Incest In The 1970's

Imagine a baby is being born and several hours later he or she dies. This is one of the many realities of products of incest. Incest is a topic that still affects people all over the world to this day. Whether it be by choice or by a case of rape, incest is a problem that is prominent and has been prominent since it’s discovery in the 1970’s. (Mithers 257) There are many cases of incest where the people who partake in incest are punished. Often, the victim is the one that is negatively affected. Unfortunately, many times the woman is the victim. Mithers reveals the shocking statistic that according to the evidence researchers have found, approximately 12-15 million women have been negatively affected by incestuous abuse, half of the cases include

(Correspondent 1) Incest is not limited to blood related parents, it can include stepparents and adoptive parents, and are any acts such as undressing or touching not just intercourse. (Correspondent 1) The Children's Division of the American Humane Association estimate that a minimum of between 80,000 and 100,000 children are sexually molested each year, and in 25% of these cases a blood relative is the offender. (Correspondent 1) However, these cases do not even take into consideration the 12- 15 million women mentioned previously. Many times, because these cases involve some parental/ authority figure and child, the parental/authority figure can manipulate the child into not telling anyone about the issue and sometimes the child is put in a position where they cannot speak on this issue. In a specific case, twenty-year-old college student from Boston was affected by incest and her own father was the offender. (Correspondent 1) From ages 11-15 the girl was molested by her father while her sister lay pretend asleep in the bed across from hers, and later she explains how her was also molested by their father. (Correspondent 1) She explains how her father was a middle-class man who was very amiable and never smoke or drank. (Correspondent 1)

The repercussions can vary from behavioral problems like multiple sexual partners, a sudden drop in grades, or addictions to drugs or alcohol and longer term effects include chronic depression, sleep disorders, shame, and guilt, as well as suicidal urges. (Adubato 1) However each victim of incest is different. In a story about a twenty-four-year-old woman with the pseudonym, Mary Doe, she explains the effects, short term and long, incest has on her, some of which are identical to repercussion stated above. Mary Doe was affected by incest when she was four or five years old, and her father was the offender. (Mithers) In her adolescent years she suffered from drug use, promiscuousness, self-hate, eating disorders, suicide, and repression. (Mithers) Because Mary Doe was an alcoholic she was arrested from drunk driving, which led her to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. (Mithers) It was here after she began to become sober she remembered everything that happened in her early childhood; Mary Doe was dealing with one of the many effects of incest. She was just one victim, many other victims who are affected tend to have these repercussions follow them into adulthood and it affects them their entire