Roger dean kiser orphanage home

Roger Dean Kiser was 12 years old when he was first sent to the Florida School for Boys in Marianna.

That was in 1959.

The state-run reform school became the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.

"You don't see, hear or say anything. And if you do, they're going to get you, and they're liable to beat you to death."

In the 1950s and 1960s, former residents say they were beaten and some of their friends were killed.

"The first thing I noticed is men would come into the dorms at night and the boys would be taken out," Kiser told Here & Now.

"Some would never come back."

Kiser says he was brutally beaten, witnessed rapes of boys by staff, saw boys taken to be beaten who never returned and even witnessed the death of one boy.

"I've only been able to describe it almost as a concentration camp," Kiser said.

"You have to be ve