I get the feeling that this meeting today that this is far more common than one ever would suspect. I'm quite sure it is and that's part of why I made the statement that we should start looking at this as something it happens every place all the time and not as the Exotic sing. It only happens to other people. I'm sure that what part of our mission with his Workshop is to open up the topic to say incest out loud to allow other people to say it out loud and start looking at it more and more people start saying it out loud starts thinking about it and start discovering that it happens much closer to them than they ever realized. It's the whole social taboo kind of thing. So he says incest with Trent receive incest. It's a known over there. If we don't listen anymore, we might be better off if the word incest and exist and we had to look at the other problems involved mainly Thievery Corporation aggression. Whatever goes with it. I think those are the real problems.That was Jeanette Milgram Community coordinator for Minneapolis has walk-in Counseling Center and one of the organizers of a meeting on the subject of incest and sexual abuse that attracted over 100 public health workers Social Service people counselors law enforcement Personnel medical people and other Human Service Personnel. Incest is a topic just not being dealt with say the people at the Minnesota Resource Center for social work education and the walk-in Counseling Center. Both minneapolis-based organizations a few weeks ago. They sponsored an all-day comprehensive workshop on legal law enforcement medical philosophical and consoling aspects on the problems of incest and sexual abuse. The conference was a breakthrough of sorts. Finally a room full of people helpers admitted that incest is One symptom of mini family dysfunction and too long the taboo of the word info.Has prevented sensible realistic viewing of such problems here is a collage of several opinions expressed throughout that day's Workshop by law enforcement people concern counselors and social workers. I think this whole sexual molesting incest topic is kind of like an iceberg and that we perhaps become aware are very few. Only those that surface in the form of some kind of hurt. That is so difficult to bear that it is finally shared with someone but I had to talk to the fathers of the main thing was you're not going to use my name. I said, no, I'm not going to the mothers of the daughters. It was I'm so glad I'm so glad but fine with somebody else say something about this is not just me. It's my girlfriend. You know, I know that there are other people that need help and don't know if I can get this I don't see what we're doing to to help this girl. Now it's becoming a problem for her. That's why I came to light. So what can we do to help diminish the problem? To seek prosecution of the offender may only further compound the problem. She may be obligated to testify she may become instrumental and incarceration of her father my own cliche about what mothers look like an incest family to start a blog so, you know, there's just must not care and just be sort of sitting there while they're not just like a pass. They're actively encouraging something kind of a picture. Clinically they appear to be dependent and childish stream life childish. Most of them had know about the incest. They daughters have been trying to tell him for years. They are frequently active including with its eyes. I know there's going on some of these won't say that they knew it was going on in the situations we've avoided Seeking prosecution and that's because in our experiences through the years that we have not found the father as a danger to any child outside of his own home. We have had situations where a father has remarried and has started a second family and has been involved in this Behavior again, but it's always been in the security of the home in both of these cases that I I guess I'm going to limit it just to these till because I think we can get carried away with case histories all the mothers. Refuse to acknowledge that it had gone on they had marvelous defense mechanisms and even faced with the undeniable fact that this was a pregnancy caused by incest. They could not verbalize and could not acknowledge this Even with what we felt was the most kind of understanding counseling that we were able to provide. In one case the Father the perpetrator of the Act was incarcerated and did leave the home divorce did Acker and he did not return to the hole which is a little different from the norm many times these families. I understand to remain intact and the Man actually comes back to the same situation that he left someone said about families involved in a behavior. Every single one of them is looking for a mother would become much more interested in what's happened to the mother and her role in these families than almost any other family member in terms of thing in the family as a whole. I think she's person that cannot be a mother a good deal of the time. She's a person that has become one of the kids. she is a person who has tried to make this oldest girl her mother to make up for the mothering that she lacked the child abuse law in Minnesota require controller not sexual abuse that it presents a real problem to me when we get into a mandatory reporting with the society's reactions to and and mores and so forth about incest and sex abuse if we're going to get into a state Reporting System you start to label Jon Jones as a child abuser. I'd like to talk briefly about the stepfather stepdaughter relationship. I can say with a great deal of confidence that I think this occurs much more frequently than what the general population might want to believe during the course of our Counseling in preparation of a will reveal that a stepfather approach them molested them actually had intercourse with them or in some way thwarted their own concept of themselves and they feel and give evidence to the fact That they have been unable to make a meaningful sexual relationship either with a man. They married or the man who fathered their child outside of marriage. They seem to have kind of a damaged view of themselves as a result