Warning: This article discusses topics of child abuse and sexual assault that could be distressing for some readers.
Michael Bell, Jesse Guardado, Jerry White, and many others share a common background. They all attended the same boys’ school in Florida and later found themselves on death row.
Michael Bell was executed on July 15 for the 1993 murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith, marking him as the eighth person executed in Florida this year.
Before his execution, Bell recounted his early years and the traumatic experiences he and his peers faced while attending the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, which ceased operations in 2011.
During the years 1986 and 1987, when Bell was 15, he attended the school and remembered being coerced into physical fights with other boys and subjected to beatings with a strap. A recent report by The Marshall Project sheds light on the ordeals that Bell and other death row inmates endured.
While typically schools would intervene to stop fights, according to Bell and other attendees, the staff at this institution allegedly encouraged such altercations. They reportedly even placed bets on the outcomes.
Bell revealed to The Marshall Project that guards forced him to fight boys much larger than himself on multiple occasions, while wagers were made by other Dozier employees regarding his potential success.
After one guard lost money betting on Bell, he was allegedly sent to a notorious area within the school known as the ‘white house’, where an employee reportedly whipped him with a long leather strap approximately ten times.
Abraham Hamza, another former student who did not end up imprisoned, corroborated these accounts to The Marshall Project, stating he witnessed guards compelling children to fight each other while placing bets.
Bell recounted being sexually assaulted by a staff member during his tenure at the school and claimed to have witnessed sexual assaults happening there, hearing the cries of boys being abused in his dormitory at night.
Despite the presence of a staff member during the night, Bell and another dorm resident told The Marshall Project that such abuses were frequently ignored or overlooked as the staff member often slept through them.
In court documents, Guardado, who is on death row for a 2004 murder, stated: “I saw people being raped and beaten. A horrible place. A nightmare.”
Hamza noted that he also observed smaller boys at the school becoming victims of sexual abuse.
Bell’s recollections of being beaten with a leather strap were echoed by Guardado, who described being physically abused while restrained with handcuffs and shackles.
Jerry White’s mother, whose son was executed after committing a murder in Orlando, also claimed he suffered severe beatings during his year at the school.
Bell described being shackled to a cot via his arms and legs for extended hours. Early on, Bell, who is Black, adapted by learning to stand up for himself, saying: “I was light-skinned and real little … with curly hair and that’s like a sign of being weak.
“So people would disrespect you just because of that. And so you have to go in and fight them because they’re going to dog you and abuse you and do all kinds of stuff if you don’t, so I was used to it.”
The Marshall Project reports that 34 former students from Dozier have been sentenced to death in Florida. Among them, 10 remain on death row, nine have been executed, five passed away from other causes, while the remaining were re-sentenced to life imprisonment.
Artha Gillis, an expert in child and adolescent forensic psychiatry, noted that it’s challenging to scientifically establish a direct link between the abuse at Dozier and the subsequent murders. However, Dr. George Woods, a neuropsychiatry specialist, opined that the school environment ‘helped make these boys killers’.
Marlyne Israelian, a clinical psychologist, further explained: “If you have grown up in an environment where you are being cruelly treated and beaten, and you are emotionally and physically in constant danger, your brain is going to read and perceive danger in everyone.
“You perceive a threat even in the absence of a threat because it is the adaptive thing to do in order for you to survive.”
The Dozier School ultimately closed following a US Department of Justice investigation that documented the abuse. In 2024, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis enacted a law that allocated $20 million in compensation to individuals who suffered physical and sexual abuse between 1940 and 1975 at Dozier and another institution, Okeechobee.
To date, no one has faced charges or prosecution for the abuses documented at these schools.
If these issues resonate with you or you need to talk to someone confidentially about child welfare, the Childhelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453)) is available around the clock, accepting calls from the United States, Canada, US Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
You can also reach out to The National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673), which is accessible 24/7, or engage in an online chat through online.rainn.org