolated incident.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)From Tidwell's deposition. It sounds so weird.
uppityperson
(115,678 posts)them?
" hit kids eight to 10 times per infraction with a thick leather strap, but never hard enough to harm them."
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)
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, Floridas 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 Floridas 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 schools 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 schools surviving employees and managers could potentially be prosecuted for felony murderFlorida law includes special provisions for deaths that occur during the abuse of minorsor, 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.
d_r
(6,907 posts)Is still legal in Florida schools and many other states. Should be stopped.