RALEIGH -- A committee to look into the state's eugenics sterilization program wants to hear from victims as it reviews the program and considers whether North Carolina should become the first state to award financial compensation to those who were affected by it.

"We certainly want to have either victims or families who feel comfortable give us input," said Carmen Hooker Odom, the secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services at the first meeting of the newly formed Eugenics Study Committee yesterday.

"We would welcome them getting in touch with us, for sure," Hooker Odom said.

Gov. Mike Easley, who announced the appointments to the group Monday, formally apologized in December for a program that sterilized more than 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974. Many of the operations were done against the patients' wishes, and some were performed on children as young as 10.

Hooker Odom called the state-sponsored venture a "horrible, horrifying, terrible thing to do."

Efforts to investigate the program - which was often marked by coercion and faulty intelligence tests - started in earnest after a series of stories in the Winston-Salem Journal in December exposed previously unreleased details.

"Obviously, we all believe and it is clear that this was a disturbing moment in our not too distant past," Hooker Odom said. "It's pretty shocking. Certainly, Govenor Easley was as deeply horrified and shocked as I was."

Easley asked the panel to investigate how the program unfolded in North Carolina, how to prevent a similar scenario in the future and how to redress the victims.

Financial reparations are one possibility, but some supporters question whether it's the right time to debate financial compensation, given the current budget crisis. The state is facing a deficit estimated to be as much as $2 billion over the next two years.

"I'm glad the governor and the secretary are beginning discussions on this so promptly," said Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham.

"However, I doubt that this is a budget year in which such a program should move forward. The governor has already indicated his budget will be full of spending cuts, which means cutbacks in education and human services," Luebke said.

"The sterilization program is a blot on North Carolina, but it may not be possible to begin reparations this year," he said.

Hooker Odom said that the state also could recommend counseling services or health coverage for the victims or their families whose lives were permanently altered by the state program.

She acknowledged it would be a "herculean task" to track down victims and their families.

More than 150,000 pages of documents related to the eugenics program are stored at the state archives - under "lock and key," a state archivist said, because of confidential patient information.

State officials cannot examine the documents to identify patients but must rely on people contacting them.

The committee spent much of its first meeting learning details of the program. It was the third largest in the country, behind California and Virginia.

Nationwide, about 65,000 sterilizations were performed as part of the eugenics movement, which sought to eradicate mental illness, genetic defects and such social ills as out-of-wedlock births.

"These operations were justified in the pseudoscience of eugenics," said committee member Stan Slawinski of the N.C. Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services.

Initially, the majority of the sterilizations approved by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina were performed on white women.

However, by the 1960s, the program mainly targeted young black women.

The Journal's investigation showed that the number of blacks sterilized outnumbered whites for the first time in 1956-58.

By the late 1960s, more than 60 percent of those sterilized were black - 99 percent of those victims were female - in a state where blacks made up about a quarter of the population.

Hooker Odom plans to expand the five-member committee, which is now comprised of that is now composed of state employees. She wants to include to legislators, including Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, and a state senator, as well as an ethicist and perhaps victims or their family members.

Meanwhile, Womble said that one of the first steps the state could take is to strike existing law that continues to authorize sterilization for the mentally ill or retarded "for the public good."

He worked with legislative counsel yesterday to draft a bill that would do just that.

"I'm looking to wipe it off the books," Womble said. "And then my second step is to offer some sort of compensation, reparation, whatever you want to call it."

Acknowledging the state's significant budget woes, Womble said there is no rush to appropriate reparations this year or next. "It's going to be difficult, I realize that," he said. "But I do think these people need to be compensated. I don't know if we can ever fully make them whole again."

The study committee has tentatively scheduled a second meeting in the first week of March. Hooker Odom said that it could make recommendations to Easley as early as May or June.

She said she expects the review to be monumental and daunting. Of the sterilization program, she said: "I fluctuate between crying and just being outraged over it."

Victims and their families who want to get involved in the committee process can call the Care-Line, an information and referral service of the health and human-services department, at (800) 662-7030.

• Dana Damico can be reached in Raleigh at (919) 833-9916 or at ddamico@wsjournal.com