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Incest Is Best?

Unfortunately, it's quite easy to explain.*

It went on for 25 years, from when the daughters were 8 & 10.
Assuming that it stopped a couple of years ago, that makes the start of the abuse about 1981.

Back then, children frankly weren't believed when they alleged familial sexual abuse. Even if these two girls had felt able to speak up, they wouldn't have had anyone close and reliable to talk to, as their father moved the family around to isolate them.

As they grew older, the girls had children of their own to think of and he was able to manipulate them further by threatening their children in various ways - by saying that they'd be taken into care, or even by saying he'd harm them if outsiders found out.

Also, he'd have made sure they knew that incest was illegal and would tell them that they'd be seen as consenting and arrested with him and sent to prison, and their kids would be taken away and adopted, and so on.

Over the years, the daughters would find over and over again that their father could do whatever he wanted, as it seemed nobody would stand up for them.

I'm quite sure that this is going on in another family round the corner from one of our dear readers, this very day.

In fact, it happened on my street some years ago. A man who'd been having sex with his two daughters, who were in their early 20s and had both had children by him, was eventually locked up.
Sadly, some of my neighbours blamed the daughters themselves, as they were eventually 'old enough to say no'. :(

* I hold a Master's degree in criminology so I know whereof I speak.
 
Thanks for the explanation. I can't see how blaming the daughters would help, let's hope they don't have to suffer that. I heard on the news that one of them phoned Childline years back, but they weren't able to take it any further.
 
gncxx said:
Thanks for the explanation. I can't see how blaming the daughters would help, let's hope they don't have to suffer that. I heard on the news that one of them phoned Childline years back, but they weren't able to take it any further.
She wanted assurance that her children would not be taken by social services if she reported her father. Childline was unable to reassure her. I think that her fears were realistic. The system worked against her there, poor girl. Even though I have great respect for Social Services - they do a very difficult job - I can quite imagine that she was right, and that social services would have swooped in and taken her children even though she was a victim.
 
Incest may not be best, but marriage bans should be rolled back, scientists say
www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/po ... 2008-12-22

Inbreeding is the source of jokes about British royalty and is associated with increased birth defects among offspring. The practice is so reviled that 31 U.S. states ban marriage between first cousins or allow it only if the couple has undergone genetic counseling or at least one partner is sterile or no longer fertile because of age.

But those laws "seem ill-advised" and "should be repealed," a geneticist and medical historian write in today's PLoS Biology. "Neither the scientific nor social assumptions that informed them are any longer defensible."

The US "cousin marriage" prohibition stretches back to the 1858, when Kansas barred such marriages; Texas was the most recent state to pass a ban, in 2005, write Diane Paul, a political scientist emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Hamish Spencer, head of zoology at the University of Otago in New Zealand. (European countries didn’t ban the practice because there, "the rich and noble were marrying" their cousins, Spencer tells us. "In America it was immigrants and the rural poor — a much easier target of legislation than your monarch.")

First cousins share about an eighth, or 12.5 percent, of their genes, according to a 2002 study in the Journal of Genetic Counseling. Because of that overlap, there's a 1.7 percent to 2.8 higher risk of intellectual disability and genetic disorders, including seizures and metabolic errors among children whose parents are first cousins than among the general population, says Robin Bennett, a certified genetic counselor and lead author of that research.

That elevated risk is "comparable to a 40-year-old woman having children and we consider that perfectly acceptable," Spencer tells ScientificAmerican.com. "I can't imagine a law saying they're not allowed to have children."

The father of evolution, Charles Darwin, married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, as did Albert Einstein when he walked down the aisle with cousin Elsa. But while marriage between first cousins occurs often in some parts of the world, and was not uncommon among immigrants and the rural poor during early American history, the practice is rare in the West, Spencer says.

"It's not an issue because most people aren’t interested in their first cousin," Spencer admits. "But it does affect some individuals and it doesn’t seem particularly fair."

It's worth noting that sex between more distant cousins may actually offer reproductive advantages. Pairings between third and fourth cousins result in more offspring and grandkids than more conventional couplings between folks who aren’t related, the Icelandic biotech company deCODE genetics reported in February.
 
