ORLANDO, Fla. – After 16 years of advocacy work, Paul Elgin and his group, the White House Boys, witnessed their efforts come to fruition.
Elgin and other members of the group attended the notorious Dozier School for Boys. Elgin was there from October 1964 to October 1965.
Last week, Elgin went to Tallahassee to watch Gov. Ron DeSantis sign House Bill 21 into law.
The bill, scheduled to take effect July 1, establishes the Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program.
The legislation will appropriate $20 million from the state’s general revenue fund to compensate living persons who attended the Dozier or Okeechobee reform schools between 1940 and 1975.
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Also, it allows the Commissioner of Education authority to award survivors standard high school diplomas.
“I didn’t commit a crime. I ran away from home and wouldn’t listen to my stepfather,” Elgin said.
That’s why his family made the decision to send him to the school, but Elgin emphasized if they knew what was happening on that campus, they would have never done that.
Elgin said he does not blame his family.
When riding up to the school, Elgin said he was in awe of how it looked, likening it to a country club.
His optimism quickly changed after witnessing and experiencing physical abuse.
He explained why the group he is in currently is called “White House Boys.”
“The White House, let me explain, it’s a little white building where they beat the boys,” Elgin said.
That’s where staff at the school brought Elgin after he made a mistake while working in the kitchen.
“I gave one of my friends syrup for their pancakes, I didn’t know it was staff syrup,” Elgin said. “So they took me down for giving him syrup.”
Elgin and a boy waited in the White House when they heard another boy in the next room scream.
“We lost it, I looked at him and I said I’m not going in there,” Elgin said.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have a choice.
“It was my turn next and they told me I want you to grab them rails the bed rails bit that pillow that nasty pillow and if you let go, we’re going to start back at one,” Elgin recounted. “He beat me so bad, my buttocks looked like hamburger meat and it was so numb, I thought he was done, then he decided to go for my legs.”
Elgin said he was hit more than 35 times, with a leather strap that had metal in it.
“I couldn’t get up, I had to get help to get off the bed,” Elgin said.
That wasn’t his only time being beaten. Elgin said they took him to the White House a second time after he was caught smoking.
This is something Elgin and his family have been living with for decades.
News 6 reporter Treasure Roberts asked if he contacted his parents after that happened.
“If you did that, that’s the last thing you want to do because there have been many boys not come out of there, they’ve been killed in there,” Elgin said.
After an excavation on the Dozier School property, human remains were uncovered in 55 unmarked graves, some with gunshot wounds or signs of blunt force trauma.
Though Elgin is proud of the legislation, he said the money won’t heal the physical and mental trauma.
Despite the legislative victory and the grim discoveries of human remains at the Dozier School site, Elgin believes the compensation can never fully rectify the past.
“That could never be enough for what we’ve been through and what the families have been through,” he said.
For survivors to receive compensation, they have to send in an application providing proof they attended the school and proof they were abused. The money cannot go to the survivor’s estate.
The application is due by Dec. 31, 2024.
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