Dozier School for Boys

Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges on Thursday refused to vacate Cole’s death sentence.

The ruling likely will set off a flurry of appeals in the runup to the scheduled Aug. 29 execution of Loran Cole. Cole was sentenced to death in the February 1994 murder of John Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records show.

Loran Cole, 57, was sentenced to death in the February 1994 murder of John Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records show. Cole was 17 when he was sent to Dozier in 1984.

The program will compensate people who were at Dozier or the Okeechobee reform school between 1940 and 1975 and “who were subjected to mental, physical or sexual abuse perpetrated by school personnel.”

They included a wide-ranging plan to expand access to health care, and a bill aimed at keeping children under age 16 off social media.

Men who suffered abuse decades ago at two former state reform schools have been coming to the Florida Capitol for 16 years seeking restitution. They may finally succeed this year.

The bill will go to the Senate, which is expected to pass it in the coming days.

Decades later, survivors known as “The White House Boys” still struggle when recalling the mental, physical and sexual abuse they endured while in the state’s care at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.

A bipartisan bill going through the legislature would establish the Dozier School for Boys and Okeechobee School Victim Compensation Program.

The ceremony came more than five years after state lawmakers apologized to boys who had been sent to the reform school, and abused and to the families of dozens of boys who died.

The infamous North Florida reform school closed in 2011 after a rocky 111-year history.

State Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, said “too many have died and have not been made whole."