Austria names Fritzl trial date

Police say Fritzl has admitted imprisoning and raping his daughter
Josef Fritzl, the Austrian accused of keeping his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years, will go on trial on 16 March, a court in Austria has announced.

He is charged with murder, enslavement, rape, incest and false imprisonment.

Investigators say Mr Fritzl, 73, has confessed to imprisoning and raping his daughter Elisabeth, and fathering seven children by her.

But he denies murdering one of those children, who died shortly after birth and whose body he incinerated.

His trial will last about a week, court spokesman Franz Cutka told the AFP news agency.

A psychiatrist's report last October said he was mentally fit to stand trial.

Mr Fritzl is being held in pre-trial detention in St Poelten, 80km (50 miles) west of the capital, Vienna.

Of the six surviving children, three were raised in the family home, while the others were confined to the cellar for their whole lives, not seeing the light of day until they were discovered and released by police in April 2008.

The case first came to light after 19-year-old Kerstin, one of the children fathered by Mr Fritzl and kept underground, became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7844366.stm
 
Call for change of law as Irish mother of six jailed for incest

A mother of six children who admitted she ran a “house of horrors” was jailed today after admitting incest, sexual assault and gross neglect in the first case of its kind in Ireland.

The trial of the woman, who cannot be named in order to protect her children, has shocked the country and could lead to legal reforms. She was jailed for seven years, the maximum sentence under a law that has not been revised in more than a century.

As she began her sentence today there were calls for a public inquiry into why her children were taken into care eight years after their treatment was first reported to the authorities.

Alan Shatter of the opposition Fine Gael party said:”There are serious questions to be answered as to why there wasn’t earlier intervention.

“What did the education authorities know? These children were attending school in circumstances in which alarm bells should have rung. What about doctors and nurses with whom there was contact?”

The woman, from Roscommon in the Irish midlands, pleaded guilty to all the charges on crimes committed two years after the children’s plight was first raised by her sister. She spoke to the family doctor, who contacted social services in 1996.

Tt was not until 2004 that the children were finally taken into care, by which time the woman had forced her eldest son to have sex with her on at least four occasions, the first when he was 13 years old.

The boy told gardaí he remembered that one of the incidents was a few days before his 14th birthday when his mother returned from the pub. She was drunk on each occasion that she forced him to have sex.

The woman, who was 36 when she first committed incest with the teenager, told gardaí that she was “the worst mother in the world” and that her children would be better off without her.

She admitted having made her son watch pornographic films with her. When the children were taken into care she threatened him that if he told anyone she would force him to have sex with her again while she was visiting him.

When he replied that the visits were supervised she said she would take him to the bathroom and have sex with him there.

“I was confused,” the boy told gardaí, recalling the first occasion, crying because she was his mother and he did not know why she had done this to him.

The woman admitted the incest to gardaí in May 2006, saying that her son had been shocked and afraid. He said had said “no” but she told him it would not hurt.

She admitted threatening him that if he told anyone about it she would end up in prison and the children would never see her again. The mother said that “truthfully” she did not remember how many times she had had sex with her son.

A garda officer said that he put it to the woman that the family home was a house of horrors because of the neglect and the incest, and she replied that it was “a house of horrors with bells on” with her children neglected and unfed while she was the pub drinking.

“If I could turn back the clock I would,” she said.

Judge Miriam Reynolds asked why eight years had elapsed during which social workers and home helps visited the home regularly before the children were rescued.

Social workers tried to take the children into care in 2000 but a group, described in court as a Catholic right-wing organisation, helped the mother financially and she won a High Court case blocking the care order.

The offences took place at the family's three-bedroom bungalow in County Roscommon, which was filthy, strewn with rubbish, cold, damp and had dead rats and mice inside and out.

"Any possibility of them having a normal and proper life has been stolen from them by this woman who called herself their mother," the judge said.

"They feel guilty. They feel they did something wrong. I can assure them that they did not."

Victim impact statements from the children were read to the court, detailing how they were not fed properly, their clothes were not washed and they were deprived of heat.

One son described how he and a brother cared for the younger children when their mother left the house every evening at 6pm to go to the pub, only returning very drunk between 3am and 4am.

His sister, now aged 12, said that the home was “scary” when her mother was drunk. She described being bullied at school and being called smelly by other children.

