Incest Is A Crime Not A Taboo

Submitted by Grace on Tue, 10/13/2009 - 12:30

mackenzie philips I was as shocked as anybody to see Mackenzie Phillips tell Oprah about her incestuous affair with her father. What is more disturbing is that this affair went on for 10 years. This is certainly an act of crime that went unpunished. I feel so disappointed because a lot of people chose to focus on how it was a "consensual" affair. In the U.S., incest is a crime regardless of the age or consent of those involved. But who would ever consent to sex with their father if they were in the right state of mind??? Remember, it all began with a drug-fueled rape.

It's funny how David Letterman gets a few laughs and a lot of sympathy for confessing about an "extortion plot" against him. Just because he allegedly had those sexual shenanigans before being wed to his longtime girlfriend doesn't make it ok to cheat and lie. I mean think about it...Letterman only made a public confession because he was being blackmailed.

On the other hand, here comes Mackenzie trying to reach out to the public, and most of you easily dismiss her story as one fabricated by a drug addict wanting to seek attention and sales for her new book. I know it is what most people think at the back of their heads. There is also a lot of disgust and resentment going on because Phillips chose to talk about an inconvienient truth. Incest is a crime not a taboo. Mindy Mcready, Mackenzie's roomate in the TV reality show, Celeb Rehab, gave an excellent point when she commented:“Nobody has the right to say what they do or don’t believe. Dealing with a 30-year long drug addiction problem doesn’t just encompass the drug, 'cause there’s a reason why she went to that in the first place.”

Understand that most victims of sexual abuse are scared, confused and ashamed so they tell no one. Instead, they shunt the unsavory secret into a dark corner of the mind, where they try, alone, for years to make sense of it. What Mackenzie did was a very brave thing. In order for her to be better, she had to get real with herself and her friends and family members. No matter how hard it was and no matter how difficult the subject matter, the truth had to come out.

This raises the question of how much do we all know about sexual abuse, or what is more aptly defined as sexual assault (incest and rape is a type of sexual assault)? So often we turn a blind eye on this subject because it is uncomfortable, or because we think it would never happen to us or someone we know. I think if we keep ourselves informed enough, we would be able to help someone like Mackenzie.

Here are some sobering facts from RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest Network):

About Victims

1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men will be a victim of sexual assault in their lifetime.
College age women are 4 times more likely to be sexually assaulted.

Learn more victim statistics

Sexual Assault Numbers

In 2007, there were 248,300 victims of sexual assault.
Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted.

Comments

poor title

Submitted by psxpaul on Thu, 10/15/2009 - 06:35.

This article isn't really about incest, its about sexual abuse/rape. And I wouldn't call a father having sex with his young daughter just 'incest'. The incest part of it is overshadowed by the rape part of it. I would even go so far as to say that incest by itself should not be illegal- I have met a couple of people whose parents were cousins, and things turned out just peachy for them. They did not have flippers, and were very normal people.

Also, with all your facts about rape, I found it interesting that you left this one out:
About half of all rape cases filed turn out to be false!
www.mediaradar.org/research_on_false_rape_allegations.php
www.anandaanswers.com/pages/naaFalse.html

So for every woman who is raped, there is a man whose life is ruined for being accused of something he never did. Also interesting, is that those men are disproportionately African-American.

I wonder how those stats might skew the ones in the article.

poor comment

Submitted by JRD on Thu, 10/15/2009 - 15:38.

Those stats are from studies conducted decades ago from small limited populations of either college students or one midwestern area of 70,000 people.

So your out of date stats don't skew anything.

I think this other blog

Submitted by psxpaul on Mon, 10/19/2009 - 19:00.

I think this other blog summarizes things nicely:
http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2009/10/time-to-put-to-rest-myth-th...

The fact is, false rape accusations are very common, and can be incredibly damaging to the falsely accused. I can think of two high profile cases in recent memory - Kobe Bryant and the Duke lacrosse team- just off the top of my head.

In the case of the Duke lacrosse case, the accuser was not punished at all, and even just published a book. How can someone cause so much grief, and waste so much in taxpayer money, and end up making money on the whole thing? And as much as I dislike Kobe Bryant, his case is interesting too. The accuser never proved anything, and actually got a huge payday to drop the charges. Kobe lost millions in endorsement deals, and a huge number of people will never see him the same way.

And you can't really use accusations as a meaningful statistic. If you want to debate that 90% of the accusations are true and provable, then provide a better survey that backs your claims. Because without that statistic, the rest of the statistics are the equivalent of, "OMG, look how many people cried wolf this year!!1! We have a wolf epidemic!"

Don't forget about Roman Polanski and Tyler Perry

Submitted by Grace on Tue, 10/13/2009 - 20:02.

They all made the news as well because of some type of abuse...Charles Blow from NYTimes wrote a snippet about them and how we need to raise awareness on abuse especially on children here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/opinion/10blow.html?hp

Thanks for this post, Grace!

Submitted by Rae on Tue, 10/13/2009 - 17:17.

Thanks for this post, Grace! I totally agree on the whole Letterman thing... perhaps that will be my topic this week for my blog;)

The statistics and links to more info are great!