North Carolina task force, including historian, recommends $50,000 for sterilization victims

(CNN) – Living people who were forcibly sterilized as part of a decades-long eugenics program in North Carolina should receive a one-time payment of $50,000, a state task force recommended on Tuesday.

North Carolina sterilized an estimated 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974, many of them against their will. The state apologized for the sterilizations in 2002, and Gov. Bev Perdue created the compensation task force last year. Many states once had eugenics programs, and seven have apologized, but North Carolina is the first to consider paying victims.

The five-member task force - including a doctor, lawyer, historian, retired judge and retired journalist – met for 10 months and has a February 1 deadline to send a report, including recommendations for compensation, to the governor.

The payments will need to be approved by North Carolina's legislature, and nobody is saying yet where money for victims would come from - some estimates put the number of living victims at 1,500. Task force spokeswoman Jill Lucas said Perdue will include the recommended payment in the budget she submits to the state legislature, which will take it up this spring. There is a three-year statute of limitations, so victims need to come forward soon....