Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in the news today

The Florida School for Boys, also known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys (AGDS), was a reform school operated by the state of Florida in the panhandle town of Marianna from January 1, 1900, to June 30, 2011. For a time, it was the largest juvenile reform institution in the United States. A second campus was opened in the town of Okeechobee in 1955. Throughout its 111-year history, the school gained a reputation for abuse, beatings, rapes, torture, and even murder of students by staff. Despite periodic investigations, changes of leadership, and promises to improve, the allegations of cruelty and abuse continued. Many of the allegations were confirmed by separate investigations by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2010 and the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in 2011. State authorities closed the school permanently in June 2011.


Florida's Dozier School For Boys: A True Horror Story : NPR

Over the past decade, hundreds of men have come forward to tell gruesome stories of abuse and terrible beatings they suffered at Florida's Dozier School for Boys, a notorious, state-run institution that closed last year after more than a century.

Known as the "White House Boys," these 300-some men were sent as boys to the reform school in the small panhandle town of Mariana in the 1950s and 1960s. They have joined together over the years to tell their stories of the violence administered in a small building on the school's grounds they knew as the White House.

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162941770/floridas-dozier-school-for-boys-a-true-horror-story

After having experienced the most horrible two years of my life at a Florida reform school in 1959-1960; I have worked for more than twenty years to expose the horrors that took place at the Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna (later known as the Arthur Dozier School). The beatings, the molestations, the rapes, the nightly disappearances and even the murder of young boys are memories that have haunted me for many years. I yelled and screamed for years yet no one would believe me. Now the bodies of young boys are surfacing and the stories are coming to light and now I know for sure that it was not just a child-hood bad dream.

When boys and or girls are taken away by the state, for whatever reason, and placed in a state care facility they may not have to love them but do have a responsibility to care for and protect those children. At the former Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna (Dozier School) many boys’ lives were destroyed as were many of the lives of their families and children in later years. Had any parent treated their children in the manner the state treated us they would have been sent to prison for years. The state took on that responsibility not by choice but by court order and to have allowed boys to be beaten bloody, molested, raped and killed is something they should be held responsible and accountable for just as would have our own parents.

Roger Dean Kiser, author/child advocate

Read more here http://www.thewhitehouseboys.com/

TO GO THE MOST RECENT NEWS - CLICK HERE http://www.officialwhitehouseboys.org/

Todays news I saw, Florida will exhume remains of 100 children who died at Dozier School for Boys
The notorious reform school was closed in 2011 following decades of reports that boys had been tortured.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/florida-exhume-graves-dozier-school-boys-article-1.1419154


Why am I putting this in the anti psych forum ? It shows if we keep at it we can hold psychiatry accountable for its human rights violations if we keep at it.

For example the drugging of foster children , Florida is infamous for this !

New Study Shows U.S. Government Fails to Oversee Treatment of Foster Children With Mind-Altering Drugs ,

BC News was given exclusive access to the GAO report, which capped off a nationwide yearlong investigation by ABC News on the overuse of the most powerful mind-altering drugs on many of the country's nearly 425,000 foster children.

One young child interviewed by ABC News described the effect of the antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs he was taking: "They made me feel like I had a thousand bricks on my head." Another child said, "Some of the medications were for ADHD but I'm not ADHD, I'm just naughty." A teen in foster care on multiple psychiatric drugs told ABC News she felt like a "guinea pig."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/study-shows-foster-children-high-rates-prescription-psychiatric/story?id=15058380

Drugging Foster Children We’ve known for a long time that children are being overly medicated in foster care. State lawmakers seem very resistant to making laws to prevent this, probably because of pressure from the pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile thousands of children are mentally injured by psychotropic drugs after being placed in “chemical restraints” to control and subdue them. Recently – just last April – a drugged seven-year-old foster child in Florida took his own life, and once again the spotlight is on this issue. Florida legislators, feeling the heat, are making the motions to do something about this.


NOW THEY USE CHEMICAL BEATINGS ON CHILDREN !


These psychiatric nightmares are the new form of child torture called help or what ever

But because they are called "treatment", not punishment, they seem to be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice...

Here is just one example:

Universal Health Services: Profits Over Patients

TIMELINE OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH SERVICES’ DEATHS, CRIMES, VIOLATIONS, ETC.

http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Universal_Health_Services_Profits_Over_Patients.html

We have to keep exposing this kind stuff.

Just wrote a whole msg and my internet disconnected! so annoying!
I was saying that this is outrageous.
I was watching dr phil today and there was a girl and her family on and the girl was labeled 'unruly' , so to cut a long story (that I just wrote and lost) short, in the end they locked the girl up and sent her off to teenage bootcamp.
Not once did the parents and the girl (nor did dr phil adcovate) that they should sit down and discuss the problems and how they could be solved, for eg by asking the girl 'what can we do as parents to make it easier for you? How can we help and support you when your feeling angry? what do YOU want to see changed with us? how can we as parents change to better meet your needs?
SO many better ways to deal with 'unruly' teenagers rather than sending them off to some authoritarian bootcamp which is likely to truamatise her even further and is using fear and authority to control the teenagers back into being 'compliant'.
Its not unusual for teenagers to experiment with drugs. You don't lock them up for this u try to help in a compassionate caring way. So many alternatives rather than this 'punishment'.
So getting back to the original story by copy cat, I cant believe this place has existed for so long and only recently been shut down, I hear there are allot of places coming up like this one and they need to be alternatives to this fear mongering practices, and alternatives for kids/teenagers to talk about how life could be better for them, how they could control their anger in a safe place and eventually seeing the side of the parents (if they r honest and cooperative) they should help out each other. you don't just ship your kid off to places like this!

