Death Sentence For Orphans/foster kids
By Vonia Martin
After watching the latest news about this horrible true life nightmare of a place; Dozier reform school for boys, I just want to throw up. How horrific that this place was operational until 2011 yet no one remains to hold accountable for the crimes committed against these children. That doesn't seam reasonable but who am I to question wether or not people get away with what seams to me mass murder. Mass murdering of children, adult supervisers letting if not encouraging children to kill each other or suffer worse then death consequences. What is worse then death; being raped and sodimized when your just a boy. Being raped and sodimized in front of everyone then being made fun of naked and beaten. You are told if you don't kill you will suffer the same fate day after day night after night until you do kill so you may as well just get it over with. So broken are you that you don't even notice until its too late that its your own brother they made you kill and what's worse still, you are made to dig and bury your own brother so you can get out of there alive. Now you have to live with what you've done and the fact you can't tell anyone what they are doing for fear you will be imprisoned for killing your own brother if your family doesn't kill you first. To have to live with this secret the rest of your life must have weighed heavy an many of these young boys. I wonder how many of them ended up taking their own life. What are the statistics on this horrible place or have they buried them in other statistics to hide the real truth which is always in the numbers.
There needs to be some way for these kids, who are now adults, to get some justice! The statute of limitations on violent crime, especially committed against a child, should no longer be! When we deny justice because too much time has gone by we are just as guilty of that crime as the one who committed it. If we need to write or rewrite the laws then so be it! As long as these men live they have to endure the memories of what was done to them. No amount of time is going to erase, from their minds, the abuse they suffered. The scars are still there so why do the ones who put them there get to get away with it? No crime against a child should have a statute of limitations. The state of Florida should be held accountable for allowing these crimes against children to go on and to go on and on and on. 110 years! WTF?
All I keep seeing in my minds eye are these little orphan/foster boys being hunted like animals and killed then put in an unmarked grave. No one noticed that a lot of deaths were occurring because they were no body's children. The perfect victim; orphans/foster kids.
If there is one thing I know in this world and that is people. Hell, I'm one myself. Having grown up in the foster care system I know a little bit about what I'm saying. After being victimized my whole childhood, I know something about survival and how predators turn their victims into the monster for the sake of them getting away with it. When confronted with the choice don't become the monster! If you end up dead its better then living with what you are about to do, trust me. No, I never became the monster but I know how tempting it is just to end the pain. There is no end to it for me because I will never know justice.
I feel those orphan/foster kid's pain as if it were my own. It just hits me at some point in my day I am seeing boys running, running through trees and shrubs over logs and stumps. Running for their lives. The fear was so great that some froze where they stood only to be cut down like an animal. They would leave them there, where they were killed, to be picked apart by the animals, their remains will never be recovered. When they were segregated, the whites from the blacks, they would get the black kids to hunt the white orphan/foster kid and visa versa. The people that ran the place would pit them against each other then throw an orphan/foster kid in the middle and make them kill them if they wanted to get out. The ones that wouldn't participate ended up dead, those are the remains of the ones that are identified because they had family. Orphans/foster kids don't. Dozier's employees used these kids for their own amusement and experiments. The state of Florida used Dozier to rid itself of what it deemed to be high risk children, potentially costing the state a lot more when they enter the prison system. Hundreds of children just went missing from this place, more then we will ever know because their remains will never be found since aligators and cracodiles inhabit the everglades where Dozier is convienantly located.
It's shit like this school that keeps prejudice alive and well. It's shit like this that makes my point about prejudice that it isn't going to go away until we admit our prejudice against orphans/foster kids. Collectively as a whole society subconsciously and systematically set out to rid ourselves of them. God knows we don't really give them a chance.
After hearing about this horrific true life nightmare about this reform school for boys in Florida my first reaction was thank god I'm not a boy and second how in the hell did this go on for over a hundred years? It took a few days for it to sink in, there were orphans there that did nothing wrong but had no where else to go. These are the bodies in the unmarked graves. Not only did no one miss them no one even bothered to know their names, the others buried there that are missed and have names wouldn't kill the orphans so they were killed. That is how they got away with it all these years, by making murderers out of the boys with something to lose. Some how the boy that they killed in 'the White House' wasn't an orphan so they had to turn the guilty ones over to the authorities other wise they may still be in business.
It's one of the tricks the pedophile/predators play on their victims; they turn them into their worse night mare. They get them to commit horrific acts with them in exchange for their freedom that in the end they won't want because now they are the monster. It does insure their silence since now they are one of them. Most victims don't become the monster, no, most kill themselves. For some, it's to escape the nightmare for others is to not become the nightmare. These children were hunted like animals and killed where they were caught.
If you think I don't know what I'm talking about, why have they stopped idintifying the unmarked graves there? Why aren't they trying to identify the boys in the woods? Why is it whenever orphans are mentioned it's like this collective unspoken understanding passes through everyone and the conversation is changed. Well, I will tell you why; because no one cares, so no one knows who they are. They truely are the lost boys.
How do we know that one of those boys isn't the decendent of someone great? An illegitimate child, perhaps? We will never know if we don't dig them up and at least give them a number and put them in the DNA data base. Which can use as much as we can throw at it.
My other question is; do we think this is the only place like this?
Please, don't kill the messenger.
My heart and thanks goes out to the scientist that took it upon herself(themselves) to at least identify some of the unmarked graves. By comparing DNA of some of the surviving family members they identified 14 of the 51 bodies they exhumed. The rest are probably orphans, who's names we will never know. What else do we do with these boys, that will become men, that have nothing to lose? I know, we put them in tents under a bridge some where and hope they stay out of sight. Then when we can't ignore the stench or sight any more we get out the fire hoses and hose them out of the gutter and down the storm drain to the next tent city they will set up only to start the process all over again.
These people probably don't have any identification so going to get aid is difficult because the government wants to track these people and they have had enough of the system. A lot of them are mentally ill and trying to self medicate and it's hard to get drugs in in institution, except the kind that makes them feel like some one other then themselves. Besides people like to feel like they are in control of themselves and part of that is self medicating. Most have come to not trust the system or the people that say they want to help you.
This story won't let go of me. Its like all the orphans buried there want to be found, they want us to know their stories. Orphans have no one to request their bodies be exhumed so I will. Please, please dig up all the bodies at Dozier and give them a proper burial or cremate them but don't leave them in their unmarked graves. I have a feeling these are the kids they hunted and killed where they found them. The other boys were made to do most of the killing of these orphans, that way they where less likely to tell anyone what was happening there.
What went on in the 50s and 60s that children were hunted like animals and murdered by one of their own. What goes on in a persons head to do something like this to children? They say that there are very few survivors of this reform school, on both sides; staff and children. Why? They just closed it in 2011? So why is everyone dead already? Suicide? I wonder.
