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20. 09. 12. - 14:22
Sterilisation for gilrs in childrens homes claim.
Leading child psychiatrist Ernst Berger in Austria claims that children in homes in Austria were forcefully sterilised by doctors up to the year 2011.
Young girls and women with disabilities both physical and mental were sterilised with the operations covered up as an "appendicitis" procedure.
According to Berger the girls were unaware that they had been sterilised and would not be able to have children.
To carry out the operation the parents had to be in agreement, but it is alleged a lot of pressure was put on the parents by doctors and the children's homes and that they were forced to undergo the procedure to be allowed into the homes.
Berger said: "It was an open secret that the children were sterilised before being taken into care in the children's homes."
A former Viennese psychiatrist who specialised in disabled patients, Andreas Rett, a former member of the Nazi NSDAP, had previously ordered forced sterilisations for everyone who had an IQ less than 85 - claims Berger as well as Volker Schönwiese, a lawyer specialising in disabled rights.
Berger said: "Rett was my predecessor. I knew what his position was."
General sterilisation for everyone with an IQ less than 85 was well know in 1975.
Therefore it cannot be ruled out that girls were then sterilised who nowadays would not be classified as disabled, confirmed Berger and Schönwiese.
It is thought that the majority of girls affected were forced into the sterilisations in the 1980's and 1990's.
A colleague of Rett who died in 1997, Heinz Krisper, said he did not believe that Rett was in favour of general sterilisation for all those with a low IQ.
He said each case was decided upon individually in the patients best interest.