In an interview with gardaí in 2006, the mother admitted that her children were often blue with the cold, had dinner only twice a week and had lice crawling around their heads and bodies.

"It was a house of horrors... with bells on," the mother said.

The woman was prosecuted under the 1908 Punishment of Incest Act, under which men and women could be jailed for only seven years.

In 1993, when a man who had continually assaulted and raped his daughter over a 16-year period was jailed for the maximum seven years, a public outcry forced the government to amend the legislation.

The Kilkenny incest case, as it became known, led to the maximum sentence being increased to life imprisonment for men, but it stayed at seven years for women.
 
Colombia shocked by incest case

A Colombian man has appeared in court accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering 11 children with her.

Arcedio Alvarez is said to have abused his daughter, now in her 30s, since she was nine years old.

The case has shocked Colombia, and the 59-year-old needed police and army protection for his court appearance.

Mr Alvarez, who the press have dubbed the "monster of Mariquita" after the area he comes from, denies incest and rape, saying his daughter was adopted.

"We agreed to have a romantic relationship because we really loved each other. But she was not my own child," he told the court in the central Tolima province.
“ Sometimes I would ask him [why we were doing it] and he would say it was God's will ”
Arcedio Alvarez's daughter

It is not clear whether his claim is true, or whether it would affect the charges he faces, but the woman says she always saw him as her father.

"I always respected him as my father and he is my father," she said.

"He never spoke about [incest], about why we were doing it. Sometimes I would ask him and he would say it was God's will."

The woman told police how her mother died when she was five years old, leaving her in the care of Mr Alvarez.

She says she was raped repeatedly and had 11 children - three of whom died.

The woman and her children are now under state protection.

Child welfare campaigners have called for a life sentence if he is convicted, saying there are hundreds of thousands of child sexual abuse cases in Colombia not being prosecuted.

The case has also prompted a movement to change Colombian law, says the BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Colombia, to ensure that those found guilty of raping children go to prison for life.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/a ... 970414.stm
 
Italian 'Fritzl' and son arrested
Italian policeman and car (file pic)
Police have not revealed many details about the case

Police have arrested a man and his son on suspicion of raping their daughters in the northern Italian city of Turin.

The son was allegedly encouraged to imitate his father, who reportedly kept his daughter captive in a dark room for 25 years, sexually abusing her.

Italian media say the first victim, given the pseudonym "Laura", is now 34 and is having psychological treatment.

Laura alerted the police, who now believe that the 63-year-old man's son also raped his own four daughters.

Laura's abuse is believed to have started when she was nine years old.

Prosecutors say she was locked up in a room without electricity, forced to leave school at the age of 13 and never allowed to leave the house without her father's supervision.

According to Italian media reports, the case came to light after Laura accused her brother of rape.

She had reportedly fled her father's house, sought refuge in her brother's house, only to be allegedly locked up and raped by her brother for two weeks.

Laura says her brother also raped his own four young daughters.

'Droit de seigneur'

"It seems that in this family there was a sort of 'droit de seigeneur' of the father over the daughter," prosecutor Pietro Fornon said, alluding to the medieval feudal right which gave the lord the right to sleep the first night with the bride of any of his vassals.

Father and son, both street vendors who collect scrap metal for a living, have been arrested and charged with rape, sexual abuse and carrying out obscene acts in public.

Both men have denied any wrongdoing.

Laura was reportedly already known to police after filing a complaint for sexual abuse 16 years ago.

But as the BBC's David Willey reports from Rome, no action was ever taken because the woman was allegedly forced by her father to pin the blame on an uncle who also denied any wrongdoing.

Unusual case

Investigators say the case is unusual in that most of the other members of the large family of the accused - he has eight sons and two daughters - defend their father and have told police that they worship the ground where he treads.

The younger children have now been taken in charge by the city authorities and are undergoing therapy.

Italian media say the case echoes that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man jailed for life on 19 March for having kept his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar for 24 years and fathered her seven children, murdering one of them by neglect.