of the stepfather step daughter relationship. And I I just feel this goes on a great deal again, the mother's successfully covering up denying not willing to cooperate in doing anything about it and allowing it to continue many times runaway girls are running away from The advances of a stepfather as a social worker. There's no privilege attached the information you can. There is some protection about the balls in your information to standards are met number one that the information is given and in confidentiality which generally is I can almost assume that one aspect but the second one is that is it necessary to get that information from you to protect somebody or are you going to be causing more home by divulging and Clark's Journey speaking when you get to that you're causing more harm by it by withholding it protective services and have some cases of sexual abuse. So I really came to kind of learn about Innovative techniques, and I'm very delighted and surprised to have been provoked into thinking much more deeply about incest in general and whether perhaps Quote Solutions really might be easier if we would take the morality out of our way of thinking about it. So I've been very stimulated. The main reason I came to this conference was that my awareness has been heightened to these issues that are being dealt with here because I am starting to do with him in my work. I have a lot of questions about how to deal with incest sexual abuse because I'm running across these things. It's an area. I have never gotten into before I know very little about these areas and I think as a hold the social service agencies have not dealt with these areas very much and I think it's important area to get into was made at the beginning, you know, the conference that we're all here because like she pointed out only one or 2% of us have ever had any classes in it and you know any training type of exposure to sexual abuse incest in yet with all ran across cases that we've handled in various ways, and we're very uncertain about what we're doing and what we're feeling right and there's talk on our own values and How we react to people in terms of our own values, I think was probably the most important thing to me, you know, in terms of this conference Dr. John brantner of the division of Health Care psychology at the University of Minnesota hospital was one of many speakers at they all day conference on the subject of incest and sexual abuse the title of his talk incest Fashions and evil and Badness what I plan to try to do for a bit here is to sound another note perhaps to serve as a transition for our concerns this afternoon and perhaps to examine the concept of incest in its application in our society now and then four more time in other societies perhaps and perhaps to ask what contribution This concept makes to our understanding our management our control and our treatments of the problems that we are all deeply concerned with. Incest in a broader sense than the Minnesota statutes. Incest is the crime of sexual intercourse or cohabitation between persons within the degrees within which marriage is prohibited by law. That seems clear. In the Minnesota statutes as your thing in the in the in the folder that you received. This is depending on how you count degrees of relationship sexual intercourse with people within the third degree of relationship. Not with first cousins most societies agree most there are exceptions with most societies agree that sexual relationships within the closest degree of blood relationships are incestuous that is sexual intercourse with parent with sibling or with child and these are mostly forbidden. Well in civilized societies crimes are defined by legislative bodies sin is defined by canon law and psychopathology is defined by committees with the appropriate professional associations. Of course, all of these bodies attempts to reflect some sort of absolute standards and also to reconcile these absolute standards with what they perceive societies will at that time to be for instant eating meat on Fridays in the United States constituted a SIM for the members of a major christian denomination until fairly recently at present. It does not For instance the list of substances whose ingestion is felonious. changes from time to time in various societies including r o public blasphemy taking God's name in vain was a crime in England in the crime in the United States, even for atheists for a considerable period in history and were subject to very severe penalties in crime. I didn't look it up. I suspected blasphemy may still be a misdemeanor in the City of Minneapolis swearing in public Is It Anyway the blasphemer that convicted blasphemer was punished by having a hole bored through his tongue with a hot iron. It was a very serious crime. Societies are sometimes so repulsed by some behaviors, but no laws are necessary civil laws. As far as I can tell there are no laws setting penalties in the United States. I'm quite certain. There are none in the City of Minneapolis. No ordinances setting penalties for the sale preparation or consumption of human flesh. None are needed. We are universally revoked by that particular Behavior, but even hear changes occur. The survivors of the Donner Party were shamed for more than five generations for there cannibalism. But you and I have already forgotten the names of the survivors of the Chilean soccer team who survived their Andy and isolation after the plane ride by exactly the same means what is incest? With what shutters we are accustomed to think of George Gordon Lord, Byron. Incestuous Byron with what others will think of and read and reread of Gertrude Hamlet's mother and her incestuous relationship of Caligula. The Roman Emperor of Cleopatra and all the other incestuous ones including Oedipus himself. Let's look a bit closer. first-rate quick quilts for you Is it incest Rose or not? If a man has intercourse with his father's wife in other words with his stepmother? Yes, it is. Is it incestuous if we have sexual relationships with his brother's wife? No, it is not. If you have sexual relationships with his son's wife, yes it is. If he has relationship sexual relationships