A Whisper Past

Leilani Muir was severely abused by her mother, who told many lies in order to have her daughter admitted to the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives in Red Deer at the age of 11 and branded a moron. But Muir never was mentally defective and never should have been in that institution in the first place. Because of a terrible injustice, a normal child became an insider in a mental institution and is now able to convey to us what life was like there in the 1950s. She tells about how she was briefly questioned by the Alberta Eugenics Board and then sterilized by two clumsy physicians under the guise of having her appendix removed. The agony of her many later attempts to have the sterilization operation reversed is described in detail. She eventually launched a lawsuit against the Alberta government and won an important judgement that led to compensation being paid to hundreds of other victims. After the trial, she became a public figure and continues to speak against all forms of child abuse and discrimination against the disabled. This is Leilani Muir’s story in her own words.