The 11 remaining victims of a covert sterilization program that took place in Virginia between the years of 1924 and 1979 have received compensation by the commonwealth, according to new reports. The Virginia General Assembly set aside $400,000 in its budget to compensate each living victim of the program $25,000 as a symbolic reparation for this dark time in the state's history.

A protocol of the Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act, the sterilizations were performed on victims at a number of hospitals throughout the state in an attempt to prevent certain "undesirables" from reproducing. Many other states eventually modeled their own sterilization legislation on this Act, as did Nazi Germany with its more well known eugenics programs.

Lewis Reynolds, now 87, is one of the few surviving victims who recently received compensation. The Lynchburg resident was sterilized by the state when he was 13, but he didn't realize at the time what had happened. But recalling when his first wife left him because he was unable to produce children, he says he now recognizes the damage that was done.

"I think they done me wrong," he told The Associated Press (AP). "I couldn't have a family like everybody else does. They took my rights away."

According to the AP, sterilizations in Virginia took place at six state institutions, including at Lynchburg's "Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble Minded," which has since been renamed the Central Virginia Training Center. Reynolds was admitted to this facility at 13 after being presumed to have epilepsy, but it turned out that he was actually just exhibiting temporary symptoms as a result of being hit in the head with a rock.

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