Italian police announced the arrests on Friday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7968452.stm
 
Revealed: the inbreeding that ruined the Hapsburgs
Dynasty that dominated Europe for more than 500 years was undone by incest, study finds
By Steve Connor
Wednesday, 15 April 2009

The Hapsburg dynasty was one of the most important and influential royal families in Europe dating back more than 500 years and producing rulers in Austria, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands and the German empire. Then, in 1700, it suffered a sudden demise of its Spanish branch. Now scientists believe they have come up with a definitive explanation.

A study of the extended family tree of the House of Hapsburg has found that the last Spanish Hapsburg king, Charles II, was the offspring of a marriage that was almost as genetically inbred as an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister or parent and child.

Scientists have found that the Hapsburg fashion of marrying their relatives to keep their dynastic heritage intact had dire consequences for subsequent generations, which culminated in the last heir to the Spanish throne being sickly and impotent.

Charles II of Spain was nicknamed El Hechizado – The Hexed – because people at the time thought that his physical and mental disabilities were the result of sorcery. Now a study into the genetics of his immediate ancestors has found that he was so inbred that he probably suffered from at least two inherited disorders.

Despite his deformities and severe health problems, Charles had married twice in the hope of continuing the rule of the Hapsburgs, but he was incapable of fathering an heir and died childless at the age of 39. He was the last of a long line of Hapsburgs and it spelled the end for the Spanish branch of the dynasty.

Scientists believe they can show just how inbred Charles was following a study of more than 3,000 relatives of the Hapsburg family extending over 16 generations. The researchers found that his "inbreeding coefficient" – a measure of the proportion of inbred genes he had inherited from his parents – was on a par with that of the offspring of an incestuous marriage.

Professor Gonzalo Alvarez, of the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, found that the Hapsburgs suffered a far higher child mortality than the general population, even though the family was immensely wealthy and did not experience the poverty related health problems faced by many people at the time.

They also suffered a higher incidence of physical deformities, which were best exemplified by the famous "Hapsburg lip", a disfiguringly prominent lower jaw caused by an inherited medical condition called mandibular prognathism, when the lower jaw grows faster than the upper jaw.

Charles II not only suffered an extreme version of the Hapsburg lip, his tongue was said to be so big for his mouth that he had difficulty speaking and drooled. He also suffered from an oversized head, intestinal upsets, convulsions and, according to his first wife, premature ejaculation.

etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 68857.html
 
rynner2 said:
Revealed: the inbreeding that ruined the Hapsburgs
Dynasty that dominated Europe for more than 500 years was undone by incest, study finds
By Steve Connor
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
I always thought this was common knowledge?
 
H_James said:
rynner2 said:
Revealed: the inbreeding that ruined the Hapsburgs
Dynasty that dominated Europe for more than 500 years was undone by incest, study finds
By Steve Connor
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
I always thought this was common knowledge?
In general terms, yes.

I think this study has pinned down the actual genetics:
The researchers found that his "inbreeding coefficient" – a measure of the proportion of inbred genes he had inherited from his parents – was on a par with that of the offspring of an incestuous marriage.
 
:) fair play. I thought they'd run out of news so had decided to run olds instead - or something.
 
rynner2 said:
H_James said:
I always thought this was common knowledge?
In general terms, yes.

I think this study has pinned down the actual genetics....
Yes, it does; and thankyou for posting it; but it's still science "proving" what we already assumed anyway.
 
Wow he was an ugly bugger wasn't he?

I find this all very interesting. Aside from the usual interest in things that are socially unacceptable, the European royal families always make me curious. I want to know more. And I don't even know what I want to know.

Tell me everything! :D
 
"What he said"!

TheOriginalCujo said:
I remeber reading something about this. It seems that the incest taboo it built from constant close contact, as Anome says.

Unfortuantely we are often naturally attracted to people who are similar to us. We sense their mental and emotional simmilarities and these things tell us that our attraction may be reciprocated.

In these adult reunions the shared genes make for similar minds but they don't have the protection of familiarity.

Cujo

Yes, I think that makes alot of sense! - The bit about 'similar minds' but not having the protection of 'familiarity'!

I also wonder if in some cases of "G.S.A" is it? If on some level the whole Search for the "Soul mate" psychology kicks in?? Maybe all those hopes and dreams of that one special "soul mate" that have built up over the years get activated, and unleashed onto each other??

