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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    N.C. works on compensation for forced sterilization victims

    NC works on compensation for forced sterilization victims

    By MARTHA WAGGONER
    Associated Press
    Published: Monday, Aug. 1, 2011 - 10:19 am
    Last Modified: Monday, Aug. 1, 2011 - 11:39 am

    RALEIGH, N.C. -- A task force investigating the forced sterilization of about 7,600 people in North Carolina said in a draft report Monday that those still living should get money as compensation but the panel is not yet sure how much.

    Figures ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 have been recommended for the victims, but the Eugenics Task Force said it needs more time to consider those and other amounts. Any compensation should be exempt from state taxes, the report said.

    Although the state previously estimated almost 3,000 victims in North Carolina, the report said the figure was closer to 1,500 to 2,000.

    Panel members also want to consider whether to compensate victims' estates and the possibility of offering state health benefits to living victims.

    "We know that in a period of tight budgets, compensation may not be popular among your constituents," the task force said in a letter to Gov. Beverly Perdue that accompanies the report. "For many citizens, it may be hard to justify spending millions when the state is cutting back on other essential services. But the fact is, there never will be a good time to redress these wrongs and the victims have already waited too long."

    A spokeswoman said the governor had no immediate comment. The Legislature would have to approve any payments.

    One issue for the task force seems to be that paying the victims a small amount could trivialize their suffering.

    "The Task Force emphasizes that no amount of damages is meant to place a value on a victim's life or life lost and also recognizes that setting a damages figure that is too low may be perceived disrespectfully and could results in further victimization," the report says.

    Australia Clay, whose mother was sterilized in 1965 after having three children, described the report as "sketchy" because it didn't provide a compensation figure and didn't immediately recommend payments to victims' estates.

    "There just was a holocaust in our state, and this is something the state is going to have to pay for. I am disappointed that they did not make the decision that if the victim is dead, the amount of compensation would go to the estate," said Clay, 64, of Durham. "Twenty-thousand dollars is not enough. Well, $1 million wouldn't be enough."

    Her mother, Margaret Helen Cheek, had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and sterilized while she was a patient at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro. Clay believes her mother suffered from post-partum depression. Cheek died of a stroke in February 1978.

    The task force pointed out that other studies in North Carolina also have recommended compensation, most recently in 2008, when the N.C. House of Representatives Study on Eugenics suggested $20,000 to surviving victims only.

    The final report is due Feb. 1.

    "The Task Force worries that the prolonged discussion of damages, which has gone on now for almost 10 years, has given victims false hope and prolonged their suffering," the report said.

    The state ended the sterilization program in 1977, three years after the last procedure. In 2002, then-Gov. Mike Easley apologized for the program. About a half dozen other states have apologized for their eugenics program, but none of those has a plan to compensate victims.

    Women and girls made up about 85 percent of the victims in North Carolina, which ramped up its sterilizations after World War II. Around 70 percent of all North Carolina's sterilizations were performed after the war, peaking in the 1950s, according to state records.

    Nationwide, there were more than 60,000 known victims of sterilization programs, with perhaps another 40,000 sterilized through "unofficial" channels like hospitals or local health departments working on their own initiative. Eugenics was aimed at creating a better society by filtering out people considered undesirable, ranging from criminals to those imprecisely designated as "feeble-minded."

    In North Carolina, people as young as 10 were sterilized for offenses as minor as not getting along with schoolmates, being promiscuous or running afoul of local social workers or doctors. The state's law allowed such professionals to refer people to the state Eugenics Board for sterilization while in other states, where people had to be jailed or institutionalized before they could be sterilized.

    http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/01/380892 ... z1TnyumSig
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 05-24-2012 at 01:06 AM.
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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