VALDOSTA, Ga. — A group of abuse survivors at Florida's reform schools is feeling unheard and seeking answers to why they're not eligible for compensation.
They reached out to WPTV after the debut of "The Okeechobee Boys," an hour-long special report examining the compensation program for survivors of abuse at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Florida School for Boys at Okeechobee during the middle of the 20th century.
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A 2024 law created a $20 million compensation fund for survivors who attended the schools and were abused between 1940 and 1975.
Bennie Wilson attended Dozier in 1976.
WPTV visited Wilson at his home in Valdosta, Georgia, where he spoke about being beaten at the school multiple times per day.
"Whenever they felt like you did enough to deserve that," he said. "Could be two or three times a day."
Like the other survivors who applied for compensation, Wilson obtained a copy of Dozier's ledger with his name on it and filled out an application. He learned he wasn't eligible for compensation when a letter from the Attorney General's office arrived in late February.
"This outcome does not diminish your experience as a person impacted by the events which took place at the Dozier School for Boys and Florida Okeechobee School," the letter read, in part.
Wilson said he felt "cheated (and) mistreated" when he read the letter.
"It made me angry, to be honest about it," Wilson said. "What about 78? What about 79? What about all those other years that went by, and stuff was going on? I can't figure out how they can come to that conclusion."
"What they did to these young men was take their futures away," said state Rep. Michelle Salzman, R-Escambia County, who filed the compensation bill that passed unanimously during the 2024 legislative session.
The bill's resounding success followed 16 years of failed attempts at similar legislation by other lawmakers.
WPTV asked Salzman in January why 1975 was the cutoff.
"That was the way the bill was written in the past, and we didn't get the historical information," Salzman said. "We tried really hard. We reached out to a lot of people to try to find out where those numbers came from."
As reported in "The Okeechobee Boys," there's evidence that the abuse continued at the reform schools beyond 1975.
"I try to forget the names. I try to forget it all," James Walker said while sitting next to his wife in a pair of recliners in their home in rural Fort Meade, Florida.
Walker was sent to the Okeechobee school in 1978. He said he didn't bother applying for compensation because he knew he didn't qualify.
"(There) ain't no forgetting it, and it wasn't right," he said.
Stories like Walker's and Wilson's offer one clue as to why the line may have been drawn at 1975: neither of them experienced or witnessed the bloody beatings in a secluded room with a modified paddle — a disturbing ritual described by the men who were at the schools in the 1960s.
"I didn't see anything," Walker said when asked about the beatings. "But as far as stuff happening, yeah. Because, you know, they showed me ... the clinic and the room off beside the clinic, where they said they take you in there and straighten you out."
"Nobody really would say anything about it," Walker continued. "Because they figured ... 'If I say something about it, I'm gonna be the next one in there.'"
Wilson said Dozier's infamous "White House" was no longer used as the venue for the beatings by the time he was there.
"Those people didn't wait for you to get to no White House," Wilson said. “They whooped your ass anywhere you go — anything you do that was considered wrong."
The men said the physical abuse took a different form.
According to Wilson, employees would whip him and other boys using a long antenna that they unscrewed from walkie-talkies.
Wilson and Walker also allege rampant sexual abuse.
Wilson was never assaulted, he said. But he witnessed children being molested.
Walker said he was raped by a group of his fellow students.
"A light went out, and they shoved me into a room — a little small room, and choked me, started hitting me in the ribs, choked me and took turns with me," he said. "And (there) wasn't nothing I could do about it."
Walker said it happened while an employee was supposed to be keeping watch.
"They knew he was drunk," Walker said. "He should have been on his job, you know, taking care of us and looking over us. And this would have never happened."
According to Walker, the students who raped him were prosecuted. But he's not aware of any internal investigation or consequences for the state employees who failed to protect him.
"I hate that we weren't able to solve or get justice for everybody all at once," said Troy Rafferty, an attorney who wrote the victim compensation bill that Salzman filed.
"I didn't arrive at 1975," Rafferty explained. "We determined, based on discussions with all of ... as many of the victims as we could, going through everything we could, it was determined that that would be the opportunity to get it passed and to help most victims that we had — that we were aware of at the time."
Rafferty acknowledged the evidence showing the abuse did not stop after 1975, but said he also understood from survivors he'd spoken with that the ritualistic beatings had stopped by that year.
However, Rafferty's reasons for keeping the cutoff at 1975 were less tied to what was going on at the schools. Instead, his rationale was more pragmatic.
Rafferty explained that previous versions of the bill were overly complicated, partly because they attempted to distribute compensation based on the length of time spent at the schools and the severity of the abuse experienced. He believes the simplicity of his compensation bill, which divides $20 million evenly among eligible applicants, helped ensure its success.
"There is no such thing as a perfect bill. Would I like to have included no time restrictions? I would have loved for it to have no time restrictions. It's just not a practical reality," Rafferty said. "Because of the age of these victims, and because of some of their health conditions. I mean, these victims were dying, and what we wanted to do was make sure we got some form of compensation — some form of justice for them — as quickly as possible."
Rafferty said there's still hope for the men who attended the reform schools and experienced abuse in more recent years to pursue justice.
"This looked like a pretty hopeless situation... even for the boys that have been going up (to Tallahassee) for, you know, many, many years and fighting for this legislation that we just got passed," Rafferty said. "So there's always hope."
"We're going to keep fighting for every victim out there," he continued. "Once you hear these stories, it can't help but to change you — something inside of you, that just you can't let it stand. It can't stand."
Another provision of the bill issued high school diplomas to the men who qualified for compensation. Some of those men have reported they received their diplomas in the mail.
The monetary compensation is expected to go out in June. According to Rafferty, more than 900 people were deemed eligible, which means they'll each receive just over $20,000.
"I don't know if there won't be (any) closure,” Walker said. "There'll never be closure. It's just something that I'm just gonna have to live with."