The "Smell thing" is interesting too! I also thought that if the "Smell" (altho I'm not sure we can actually consciously smell it? Isnt it like a pheremone type thing??) was too similar it was a turn off?

I once had a fantastic male pal, who seemed like my "Ideal Soulmate" but physically the idea of being with him repulsed me!!! Now what was that all about!! He wasn't hidious to look at or anything! but I sort of got the sense that maybe he was too 'Familiar'? So maybe he had chemistry that was similar to mine? Shame about that!!
 
Australian 'Fritzl' charged with rape in Sydney
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 02387.html
PÁDRAIG COLLINS

Fri, Sep 18, 2009

IN A case which has been compared with those of Austrian rapist Josef Fritzl and Phillip Garrido in California, an Australian man has been accused of raping his daughter and fathering four children with her.

Victorian state police in the Latrobe Valley (150km east of Melbourne) say DNA tests have established the accused man is the father of his daughter’s four children, and that he abused his daughter over a 30-year period.

The man is accused of keeping his daughter a virtual prisoner, raping her almost daily.

The accused, who is in his 60s and cannot be identified for legal reasons, is due to face court in November. He lived with his daughter, their children and his wife. The allegations of rape and incest revealed yesterday date back to the 1970s, when the girl was just 11.

The abused woman reportedly gave birth to the four babies in Melbourne hospitals. All four children were born with health difficulties, and one of them died from severe developmental problems soon after birth.

No father’s name is listed on any of their birth certificates, which has led to questions as to why no one investigated further at the time. The woman and her three surviving children are reportedly in a safe house, being cared for by the authorities.

Victorian premier John Brumby only learned of the details yesterday morning.

“I am advised by police that . . . this has been going on for some considerable period of time,” he told a Melbourne radio station. “I guess we will all have an interest in knowing if that is the case, how is it that that occurred? How is it that the community was not aware, or the doctors or teachers or others, or child protection?”

Victoria’s community services minister, Lisa Neville, had also just become aware of the case. “I don’t know what or if there has been any involvement at all over 30 years from the department or police or other organisations, so I don’t know if there is any information that actually exists,” she said.

“They are very serious allegations, but they are before the courts and we will all obviously need to look into the details of these cases.”

The newspaper which broke the story, Melbourne’s Herald Sun, said authorities were warned of the man’s activities years ago but had failed to investigate.

The man was charged in February, after his alleged victim approached police – three years after she first alerted officers, but added she did not want them to act because she feared for her safety. The man allegedly threatened her, her mother and her children.

The man’s wife claims to be unaware of any abuse.

Speaking in the state parliament yesterday, Mr Brumby said a crime such as this “would be met with the full force of the law”.

“Any crime against children, any crime against minors is appalling enough on its own, and then for any crime of this type to occur within a family, any crime of that type, speaking generally, is the worst possible crime you can imagine. Speaking more generally if I could, any crime of this type is one that is shocking and is personally repulsive to me and to other Victorians . . .

“We can never guarantee that every child at risk is going to get 100 per cent guarantees of safety. But we can guarantee, I think, and we can aspire to make sure the best possible support is there and available to assist those families,” he said.

There were calls in parliament for Ms Neville to resign. The incest case was revealed just a day after a damning report found child protection workers in Victoria had placed three children in the care of convicted sex offenders.

Bernadette McMenamin, chief executive of Australian child welfare group Childwise, says incest often goes unreported.

“Incest is a greater problem than sexual abuse occurring in the community,” she said.

“So in terms of figures, it is very hard to estimate, but Childwise uses an amalgamation of local and international statistics, which say one in four girls and one in seven boys will experience some form of sexual abuse.”
 
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8272229.stm

Papas star 'slept with daughter'

The daughter of John Phillips, leader of 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas, has claimed she had a 10-year sexual relationship with her late father.

Mackenzie Phillips, a former child TV star, alleges the incestuous liaison - disclosed in her recently published memoir - began in 1979 when she was 19.

Speaking on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she said the relationship was a "betrayal".

Phillips' claims have been disputed by Genevieve Waite, her father's wife at the time of the alleged abuse.

In a statement read out by Winfrey, she said John Phillips was "incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child."

Mackenzie Phillips starred in 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time and appeared in George Lucas's 1973 film American Graffiti.