Devilock wrote:Just wrote a whole msg and my internet disconnected! so annoying!

I just did the same thing, pressed post without copying first ! Can't do it again mentally tired.

Here is some paste on the subject:

Warning Signs of a Potentially Abusive Behavioral Treatment Center

http://www.heal-online.org/warn.htm#signs


BOOT CAMP FOR KIDS: Torturing Teens for Fun and Profit
Cruelty, sadism, injury & death in locked residential facilities for troubled youth
To read the most-recently added items on this Web site, including news clips, editorials, articles, reports, comments, excerpts, letters, etc.,

Right here http://www.nospank.net/boot.htm

Youth trainer at a juvenile facility: "If I can't make a kid puke or piss in his pants on his first day, I'm not doing my job."

Most reform schools are a joke if anything, criminals go in violent sociopaths come out. They are are empty promises, parents and judges hope they improve kids, the schools hope they keep getting paid. The schools themselves have the theory that the kids are unchangeable, so might as well profit. A good deal of them have ties to psychiatric hospitals and institutions and a portion of them a funded by them. As what goes on in the schools its nothing but a jungle. Staff over the years yoyo from being to passive to being to over controlling. Students control the schools everywhere, all they do is pick on on another, gang up one one another and manage to learn new and never heard of methods in pulling off crimes. Basically junior prison combined with "schooling".

Devilock wrote:Just wrote a whole msg and my internet disconnected! so annoying!
I was saying that this is outrageous.
I was watching dr phil today and there was a girl and her family on and the girl was labeled 'unruly' , so to cut a long story (that I just wrote and lost) short, in the end they locked the girl up and sent her off to teenage bootcamp.
Not once did the parents and the girl (nor did dr phil adcovate) that they should sit down and discuss the problems and how they could be solved, for eg by asking the girl 'what can we do as parents to make it easier for you? How can we help and support you when your feeling angry? what do YOU want to see changed with us? how can we as parents change to better meet your needs?
SO many better ways to deal with 'unruly' teenagers rather than sending them off to some authoritarian bootcamp which is likely to truamatise her even further and is using fear and authority to control the teenagers back into being 'compliant'.
Its not unusual for teenagers to experiment with drugs. You don't lock them up for this u try to help in a compassionate caring way. So many alternatives rather than this 'punishment'.
So getting back to the original story by copy cat, I cant believe this place has existed for so long and only recently been shut down, I hear there are allot of places coming up like this one and they need to be alternatives to this fear mongering practices, and alternatives for kids/teenagers to talk about how life could be better for them, how they could control their anger in a safe place and eventually seeing the side of the parents (if they r honest and cooperative) they should help out each other. you don't just ship your kid off to places like this!

Over the years hundreds of "respected" doctors/psychologists/psychiatrists, many from top universities of influence have tried to understand defiant, criminal, and sociopathic behavior. Many have have furthered by coming up with programs to correct or manage the people. Some have further said "They cant be helped". "Its genetic". The program part has been implemented many many times in many different institutions. Most with disastrous results.

The theories behind these programs is that these kids are "spoiled brats" or have never been taught how to control their impulses ie, complete lack of discipline. The same theory was thought to (and often still is) also hold true for criminals. By punishing bad behavior, they will gravitate toward good behavior. Latter psychologists implemented rewards on top of the punishments to help people gravitate toward the good behavior more easily. But in reality, the desired outcome by these "brilliant" discoveries in psychology was never seen in most people. In fact most just became more defiant or impulsive often feeling betrayed by society and acting out. Many left the programs feeling like something was stolen from them or that everything was unfair or that favoritism existed and always choose others. Many psychologists believed that these behaviors came from an "inflated sense of self worth", but in the truth it the opposite is true. Along with a major history of childhood trauma often is common. And moderate to severe cases (even a good chunk of mild ones) are far the result from a lack of discipline, often parents, teachers, and the rest have given their best attempts at discipline. The problem with many is they are traumatized from a wide variety of reasons. (Be it divorce, poverty, hostile environments, distant parents, divorce, bullying ect) And there are many types that people cant grasp or understand. More trauma doesn't mean these people will get better, it just makes them monsters. And monstrous behavior spreads like a virus often because these people were so immersed in an environment were they were controlled that it latter becomes a learned behavior to control others often without even thinking about it. They don't learn the "good behaviors" because they themselves don't receive it from trusted figures. It really is institutionalized bullying when one looks at the core of the concept.

All good programs work on rehabilitation and community building behavior, not harsh discipline and meaningless rewards. That and the fact personal problems are heard and addressed when they can, not just ignored or considered just a symptom of the illness.

I agree with the above post. All good points!