"That was the way the bill was written in the past, and we didn't get the historical information," Salzman said. "We tried really hard. We reached out to a lot of people to try to find out where those numbers came from."
As reported in "The Okeechobee Boys," there's evidence that the abuse continued at the reform schools beyond 1975.
"I try to forget the names. I try to forget it all," James Walker said while sitting next to his wife in a pair of recliners in their home in rural Fort Meade, Florida.
Walker was sent to the Okeechobee school in 1978. He said he didn't bother applying for compensation because he knew he didn't qualify.
"(There) ain't no forgetting it, and it wasn't right," he said.