Free Republic

The children in unmarked graves at a notorious Florida reform school will finally be allowed to tell their stories. After years of pressure from families, Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet voted to allow researchers to exhume the human remains of dozens of children who died while attending the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Researchers from the University of South Florida have identified more than 100 unmarked grave sites on the property of the state-owned school, which was closed in 2011 after decades of allegations that it routinely tortured boys who were sent there, WFLA News reported....

TALLAHASSEE (Reuters) - Excavations at a makeshift graveyard near a now-closed reform school in the Florida Panhandle have yielded remains of 55 bodies, almost twice the number official records say are there, the University of South Florida announced on Tuesday. "This is precisely why excavation was necessary," said USF professor Erin Kimmerle, head of the research project. "The only way to truly establish the facts about the deaths and burials at the school is to follow scientific processes." On a hillside in the rolling, tall-pine forests near the Alabama-Georgia border, a team of more than 50 searchers from nine agencies...

This weekend, Florida will begin digging into its tragic past as anthropologists start unearthing what they believe are the remains of dozens of children buried on the grounds of a former reform school. The exhumations at the Dozier School for Boys —which closed in 2011 —are the culmination of years of controversy surrounding the reform school and a mythology that has taken on a life of its own. Rightly or wrongly, the Florida Panhandle town of Marianna —just west of Tallahassee —has become synonymous with the school and its dark past. Some of those who were once sent to Dozier...