The 49-year-old has a long history of drug abuse and was arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin last year...

If this really happened the way she says, then it's horrible, but if she made it up because she's desperate to make cash from her new book, then that's also horrible. Either way, nobody's going to be enjoying any Mamas and the Papas tunes or American Graffiti again any time soon with that at the back of their minds.
 
Josef Fritzl 'dreams of being freed to care for wife'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11665520

Josef Fritzl during his trial in St Poelten, Austria, 19 March 2009 Josef Fritzl is expected to spend the rest of his life in jail
Continue reading the main story
Related stories

* Fritzl moved to long-term prison
* Profile: Josef Fritzl

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her, has said he dreams of leaving prison.

Fritzl, now 75, told reporters that he often thinks of his wife of 55 years and would like to care for her.

He was jailed for life in March 2009 and is being held at the maximum security Stein prison 30 miles (50 km) west of Vienna.

The interview is thought to be his first since he was convicted.

He told Germany's Bild newspaper he had written to his wife Rosemarie eight times without reply but was convinced she still loved him.

"I would later love to look after my wife because she was always faithful to me," he said.

Fritzl blames the authorities for the fact that neither she nor any of his 13 children have come to visit him in prison.

While Fritzl may be eligible for parole after 15 years, psychiatric experts would have to agree to his release and his lawyer said at the time of the trial that Fritzl was expecting to stay in jail for the rest of his life.

He was convicted of rape, incest, enslavement and murder and it is clear from the interview that he is kept well away from other inmates because of the nature of his crimes.

Two armed guards are said to watch over him constantly for his own protection.

Fritzl also describes the mundane routine of his life, growing tomatoes and peppers and watching comedy programmes on television.
 
Can I officially chunder here please? That guy makes me sick...
 
Call to demolish Josef Fritzl house
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 24926.html
VIENNA – The house under which Austrian Josef Fritzl imprisoned and abused his daughter and the children he fathered with her should be reduced to rubble, a provincial judge told a newspaper yesterday.

Judge Markus Sonnleitner, who is handling the jailed Fritzl’s insolvency, said the grey concrete building in the northern Austrian town of Amstetten was unlikely to fetch a buyer because of its dark history.

“This house should be knocked down. There is a lot of interest in seeing it vanish completely,” he told daily newspaper Kurier.

He said local authorities were looking at how to proceed, but that the cellar Fritzl built beneath the building should be immediately demolished. – (Reuters)
 
Josef Fritzl's house, site of incest, to be demolished
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12257963

The fate of the building has been uncertain since Josef Fritzl's crimes were discovered

Related stories
Profile: Josef Fritzl
Fritzl trial: Day-by-day

The house in which Josef Fritzl locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her is to be razed, Austrian media report.

No date has been set for the demolition of the house, located in the northern Austrian town of Amstetten.

The town's mayor said he would prefer the house to be knocked down under cover of darkness, to try to deter the attention of the media.

Fritzl, 74, was jailed for life in March 2009.

He was convicted of murdering one of his children through neglect, as well as rape, incest, and enslaving his daughter, now in her 40s.

His daughter and her children received therapy, though official details about their current situation have not been made public.

The BBC's Bethany Bell reports from Vienna that the fate of the house has been uncertain, with fears that no one would want to buy a place with such a troubled history.

Other tenants left the building shortly after Fritzl's crimes were discovered.
 
Incest Inadvertently Revealed By DNA Analysis Raises Legal And Social Issues
11 Feb 2011

Analyzing children's DNA to diagnose developmental disabilities and congenital anomalies can inadvertently reveal that some were conceived through incest, raising ethical, social and legal issues that the institutions and scientists involved must deal with, said US researchers in a report published in The Lancet this week.

The report highlights a need to address a problem that is likely to grow as DNA analysis technology becomes more accessible and affordable as a diagnostic tool: what should doctors do if they suspect that the child they are treating was born through incest?

This scenario is fraught with ethical, legal and social implications, for all concerned, and the authors of this report, who are themselves facing these issues, call for new guidelines to help doctors decide how to act.

Disabilities arising from missing or duplicate genes are known to occur more frequently in children born through incest.

