being chained to walls in irons, brutal whippings, and peonage surfaced,” these researchers wrote. In 2008, survivors of Dozier created a group called the “White House Boys” in an effort to force the state to acknowledge its role in the torture of children. The name comes from a place where guards took kids to beat them with a leather belt. Today all the members of the group, now led by Cooper, are around 70 years old and they number some 300. Many are felons. “What else could you expect? What else could you possibly expect to happen,” Cooper said, shrugging his shoulders. “Again, violence breeds violence.” In 2017, the state of Florida formally apologized for what happened at the school, but no reparations were ever paid and no one was charged. Now, the state will work to “bring some healing and closure to the victims, their families, and all impacted.” Cooper, however, is impatient because year after year goes by and there are fewer and fewer survivors. The previous investigation took four years and he says many survivors do not have that much time. And there is another thing. “I’m concerned about the boys that we don’t know who they are. We’re the only family they have now. The unidentified boys, without us, they have nobody.”