California’s government sterilized 600 persons who are still alive, either without their consent or without their knowledge, and is currently searching for them in order to compensate them with at least $15,000 apiece.
However, after a year of searching, the state has authorized only 51 of 310 applications for payouts.
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There is only one year left until the $4.5 million program closes, and the difficulties remain formidable.
State authorities have dismissed 103 applications, closed three incomplete applications, and are reviewing 153 more, but they claim it is impossible to validate the petitions since many documents have been lost or destroyed.
The money is available to two categories of people: those who were sterilized by the government during the so-called eugenics movement, which peaked in the 1930s, and a smaller number who were victimized while incarcerated in state institutions approximately a decade ago.
“We try to find all the information we can and sometimes we just have to hope that somebody maybe can find more detailed information on their own,” added Lynda Gledhill, executive officer of the California Victims’ Compensation Board, which manages the program.
“We’re just sometimes not able to verify what happened.”
California joined North Carolina and Virginia in 2021 as the third state to pass a compensation scheme for forced sterilizations. The first state to do so was California, which also included more recent victims from its state prison system.
The eugenics movement aimed to stop certain people with physical or mental impairments from becoming parents.
Beginning in 1909, California’s largest compulsory sterilization program in the country sterilized nearly 20,000 individuals. It was so well known that it eventually served as the model for Nazi Germany’s practices. The state’s eugenics statute was not overturned until 1979.
Only three of the 45 individuals who have received approval for reparations thus far were sterilized during the eugenics era. State officials have delivered posters and fact sheets to 1,000 skilled nursing facilities and 500 libraries around the state in an effort to reach more of the survivors who are now in their 80s, 90s, and beyond.
Additionally, the state hired Fresno-based JP Marketing under a $280,000 contract in October to start a social media campaign that will go through the end of 2023.