with his wife's sister. His sister-in-law know it is not if he has sexual relationships with his wife's father's mother. With his grandmother in law. Yes, it is if he has sexual relationship and has sexual relationships with her husband's mother's father. This is incest if he has sexual relationships with his mother's sister's daughter. Is first cousin? This depends on their society in England in the United States and in Minneapolis, as you have just read in Ireland. It is not the Forbidden degrees of Kindred and Affinity at present. The only table I know is the one in the currently valid English prayer book. And listen to what it sounds it is incest if a man has sexual intercourse with the following persons with his mother. His daughter is father's mother is Mother's mother his grandmother's now the words his son's daughter. His daughter's daughter is granddaughter's his sister is father's daughter his mother's daughter his half-sisters. His wife's mother. His wife's daughter his stepdaughter that is or his stepmother. His father's wife. His son's wife, but you see his mother his wife's son's daughter and his son son's wife. His daughter's son's wife is father's sister is Mother's sister is on his brother's daughter. His sister's daughter is the nieces. I did bring copies enough of the tables of Kindred independently within which marriage is forbidden and you've made a copy of days. Some very interesting things. It is incest if I have sexual relationships with my wife's grandmother, it is incest if I have sexual relationships with wife's mother it is incestuous if I have relationships with my wife's daughter, but it is nothing cestra's if I have relationships with my wife's sister. If my sister-in-law this was incest rest until after Queen Victoria left the Throne of England Gilbert and Sullivan, Indialantic when they predict will do in Parliament the bills change that was introduced canon law by the way is voted on by the bill in Parliament. He shall prick that annual blister marriage with deceased wife's sister, but you see what that change Claudius The dead King's brother Hamlet's Uncle speaking in the second scene of the First Act of Hamlet of Gertrude the queen Hamlet's mother. Send our sometime sister now our Queen have we asked where with the defeat of Joy with one auspicious and one dropping eye with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage in equal scale weighing device and Dole taken to wife are sometimes that's the way to take him to why Hamlet. Responding in the circulator seems I owe most wicked speed to post with such dexterity to incestuous Sheets. heart British Parliament centuries later made an honest woman no longer incest to marry your deceased husband's brother. It is not incest anymore with first cousins that used to be a menace societies. It is not incestuous to have sexual relationships for a man with his sister-in-law for a woman with her brother-in-law but it is with your mother-in-law your daughter-in-law your granddaughter and grandmother in law. Does your head spin with all of this? That's partly my point. Where where do mangos come from? with regard to human sexual behavior Do the labels sometimes form our judgments? I was making a particular point in talking to a church adult education book. And I asked them as gently as I could. In in an in an in an attempt to reassess our sexual attitudes, I asked him as gently as I could. Is it possible? Just possible that it might be. Alright sometimes. For two young people who are not yet married to each other to make love to each other. They allowed how as how sometimes this was? All right. Add another church group as a a very similar group with similar purposes just for the experiment. I in the same situation asked is fornication always bad might not fornication. Sometimes be okay. And of course they said no. Making love under some circumstances outside of marriage is not juicy juicy juicy. Same behavior, but with a different level where label would you touch it differently? What changes and Y if behavior is correctly labeled. What changes in our Judgment of a particular sexual act if we know that it is fornicate him or non-procreative or Loveless or loving are orgasmic or non-orgasmic or genital or non genital or cross-generational or chased or adulteress or incestuous? What change what changes? Why do we so dislike and fear incest? Sometimes Courts website pro and con arguments about incest based on our experience with inbreeding in the knowledge of genetic inheritance. However, we forget that arguments can be made on both sides on these grounds and the things have changed very very rapidly with regard to the prevention of pregnancy. We have heard some conflicting reports this morning about pregnancy following Ray pregnancy following incest. I daresay that incest in our society at the present time is only accidentally performed as a procreative act. That's not since the time of the Ptolemy is really are the Incas in another Society have human beings deliberately entered into an incest incestuous relationships with the aim of guessing children. Maura I think that we are are are are moved. Buy something much more primitive something much more unexamined that we cite something more primitive. Would we not all vomit on hearing with the meal that we had just enjoyed contain human flesh or recycled human shortening Would we not perhaps all feel lost and sinful and self repulsed if we shared the experience of the father in parrinello's play six characters in search of an author that our last prostitute at been our own daughter by our first wife separated from us before the birth of the child Would we not feel suicidal or Woodway? We have to ask ourselves these easy serious question in this and in other other other situations similar. Where does the pathology lie? What is particularly awful about this act as generally seen in our clinics and our Consulting rooms and our hospitals are some acts always bad under all circumstances or to fashions in the modes and changes of social attitudes influence our judgments. Is incest always totally evil totally criminal and totally pathological. Or should I judgmental and our responses are clinical