Rape at Home

The New Morality​—Harvesting Its Crop

Now even incest clamors for acceptance

“EVERY child has the right to loving relationships, including sexual, with a parent, sibling, other responsible adults or children.”​—Article Seven of “A Child’s Sexual Bill of Rights,” by the leader of Childhood Sexuality Circle.

All this time incest, the hidden crime, has been waiting impatiently in the wings, but now it is pushing forward for its turn on center stage.

Five thousand new cases are reported nationally each year, and experts say that for each one reported ten or twenty go unreported. One head of an incest clinic says: “I believe that incest is widespread in America.” A childcare worker says that incest is “more common than rape, and less frequently reported.” Some estimate that twenty-five million women in America today suffered incestuous abuse as children. Reports indicate that other countries are experiencing the same growing problem. “The latest thing now,” a new book on child abuse says, “is father-son sex clubs.” “The rate of incidence is so high,” one source said, “as to make prohibition absurd.” The strange logic is, if the crime is so widespread, why fight it?

The strangeness of that last-quoted opinion becomes understandable when its source is known. It is one of the many arguments advanced by the pro-incest lobby. The March 1980 issue of Psychology Today reported some of the incest lobby’s contentions, as follows:

“Some incest experiences appear to be positive and even beneficial.” “Incest in some cases may be either a positive, healthy experience or, at worst, neutral and dull.” “Incest fear has a chilling effect on the expression of loving feeling within the home.”

The writer of the article in Psychology Today does not agree with these pro-incest arguments. He says: “To be loved for oneself, for what one is rather than for what one can give or become, is for a child as urgent a longing as that for physical nourishment. But few children can know from infancy the difference between being loved for oneself and being used . . . to serve an elder’s sexual appetite.”

Time magazine of September 7, 1981, also published pro-incest propaganda, titled “Cradle-to-Grave Intimacy”:

“Very young children should be allowed, and perhaps encouraged, to conduct a full sex life without interference from parents and the law.” “Human beings, like the other primates, require a period of early sexual rehearsal play.” “Children really are a disenfranchised minority. They should have the right to express themselves sexually, which means that they may or may not have contact with people older than themselves.” “Such sex is basically harmless to the child.” “Incest can sometimes be beneficial.” “We believe children should begin sex at birth. It causes a lot of problems not to practice incest.”

The Time article concludes with some statements by psychiatrists. One said: “Premature sexual behavior among children in this society almost always leads to psychological difficulties.” Another who works with children concludes: “Childhood sexuality is like playing with a loaded gun.”

The popular slogan, Do your own thing, is also a loaded gun. The pimp may be doing his own thing, but it isn’t his “baby pros’” own thing. The sodomist may do his own thing, but it isn’t his young victim’s own thing. An incestuous parent may be doing his or her own thing, but it is hardly the small child’s thing. A child’s own thing is to be a child, to be secure in his childhood, to be loved by married parents. Love is thinking of others; doing your own thing is thinking of self.

Incest is probably the most selfish and reprehensible kind of child abuse. It is a grotesque violation of the child’s trust and dependency. It is the child’s closest protector that is turning on it. And the child is a damaged victim. “I have never knowingly talked to a happy, well-adjusted, unconcerned incest victim,” said Dr. Suzanne Sgroi, former chairman of the Sexual Trauma Treatment Program.

Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, director of Odyssey Institute in New York city, says: “In my own practice I have the hardest time imaginable treating these children who suffer from incest, even more than the kids who are battered, abused, set on fire, and whipped because at least those children don’t confuse what’s being done to them with love. The parent who sexually uses a child while telling him, ‘I love you,’ is raising a child who will be afraid to establish rapport, trust, and engagement with anyone else in his life, even with the therapist, because unlike the beaten child, he doesn’t seek affection, he fears affection and becomes extremely isolated.”

On page 129 of the book The Death of Innocence, we read: “Among prostitutes, the frequency of sexual molestation in childhood is 92 percent; 67 percent of them experienced some form of incestuous assault. . . . At least 75 percent of the runaways, on the national average, are escaping incestuous abuse. The same figures apply to cases of adolescent drug addiction: About 70 percent are victims of incest.”

And again, as in the case of homosexuality, the Bible views it as a crime worthy of the death penalty: “You people must not come near, any man of you, to any close fleshly relative of his to lay bare nakedness. I am Jehovah. In case anyone does any of all these detestable things, then the souls doing them must be cut off.”​—Leviticus 18:6, 29.