Graves Probed At Brutal Fla. Reform School

[RamboLiberal]

Source: CBS News/AP

A former inmate at a Florida reform school known for severe beatings decades ago says he remembers walking into a laundry room, peering through a foggy dryer window and seeing a boy tumbling inside. Afraid of retribution, Dick Colon walked away.

But Colon now wonders whether the boy he saw could be buried near the school. Florida law enforcement said Tuesday they have started an investigation into the enduring mystery: Who lies beneath the more than 30 white metal crosses - bearing no names or dates or other details - at a makeshift cemetery near the grounds of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, where youngsters were routinely beaten and abused in the 1950s and '60s.

"I think about it very often because I feel guilty. I felt as though I could have walked over there and opened the door and tried to give him some help, but then what the hell was going to happen to me if I did?" said Colon, now 65 and living in Baltimore. "That particular kid was never seen again."

Gov. Charlie Crist ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate at the urging of Colon and other men who committed crimes as boys and were sent to the school. The agency was tapped to find out what was in the graves, identify any remains and determine whether any crimes occurred.

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Colon is part of a group of men who call themselves "The White House Boys Survivors" because they suffered abuse in a small, white building known as the White House. It contained two rooms where guards would beat children, one for black inmates; one for whites.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/10/national/main4659362.shtml?tag=topHome;topStories

[MichaelHarris]

1. wonder if

anyone named Cheney was on staff there?

[bertman]

2. "Were the paddlings severe?" Answer: "yes, they were." No shit. metal and leather straps

beating on you until you are bleeding and pass out. Now that's severe.

There are some scary monsters among us.