responses are therapeutic responses. Perhaps be influenced by the circumstances the time the social mores the consequences of the Act and the needs of the victim the needs of the offender and the needs of the family look again at Lord Byron. The most interesting thing about Byron was his relationship with his mother which was not incestuous highly pathological relationship as result of this. Byron was a womanizer 130 writing about Byron, right? He consumed women the Harem of Servants of newstead Abbey Caroline lamb the contested weekly the wife of his doomed marriage. She consumed women stopping at an inn on the way across Europe is larger Byron secretary recorded fell upon the chambermaid like a thunderbolt knowing this kind of thing about Byron do we in the light of this kind of knowledge of that man? Do we greatly change our perception of him or our diagnosis of his condition on hearing hints Only Hits? Of his ambiguous relationships with his half half sister Augusta Lee. I don't think so or looking again at the worst of the Roman emperors tell a gila monster monster coupled with anything that has an orifice or anything into which entry could be Forest. Does it really matter? That's one of the thousands of his victims? May have been his mother or his sister. I think not. What about the question of gay incest? Does the significance of the ACT change because the actors are uncle and nephew or Aunt and niece or siblings or parents and same-sex child? In judging such an act I would always want to know the ages of each of the persons involved the degree of freedom of choice or coercion involved the amount of abuse or the amount of tenderness the emotions generated in the consequences set in train. Fashions change in a roll the most spectacular examples of this I know is you'll direct who had been Joan of arc's primary lieutenant. After her death, he kidnapped at least 240 and maybe by some estimates 300 children on home quotes on whom he practiced the grossest Abominations before and after he killed them. Do you know what the man was charged with in his trial heresy and sacrilege in those days. That was the evil. He was a heretic sacrilegious. And for these he was hanged in this body was publicly burned. Murder for personal gain is always most follow and it doesn't become in a Fowler. I do not do not believe it becomes Fowler. if the victim is a blood relative of the murderer, if we label it patricide or matricide or sororicide or fratricide are these in a worse than other murders for personal gain or as with looking looking princesses Margaret made another Anthropologist shortly, but Margaret me to happen to be at ham and the arapesh the act of incest amongst the Arab issues regarded as a stupid act stupid for two reasons one because These people are in the class of people. You must not eat. Aphorism witchy quotes the arapesh aphorism says your own mother your own sister your own pigs your own yams that you have piled up for said you must not eat other people's Mother's other people sisters other people's pigs other people's yams that have been piled up for seeds you made. They also regard the arapesh. She had a great deal of difficulty getting an even to talk about him. So they also seem to regard it as a stupid act because it denies you the addition of extra people doing we are related. If you marry your own sister you missed out on getting an extra set of Mother's grandmother's and extended family. You deny yourself the possibility of the extended family the extended kinship and definitive. So it's a stupid Act. I would ask again incidentally a thought that occurred to me must I make special confession for more than usually abominable thoughts because I acknowledge that say my father's Widow. My stepmother is a young and attractive woman. incestuous faults abominable here this morning this afternoon were concerned with a special and narrow form of incest do see this. That form of incest between a relative mostly apparent. most play a father with a child of 16 or more or less in the context of a family and mostly including exploitation coercion or Force abuse and assault Doesn't that say something to us? Why do we bother with the word incest? A man may not marry his mother's mother's father's father's sisters cousins aunts. Why do we bother with the word incest then does this concept add in it to our understanding or improve our intervention or does it perhaps clouded the Wicked the real wickedness of these forms of behavior that concern us here? Lies in the unrestrained exercise of coercive abusive and destructive power in the family. Over a dependent child who is without effective strength or resistance. the perpetrators pathology consists mostly in his since this seems to be what we are mostly talking about his or her inability to perceive the wickedness of the act and often in his or her determination to continue doing it. for the victim The potential for serious trauma psychological trauma for long-lasting consequences are great and we add nothing to the situation. If we bring Toys R Us an examined revulsion and rejection that may indeed Cloud our judgment or color are understand. If we respond in other words if we respond mostly to the fact of blood relationship or Affinity kindred. Between the offender and the victim we may Overlook other factors of far greater importance. parts of the awfulness in this whole situation derives from the terrible power The parents are given by law and custom over their children. parents power over the child It's difficult really difficult. I tried very very hard to find similar situations of power given to one over the body the mind and the spirit of another by law and by social custom. It is very hard to find comprable to help elephants think it through to find comprable situations of absolute power. Perhaps the power of parent over child in our society is like the power in some ways held by the exclusive supplier of his or her drug over the Ed. The compulsive adjectives user of the drop Perhaps. It is somewhat like the power that used to be given in our country is still in other countries to the slaveholder over the slave Perhaps. It is like the power given to the warden over