Carrie Buck grew up in poverty with a foster family in Virginia (USA). At the age of 17, she was raped by her foster mother’s nephew and became pregnant as a result. The foster parents then sent her to a home for epileptics and the so-called »Mentally ill«. After the birth, the foster parents adopted Carrie’s daughter Vivian Buck. In the same year, a sterilisation law came into force in Virginia. Carrie’s sterilisation was used to test the legality of the law and to enforce in court that sterilisation could be carried out against the will of the person concerned. The court assumed without evidence that Carrie, her biological mother Emma and her daughter were mentally impaired. Carrie Buck thus became the first victim of forced sterilisation on 19 October 1927. In 1932, she married the widower William Eagle. He brought six children into the marriage and died in 1941. In 1965, she married fruit farmer Charlie Detamore. The marriage lasted until Carrie’s death in 1983 and she was buried next to her daughter in Charlottesville (Virginia, USA). Vivian was only eight years old.
