TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A bill sitting on Governor Ron DeSantis's desk could soon bring relief to survivors of the state-run Arthur G Dozier School for Boys. State lawmakers passed the $20 million package, bringing survivors one step closer to ending their decades-long fight.
Last month, we introduced you to Charlie Fudge when the bill was first gaining traction to pass. Now 76, he was sent to the Dozier School when he was 12.
“It's just total excitement for all of us guys,” says Fudge, who lives in Homosassa. “We all became a family. Listening to each other's stories. And reliving the past.”
Monday, lawmakers in Tallahassee approved a bill to set up a $20 million fund to compensate survivors of Dozier and another reform school in Okeechobee. In addition to the abuse, torture and molestation, nearly 100 boys died between 1900 and 1973 at Dozier.
For the past dozen years, survivors have pressed the state and lawmakers for justice. There have been formal apologies and acknowledgments of the abuse from Florida governors Rick Scott and Charlie Crist, but until now, bills to compensate survivors languished in the legislature.
Eddie Horne saw 10 Tampa Bay's story with Fudge and reached out to say he spent a year at Dozier with his two brothers. At 14, he was brutally beaten inside its infamous "white house."
"You can't look at ‘em while they are hitting you,” Horne remembers. “I don't know how many times they hit me. The pain was so excruciating you couldn't cry it was just that hard."
Horne thinks the dollar amount for the fund should be higher considering the scope and severity of the abuse. While many have since died, for Horne and Fudge, that 20 million can't come soon enough.
If signed by the governor, the money will be divided among men who apply before the end of the year. It would apply to survivors between 1940 and 1975. The men must provide proof they attended the school and a sworn statement they were abused.