A state panel charged with recommending compensation for victims of the state's eugenics program will try to come up with a specific lump sum at its next meeting. The Governor's Eugenics Compensation Task Force was scheduled to discuss a lump sum today, but did not come to a conclusion. One task force member suggested compensation of twenty thousand dollars, but victims who attended the meeting said that is not enough. Dr. Laura Gerald heads the group.
Laura Gerald: "I think what is hard for all of us are the emotions that are involved in it and it's very difficult to hear about folks who have been wronged and to want to try to come up with some justice for those victims. but again we're trying to do that in the context of what is achievable for the state."
North Carolina sterilized 76 hundred victims under its eugenics program. The legislature abolished the program in 1977. Forty-eight victims have been identified, but the task force estimates up to two thousand victims are still alive.
