Dozier Reform School

State lawmakers approved a program to provide reparations for brutality suffered by kids at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna and the Okeechobee School in south Florida.

Nearly two dozen men questioned Attorney General Ashley Moody’s staff about a program that will compensate them for brutality they endured at two notorious reform schools.

Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges last week refused to vacate Loran Cole’s death sentence. He murdered an FSU student 30 years ago in the Ocala National Forest.

Loran Cole, 57, was sentenced to death in the February of 1994 murder of John Edwards in the Ocala National Forest. Cole was 17 when he was sent to Dozier in 1984.

The program will compensate those who were at Dozier or the Okeechobee reform school between 1940 and 1975 and who were subjected to abuse by school personnel.

Men who suffered abuse decades ago at two former state reform schools have been coming to the Florida Capitol for 16 years seeking restitution. They may finally succeed this year.

The Senate is expected to pass the bill in the coming days. It would set up a process for victims who were abused by school personnel decades ago to apply for compensation.

A bipartisan bill going through the legislature would establish the Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program.

The ceremony came more than five years after state lawmakers issued an apology to the victims and to the families of dozens of the boys who died of abuse.

A bill to compensate victims of the Dozier and Okeechobee reform schools passed its first Senate committee meeting.