Children who are not born through incest normally have a genome (that is the map of their whole DNA) with a high degree of "heterozygosity", reflecting the fact they received half their genes from a mother who was biologically unrelated to the father, from whom they received the other half.

Because of developments in genome technology, and because that technology is now more affordable, doctors are now increasingly able to scan the genomes of individual children to look for missing or duplicate sequences of DNA code, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs or "snips"), that might explain a disability. The tests they use are called SNP-based arrays.

In children born from incest, their genomes show an "absence of heterozygosity", reflecting the fact that their DNA contains large chunks where the mother's and father's contribution are identical, because they themselves shared much of their genetic code. The more chunks of the child's DNA that show the mother's and father's contribution are identical, the more likely it is that they are first degree relatives, such as father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister.

Senior author Dr. Arthur Beaudet, chair of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and colleagues wrote that in their practice they have identified several children referred for developmental disabilities and congenital anomalies in whom large blocks of their DNA showed an "absence of heterozygosity on multiple chromosomes", and in some cases this accounted for about a quarter of the genome, suggesting the children were the offspring of first-degree relatives.

"We have discussed these issues with legal and ethics experts at Baylor and Texas Children's Hospital, and we are considering how best to handle them," said Beaudet in a statement.

In most states of the US, the law requires doctors to report any suspicions of child abuse, and if they suspect that a pregnancy is the result of abuse, then they have to report it to child protective services, and potentially, to the police.

However, Beaudet said the doctor's responsibility is less clear when the mother is an adult. For instance, it might depend on how old she was and what the family situation was, when she conceived.

Revealing that a child may have been conceived through incest raises thorny social problems too.

The mother may deny that incest took place; she may be frightened and feel she and her child would be unsafe if this came out.

Beaudet and colleagues suggest this is an issue that demands new practice guidelines on consent, disclosure of results and reporting.

They urged health care institutions and professional societies such as the American College of Medical Genetics, the American Society of Human Genetics, and the European Society of Human Genetics, to either set up or task existing committees to tackle the ethical, legal and social implications of identifying potential incestual relationships as a result of this kind of analysis.

"Identification of incestuous parental relationships by SNP-based DNA microarrays."
CP Schaaf, DA Scott, J Wiszniewska, AL Beaudet
The Lancet, Vol. 377 No. 9765 pp 555-556, published online 12 February 2011.
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60201-8

Additional source: Baylor College of Medicine (10 Feb 2011).

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/216239.php
 
German trucker Detlef S incest trial opens
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12465473

Detlef S, distorted picture from court

Detlef S is not expected to speak during the trial

A German trucker has appeared in court charged with sexually abusing his daughter, and fathering seven children with his stepdaughter.

Prosecutors accuse the 48-year-old, identified only as Detlef S, of abusing the girls for more than 20 years.

The authorities believe he first abused them when they were four years old, and say he forced both girls to work as prostitutes.

He faces 350 charges, and a verdict is expected by 25 February.

The trucker's lawyers say he is unlikely to speak at the trial, but his defence team may read out a statement on his behalf.

Prosecutors say his wife will appear at the trial as a witness.

Local media have likened the case to that of Austrian Josef Fritzl, who enslaved his daughter for 24 years in a case that shocked the world.
 
Prosecutors say his wife will appear at the trial as a witness.

For the prosecution or for the defense? If there's any justice left in the world, I certainly hope it's the former.
 
German incest father-of-eight Detlef S jailed
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12819626

Detlef S (R) has his handcuffs removed (21 March 2011)

Detlef S is believed to have carried out the abuse between 1987 and 2010

Related Stories

* German trucker incest trial opens

A German court has jailed a man whose stepdaughter bore eight of his children for 14-and-a-half years.

Identified as Detlef S, 48, he admitted sexually abusing his biological daughter as well as forcing her and his stepdaughter into prostitution.

Details of the case, which was heard at a court in the western city of Koblenz, have shocked Germany.

Detlef S's stepson, who was also abused, said he and his sisters had waited for his conviction for 13 years.
'German Fritzl'

An unemployed lorry-driver, the defendant had begun abusing his stepchildren in 1987 when they were four years old and he had continued until his arrest in 2010.

He first began molesting his daughter when she was nine.

