Aggregated News
Like many other residents of the institution once known as the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital, Sarah Pack Wiley apparently understood little of what “the operation” meant.
But there’s one part she remembers vividly.
“They gave me ether,” she said last week, after telling her story to a group that wants the state to make symbolic payments to living Virginians who were sterilized under a misguided science called eugenics.
The pseudo-science was intended to prevent reproduction among people who were deemed mentally deficient.
“I didn’t know what it was about,” said Wiley, 76.
Wiley’s discharge documents from the training school confirm a sterilization procedure in 1959.
She was 24 years old.
Officials at the training school, now called the Central Virginia Training Center, told her after the procedure that she couldn’t have children of her own.
“I felt sad,” Wiley said.
A nonprofit group called the Christian Law Institute is looking for more eugenics victims like Wiley to step forward and tell their stories to lawmakers and news media.
Mark Bold, a third-year student at the Liberty University School of...
But there’s one part she remembers vividly.
“They gave me ether,” she said last week, after telling her story to a group that wants the state to make symbolic payments to living Virginians who were sterilized under a misguided science called eugenics.
The pseudo-science was intended to prevent reproduction among people who were deemed mentally deficient.
“I didn’t know what it was about,” said Wiley, 76.
Wiley’s discharge documents from the training school confirm a sterilization procedure in 1959.
She was 24 years old.
Officials at the training school, now called the Central Virginia Training Center, told her after the procedure that she couldn’t have children of her own.
“I felt sad,” Wiley said.
A nonprofit group called the Christian Law Institute is looking for more eugenics victims like Wiley to step forward and tell their stories to lawmakers and news media.
Mark Bold, a third-year student at the Liberty University School of...