Madison Heights, VA - It was an effort to wipe out an entire class of peopleto keep those considered unfit, from breeding more of the same, to purify the races.

Think we're talking about Nazi Germany? We're not. It happened right here at home in Virginia for 50 years - the forced sterilizations of some 8,000 people labeled "mental misfits." It was based on what is now recognized as a phony science called Eugenics, and Hitler actually modeled his practices after Virginia's law.

ABC 13's Noreen Turyn did an in-depth series on the subject 12 years ago, which led to an official apology from the state. But now some feel saying "I'm sorry" is just not enough.

The stories are countless, but now those still alive to tell them are few. From the early 1900s all the way up to the late 70s, Virginia took thousands of children and young adults into a hospital room and robbed them of their right to have children. Most of them happened in Madison Heights, at what was then known as the Lynchburg Colony for the Epileptics and Feeble Minded.

"I don't remember how old I was," said Lewis Reynolds, 85.

His father sent him to the Colony because he was having seizures after being hit in the head by a rock.

"But I didn't know they was going to do all this other stuff. I thought he just put me over there to get well and I could come back home."

Though the seizures were just his body's way of recovering, doctors there decided he had epilepsy, something they felt was a mental defect, and at age 13, Reynolds was sterilized.

"I didn't know what was done. I don't know if they give a reason or not, I don't know. My daddy passed away, my momma passed away, so no way in the world you'd know except if you ask them."

Reynoldsdidn't even learn he'd been sterilized until just a few years ago when his brother told him. Finally he understood why he and his wife of 47 years could never have the children they so longed for.

Go here to see the original:

Righting the Wrong - Part One