At age 13, Katrine Petersen was fitted with a contraceptive device by Danish doctors without her consent.

She had become pregnant, and after doctors in the Greenlandic town of Maniitsoq terminated her pregnancy, they fitted her with an intrauterine contraceptive device, commonly known as an IUD, or coil.

Now aged 52 and living in Denmark, Petersen recalled being told she had been fitted with the device before leaving hospital.

"All those years, I never talked about it," she told The Associated Press.

Later in life, after she married, she was unable to have children.

At an event in Greenland's capital of Nuuk on Wednesday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart Jens-Frederik Nielsen are expected to offer their official apologies for their governments' roles in the mistreatment of Greenlandic Indigenous girls and women.

Some of the victims are also expected to speak.

“We cannot change what has happened, but we can take responsibility and we can create the conditions for reconciliation with the past,” Frederiksen said in a statement released Monday, adding the Danish government intends to establish a reconciliation fund to financially compensate victims.

66-year old Kirstine Berthelsen, who like Petersen was also fitted with an IUD when she was younger, will fly to Nuuk to be at the event.

She says that being with the other adult women at the event who were girls at the time and went through a similar experience will help ease her pain.

Last month, Denmark and Greenland already published apologies for their roles in the mistreatment of the women and girls who were given contraception by Danish health authorities against their will, with most cases dating back to the 1960s.

Greenland, which remains part of the Danish realm, was a colony under Denmark’s crown until 1953, when it became a province in the Scandinavian country. In 1979, the island was granted home rule, and 30 years later Greenland became a self-governing entity.

The forced contraception of Indigenous women and girls was part of centuries of Danish policies that dehumanized Greenlanders and their families.

The policies included the removal of young Inuit children from their parents to be given to Danish foster families for reeducation and controversial parental competency tests that resulted in the forced separation of Greenlandic families.

AP Video by James Brooks and Daniel Niemann