SACRAMENTO - California is trying to find victims of forced sterilization but few victims are coming forward.
State officials have just a year left in a $4.5 Million program to compensate victims who were sterilized against their will or without their knowledge. So far the state has received 310 applications and has only approved 51 for the payout. 153 applications still need to be processed, while the rest have been denied.
The primary group include some 600 people affected by the state's eugenics movement in the early 1900's, when some 20,000 state residents were sterilized because of mental or physical disabilities. Trouble is, most of the victims alive today are well into their 80s and 90s and now the state is spending $280,000 on an ad campaign in hopes of reaching family or friends of the victims. State officials also say it's hard to verify the victims of the eugenics era because records have either been lost or destroyed. The state repealed its eugenics law in 1979.
The other group the state is hoping to compensate is a group of women who were sterilized while they were in state prisons between 2005 and 2013 but officials say those records have been much easier to find. The state legislature passed a law in 2014 to stop sterilizations in prisons for birth control purposes, but the procedure can still be performed for other medical reasons.