Legally, incest is sexual contact with a child by a member of the family, where if adults, the law would forbid their marriage.
Psychologically, incest is the use of a child by any person serving in a caretaking capacity or in a position of authority over the child to meet their own sexual needs. This includes parents, step-parents, grandparents, older siblings and any person who perceives themselves to be closely related. The sexual contact may include fondling, oral-genital sex, mutual masturbation or actual intercourse.
The emotional pain may be turned into various kinds of problems: eating disorders, drug or alcohol abuse, physical ailments, split personality, a compulsive need to achieve and prove worthy, or others...
The taboo against incest is as old as civilization, considered universal, the few exceptions being ritualized rites of passage or of royalty accepted by everyone in the culture. In the Western culture, incest is not condoned under any circumstance. Yet one in four families is affected by incest. It is a symptom of a dysfunctional family unit. It transgresses a child's innocence in the most destructive and insidious ways, confusing love, exploitation and sexuality. It thwarts the natural development of trust, independence, and self esteem by generating fear, guilt, self-loathing and isolation. The taboo does not prevent the incestuous activity from occurring, but does prevent the victim from talking about the incest. It is the taboo and the secretiveness it creates, that keeps the child a victim even into adulthood when the sexual activity has long since been terminated. The result is a person who may not build successful relationships, is suicidal, abuses drugs or alcohol or suffers from depression. If male, the victim will, without therapy, probably sexually abuse his own daughters or become a rapist. If female, without therapy, there is a high possibility she will become a prostitute, a teenage runaway, a confused mother, unable to nurture her own children. Through public awareness and acknowledgment of the problem of incest, we can all have an effect on the treatment and prevention of incest.
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