Some German media have labelled the man the "German Fritzl" after an Austrian man jailed for life in 2009 for locking up his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years; she bore seven of his children.

One of the eight children Detlef S's stepdaughter had has since died.

The case has prompted criticism of youth welfare services who had been in contact for some time with the family, who lived in the small village of Fluterschen, near Bonn.

Commentators asked why no-one had noticed the stepdaughter had become pregnant so many times without the involvement of any obvious boyfriend.

The stepson himself complained about the conduct of social workers, saying: "If you are a trained social worker, you are supposed to go there and interview the victims without the perpetrator being present, and not altogether."
 
Long-lost father and daughter reunited through the internet face jail after admitting having sex 'as boyfriend and girlfriend'
Second time pair have been charged with incest
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:53 PM on 18th July 2011

A long-lost father and daughter are both facing jail after being reunited on the internet and starting an illicit sexual affair 'as boyfriend and girlfriend'.
Office worker Nicola Yates, 26, tracked down her real father Andrew Butler, 46, through the family tracing website Genes Reunited.
The pair discovered they had been living just streets apart in Birmingham for years and got together after two decades apart.

But it was claimed that when they met again for the first time, Yates, who was 20 at the time, enjoyed a 'highly charged, emotional reunion' with her father, who at the time was in relationship with another woman nearer his age.

Suspicions were aroused about the pair when she began to spend more time with Butler and developed more intense feelings for her natural father.
Relatives were later horrified to discover the young woman and Butler had become illicit lovers.

The daughter and father were arrested in September last year after her family alerted police.
Yates, from Castle Vale, Birmingham, and Butler, from Yardley, Birmingham, both admitted having sex with an adult relative after appearing at Birmingham Crown Court earlier this month.

Incredibly, the couple had admitted the same charge four years ago and were both punished for the offence - but reignited their affair for a second time afterwards.
On the first occasion, Yates was given a community order for 18 months and Butler received four months jail.

But in 2008 the pair started up their affair again, to the horror of relatives who thought Yates had put her incestuous relationship behind her.
Her family's worst nightmare returned when Yates announced she had a 'new boyfriend' but was reluctant to introduce him to her family.
Insiders say the then 23-year-old tried to keep her new man's identity under wraps. Her mother Katrina, who split with Butler 20 years ago, asked to meet him but Nicola 'kept putting her off'.

It is now known that the daughter and father were secretly living together.
Around the same time fun-loving Yates updated her social networking sites, revealing a string of intimate facts about herself including that her favourite pastime was 'sex, sex, and more sex'.

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1SY3OJxLa
 
Pretty common I think, if yucky. There's even a term for the phenomenon of people wanting to have sex with long lost close relatives (genetic sexual attraction?). It's weird but I guess most people are narcissists to some extent and meeting someone who seems very like you, but whom you haven't been conditioned to see as a father/mother/sibling may prove very tempting.
 
I;m glad you are objective enough to analyse it, I just feel sick at the thought! :?
 
Man abused daughters for decades
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... ing33.html
Thu, Aug 25, 2011

Austrian police are investigating a man they suspect imprisoned, beat and sexually abused his two daughters over a 40-year period, they said today.

The 80-year-old Austrian, who lives near the northern town of Braunau, kept the women locked in a small kitchen with only a wooden bench as a bed, police said.

"The accused repeatedly threatened to kill them and threatened them with weapons," the police department of the province of Upper Austria said in a statement.

The man banned his daughters from having "any social contact", the statement added, without making clear if they were confined all the time.

The women, now aged 53 and 45, escaped when he tried to rape the elder daughter in May and she fought back. He fell to the ground, could not seek help and was found two days later by a social worker and taken to hospital, the statement added.

It did not give details of the father's whereabouts. Austrian media reported that he was in the hospital of an elderly care home.

The description of the alleged abuse has echoes of the Josef Fritzl incest case which rocked Austria three years ago. Fritzl fathered seven children with his incarcerated daughter before being imprisoned for life in 2009.

Police did not say whether the daughters gave birth to children by their father. The statement, which did not name the man, said he abused them from 1970 to May 2011.

Reuters
 
When this was reported on the radio they said that the women were mentally disabled but they couldn't tell if that was due to their confinement or not.
 
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