Oh man! The fact that the place was in operation just a few years ago makes it creepier.
If it was a century or two ago, we could chalk it up to folks being backwards or whatever. It's still horrifying but it would be seen as a product of a far different era.
But THIS place closed RECENTLY, which carries the implication that many of the deaths were recent! These HAD to have been kids who had no loving family or something for this stuff to happen! Someone would have to have said something in the mean time!
55+ KIDS! This must have been one horrifying reform school & reform schools are pretty rotten to begin with!
I guess the parents of each dead kid just assumed that the passing of their youngster was a tragic accident & isolated incident, not knowing that a bunch of other kiddos were dying the same way.
EDIT: I now read the story. The deaths were likely from the last century, it's the Florida Panhandle bordering Alabama & Georgia (where everything is 'The Deep South') and people did suspect stuff but the kids & their families were black. For obvious reasons nothing was done back in the day because...well...Florida, Black victims & families, Jim Crow, authorities are in on it, etc. I'd imagine that most of the deaths were from that era.
It's a horrific tale of bigotry & injustice and I hope that there some semblance of closure or justice done or something. Seeing that this is a state run by Pluto the mutant & noted for the Martin/Zimmerman case & over-zealous state troopers, it's bound to be hard.