the prisoner in the United States and especially in some Asiatic prisons Perhaps. It is comprable to the power given to the officer over the soldier the drill instructor over the recruit the Abbot of a monastery over the novice. When's he's? habits and officers and wardens and slaveholders and parents When's he's wish us? Well, we are fortunate indeed. Although the experience of being under their power of course marks and moles us for many years after it is Wendy's wish us ill we are amongst the world's most unfortunate people. old Ford Escape from these situations Being under a warden an officer apparent Ford Escape is difficult wishes us ill out Ford Escape is difficult and rare. We are marked as fugitives and in some cases we are hunted and returned one of the first cases of incest that I dealt with only tangentially as one of the drop-in clinics was of a girl felt by The Physicians who looked at her and the nurses hussar to be probably under the age of 14 mature looking whose story was that she had arrived in Minneapolis as a runaway from another state very distant stays running away from a to her unacceptable incestuous relationship with her father. She was fairly certain that were warrants out for her return that she was a hunted fugitive and that she would returns to her father or abusive coercive and all of all of these things father who was a personal friend of the sheriff. And a small town in another state. How do you respond to that kind of situation? Of course? We were very careful not to ask her age and told her that we would assume that she was over the age of 18 breaking the law have admitted to fill out Ford Escape is difficult out Ford Escape is difficult and risky. In word Escape is also difficult and rare and it's riskier since the N word escapes involved very often a change in self that may become permanent. We have all of us seeing occasional cases in which the victim escapes into psychosis. We have some of us in cases in which the victim escaped into obesity and physical Entre unattractiveness. If I make myself sufficiently unattractive, he may turn his attention to my younger sister. Similar very early case that I dealt with. Escape into fantasy into the strengthening of Dreams Escape into stupidity These are escapes. They are not solutions to the problem prisons, of course never cure anything. These are no solution. And escapes, of course only complicate the Escape through through through telling the authorities and they having having the offender jail escapes only complicate already complicated situation. Try dealing some time the girl that I was mentioning who who ate herself into gross obesity. She came to us after 7 years after the last five years after the last intercourse with her father she came to us because he was being released from prison and she was frightened to death. Because you knew it was still married to her mother. She knew he was coming back and how could you know deal with us? Is only complicates already complex situations other approaches are needed. Other approaches are needed in so many of our our current problems the problem for instance of chemical dependence. It improves as we stopped making moral judgments about drunkards and addicts child beating. becomes Perhaps Perhaps is is becoming treatable and understandable now when we learn to manage our Understandable anger and outrage and horror at the physical abuse of a child. Shoplifting becomes perhaps more complicated and yet easier to understand than the easier to deal with when we move from a simple and righteous punitive approach to that problem. So also maybe in the sexual abuse of minor children. Let's reconsider and perhaps reassess our own values here. Our concern our concern in agencies Our concern is not with the incest, but with the other aspects of the situation R horror in each case and the depth of our concern does not depend on the degrees of Kindred or affinity. The acts that we deal with you and I would be just as bad if they involved instead of a blood child a foundling child and adopted child a neighbor's child left with us for a month or week or whatever of babysitting a strange child in heist in from the street are horror of these situations does not depend on the Kindred and affinity. I think the fleet was but we must fights for children's rights We must protect and defend the children even against their own parents. Let's ask air chair for the victims of child abuse whether or not it is sexual whether or not is his incestuous. And in this situation that we have been calling incest and we have already taken this narrow thing in our discussions already today and broadened its two non incestuous sexual abuse of minor children. Let's try also in these situations to extend their understanding as there's already been The Plea has already been made to extend our understanding and our concern and our study to all of the people involved. The abuser and the abused and especially to the other family members. Helping that all of them and helping Society in these instances of sexual pathology. Move towards more healthy and integrated sexuality. How does the End by saying if Oedipus had come to me with his problem? I am confident that together he and I might have found a much healthier solution for him and his wife and his children. If 80% consulted me in his incestuous crisis the subsequent history of psychology might have been very different indeed. Dr. John brantner of the division of Health Care psychology at the University of Minnesota hospital one of several speakers participating in an all-day workshop on the subject of incest and sexual abuse. The day was sponsored by the Minnesota Resource Center for social work education and the walking consoling Center in Minneapolis. The day's discussion represent an honest breakthrough in a really discussed subject and that was its major value one participant expressed it very, well you may be disturbed but as a professional who goes to many counseling workshops is to the fact that this occurred is encouraging for say, I mean, it's true that for centuries and centuries we have never talked about this subject. This has been a special report prepared by Connie.