Looking to determine if the new law would pass a legal challenge, on September 10, 1924, Albert Sidney Priddy, superintendent[11] of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, filed a petition to his Board of Directors to sterilize Carrie Buck. She was an 18-year-old patient at his institution who he claimed had a mental age of 9.[12] Priddy maintained that Buck represented a genetic threat to society. According to him, Buck's 52-year-old mother possessed a mental age of 8, had a record of prostitution and immorality, and had three children without good knowledge of their paternity.