Leilani Muir

Leilani Marietta (O'Malley) Muir (July 15, 1944 – March 14, 2016), previously named Leilani Marie Scorah, was the first person to file a successful lawsuit against the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta. Her case led to the initiation of several other class action lawsuits against the province for wrongful sterilization. Muir's advocacy shed light on eugenics, institutionalisation, human rights for persons with a disability, and self-advocacy.

Muir was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada into a poor family that frequently moved. She was an unwanted, unloved, and abused child. Her mother looked for ways to remove her from the family and, when Muir was eight, placed her in the Midnapore Convent for a month. Then, in 1953, her mother sent an application for Muir to be institutionalized at the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives (also known as the Michener Centre) in Red Deer, Alberta. At that time there were no vacant beds.

Two years later on July 12, 1955, shortly before her 11th birthday, Muir was admitted into the institution solely on the basis of information provided by her mother, without any diagnostic testing. She thought she had been sent to an orphanage. Under superintendent Leonard Jan Le Vann, a precondition for admission into the Provincial Training School was a signature from Muir's mother permitting the legal enforcement of compulsory sterilization. Over the years, Muir was educated to a grade 5 level and saw her mother only intermittently until her departure from the institution at the age of 20.

Muir’s sterilization was part of a progression towards forced sterilization and eugenics that began in the 19th century.

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