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Florida Graves Reveal Reform School Horrors, Recall Witnesses and Families
ABC ^ | Sept. 06, 2013 | Susan Donaldson James

Posted on 09/06/2013 1:41:34 PM PDT by BeadCounter

Robert Straley was 13 when he entered the Florida School for Boys in the early 1960s for running away from home. The 1,400-acre grounds in the city of Marianna looked like heaven compared to his troubled home, he said, but on his first day, he was beaten bloody 35 times with a three-foot leather whip with a sheet metal insert.

"These were not spankings -- they were floggings," said Straley, 66 and now living in Clearwater, Fla.

"It looked like a college campus, not a reform school," he said. "There were no fences, the cottages were surrounded by trimmed hedges and tall pines and oaks. There was a swimming pool and a chapel. It looked nice, but it was a beautiful hell."

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: florida; prisons; reformschools
Interesting article, change of pace. Seems I heard a number of your oldtime Reform Schools were rough. As they should be but perhaps not as bad as what this young man suffered for merely running away.
1 posted on 09/06/2013 1:41:35 PM PDT by BeadCounter
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To: BeadCounter

Tomkinson!


2 posted on 09/06/2013 1:44:18 PM PDT by Hardraade (http://junipersec.wordpress.com (Obama: the bearded lady of the Muslim Brotherhood))
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To: BeadCounter

3 posted on 09/06/2013 1:53:23 PM PDT by Arthurio
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To: BeadCounter

The US seems to be not so far removed from the horrors in Syria.


4 posted on 09/06/2013 2:08:50 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the people. T Jefferson)
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To: BeadCounter

Sex abuse and beatings at home used to often be followed by potentially fatal sexual abuse and beatings after running away.


5 posted on 09/06/2013 2:18:51 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: BeadCounter
What! Children harmed! do not tell obama or he will want to drop in some tomahawk missiles on Florida. Not so as to cause a change in the governorship but just to let him and the world know that America will not tollerate that kind of behavior.

Obama did not set this red over and over again but the world did.

6 posted on 09/06/2013 2:22:06 PM PDT by dirtymac (1)
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To: BeadCounter

I guess I should have taken it more seriously when my mom threatened to send me to reform school.


7 posted on 09/06/2013 2:30:23 PM PDT by keat
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To: BeadCounter
This *is* disturbing. The government-run children’s penal colony was not closed until 2011. Just wow.
8 posted on 09/06/2013 2:32:08 PM PDT by twister881
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To: Blood of Tyrants

“The US seems to be not so far removed from the horrors in Syria.”

Careful what you say - Obama might just order an air strike on Florida...


9 posted on 09/06/2013 2:57:10 PM PDT by Jack Hammer (American)
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To: BeadCounter

When I was in grade school in the ‘60s in Florida, my teacher would warn the boys that they would wind up in Marianna. Little did we know what that would have meant. She also said that we were driving her to Chattahoochee (State Mental Hospital).


10 posted on 09/06/2013 3:49:43 PM PDT by Montanabound
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To: Hardraade

wilkinson school for boys


11 posted on 09/06/2013 5:21:17 PM PDT by ChiefJayStrongbow
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