Victims of North Carolina's state-sanctioned sterilization program laid out their broken lives Wednesday in front of a government task force that's asking how to make amends.
The victims' answers were clear: You can't, but you'd better try.
A handful of living victims said they were misled or outright lied to by doctors and social workers who conspired to render them sterile. An additional half-dozen relatives described lifelong mental and emotional breakdowns, uncontrolled bleeding from unsolicited surgeries, broken relationships and deep depressions.
"They cut me open like I was a hog," said Elaine Riddick, sterilized just after she had a son at age 14. "What do you think I'm worth? ... There's nothing that the state of North Carolina can do to justify what they did to me."
The Eugenics Board of North Carolina sterilized more than 7,600 people from 1929 to 1974, calling them feeble-minded or otherwise unfit. Other states ran similar programs, but North Carolina's seems to be the only one that accelerated after World War II. Much of the movement was based in Winston-Salem, and the details have been common knowledge since 2002, when the Winston-Salem Journal published a series on the issue.
Since then, formal apologies have been made, but repeated attempts to approve government compensation for the victims have failed. The state's Eugenics Task Force, which organized Wednesday's hearing, is scheduled to make a report on the matter this fall. But this is the third such commission that has reviewed the state's sterilization program.
"You sit here and talk about it all year round," said Charles Holt, a 61-year-old Kernersville man sterilized as a teenager. "They got money to do other stuff with."
About 3,000 victims are believed to be alive, and state Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, has repeatedly filed legislation calling for $20,000 to $50,000 per victim in state reparations. The bills haven't gone anywhere.
At $50,000 per victim, the state would pay out about $150 million, or less than 1 percent of the state's annual general fund budget. Some victims and family members at Wednesday's hearing felt that would be enough. Several called for a permanent memorial to victims. None seemed to think $20,000 was fair.
"Every time we go to put a number on it, it seems too small," said Karen Beck, a Winston-Salem woman whose grandmother and great aunt were sterilized in the 1930s. "How do you choose a family line for extinction?
"My grandmother and great-aunt were victims," Beck told the task force. "For years they lived inside the mirrored walls of shame and guilt erected by this state. But here's the irony. Those walls the state built? They don't reflect on my grandmother or my great-aunt. Those walls reflect only on the state of North Carolina."
Gov. Bev Perdue attended some of the hearing, sitting grim-faced in the back. She called it an unhappy day for North Carolina and said she would seek "redress in some way."
Some wondered whether they'll live to see it. "I wish they would hurry up and do something," said Willis Lynch, a Littleton man sterilized at age 14. "I'm 77 years old."
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement