Family Matters: How levels of incest are on the rise in the US

DNA testing, typically, helps humans determine their family lineage. However, in recent years, it has revealed some shocking trends in the United States.

Contrary to popular belief, incest is significantly more common in the nation.

Numerous cases of children born to close biological relatives have been discovered by widespread DNA testing, offering an unprecedented account of incest in society.

Let’s take a closer look.

What is incest?

According to the site WorldPopulationReview.com, incest is a sexual relationship between close relatives, which includes, but is not limited to, adopted parents, half-siblings, aunts, uncles, and in-laws, among other family members.

The two can't legally be married because of how close they are to one another.

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Birth abnormalities, developmental delays, and genetic illnesses including blindness, hearing loss, neonatal diabetes, and limb anomalies are among the more common conditions that affect babies born of incest, as per Dailymail.

Having a child with a parent or two siblings carries several dangers.

This is due to the fact that each parent gives a child one copy of their genes, and dominant genes override the undesirable genetic alterations known as recessive genes.

Relatives reduce genetic variation when they become pregnant, and the recessive gene they carry may combine to become dominant in the resulting child, leading to a variety of congenital abnormalities, the report explained.

Genetic differences between two parents become less common in incestual relationships, and recessive genes may combine to become dominant in the offspring. This increases the child's risk of developing a variety of illnesses, such as low IQ, a cleft palate, heart problems, cystic fibrosis, and infant mortality.

The alarming rise of incest in the US

Research using popular genealogical tests has revealed that the prevalence of incest in America is significantly higher than previously believed, with a rate of one in 7,000.

The study's researcher, Dr Jim Wilson of the University of Edinburgh, stated, "That's why, way more than I think many people would ever imagine."

The numbers are shocking since the 1975 estimate of roughly one in a million given in a psychiatric textbook, as per NDTV.

Ancestry and 23andme are two popular mail-order DNA tests that can be useful in identifying a person's genetic predispositions for specific ailments. But, using these, individuals do sometimes discover the unsettling reality about their lineage.

The tests, which cost roughly $100, are unable to determine with certainty whether a person is the offspring of an incestuous relationship, but the results can be sent to a different genetic testing company that can determine it.

According to CNN, documents and interviews with lawmakers, fertility experts, and several people fathered by sperm donors reveal that victims of this type of deception have long odds of obtaining any kind of recourse, and doctors who are accused of it have a huge upper hand in court, meaning they rarely face consequences and, in some cases, have continued practicing.

Instances

Victoria Hill, 39, was among those who discovered the unsettling truth about her family history after she struck up a conversation about family trees with an ex-boyfriend she had been intimate with during a high school reunion.

Hill claimed to have been "traumatised" in Connecticut after learning she had unintentionally engaged in incest with her high school partner.

She told CNN that it wasn't until she took the home DNA test that she realised the man she had always considered her father wasn't actually her biological father.

Hill said, “I'll just put it out there, I was intimate with my half-brother. I was traumatized by this. Now I'm looking at pictures of people thinking, well, if he could be my sibling, anybody could be my sibling.”

Likewise, Steve Edsel, a native of Virginia, discovered through AncestryDNA that his parents were first-degree relatives, either father and daughter or siblings. The idea of his conception, which was probably the consequence of his grandfather's sexual abuse of his mother, made him erupt in rage.

Teresa Weiler, 64, discovered in a case that her father was her mother's brother in 1985, as per Dailymail. She said, “It was only when I was walking the streets afterward, in a daze, that it hit me: I could never be a mum. There was no way I could risk having a damaged baby. I would have to give up the one thig I wanted most in the world.”

In another case, Steve who grew up in a foster home, was born with a heart murmur that required two surgeries when he was a teenager, a possible offspring of two sets of the same genes.

He took his Ancestry test as part of a quest to track down his birth mom, who had given him up shortly after giving birth when she was 14, according to Dailymail which cited Atlantic. He sought help of CeCe Moore, who specialises in tracking people using distant DNA matches.

Working on his case, Moore came across over 1,000 more cases of people born from incest. Most of them were between first-degree relatives, while the rest were the product of second-degree relatives, like half-siblings, uncle-niece, and grandparent-grandchild, the report said.

Laws and accountability

Typically, incest is not considered socially unacceptable. It is even legally forbidden in many countries across the world.

But, some nations do not have laws against it at all. A few of them forbid it between minors, but not adults. While others allow incest but don’t allow participants to get married.

In America, laws pertaining to incest differ from state to state. While all states make incest illegal, there are quite a few exceptions or punishments for the act.

According to the World Population Review (WPR) report, incest between adults is legal in New Jersey and Rhode Island. But neither of them permits marriage. In New Jersey, the age of consent is at least 18 years old, while in Rhode Island is 16 years.

Delaware carries the lowest possible maximum penalty of one year for an incest offence. The maximum punishments in most US states range from five to fifteen years. Four states have the harshest penalties: Idaho, Kentucky, Montana, and Nevada. In these states, a person may possibly receive a life term in prison.

The report states that incest is classified as a felony under state law, making it a statutory crime. Despite being distinct crimes, rape and incest differ in that incest involves consent from both parties, whereas rape does not. Nevertheless, if one of the participants is younger than the legal consenting age, the act is typically regarded as statutory rape rather than incest since the younger participant is not allowed by law to give consent, explained by WPR.

Matters in courts

The number of fertility fraud cases continued to rise last year.

According to The Guardian, in December, a Boston-based woman named Sarah Depoian filed a federal lawsuit in the US district court alleging Dr Merle Berger, a former professor at Harvard Medical School, secretly used his own sperm to impregnate her in 1980 after promising her the sperm would come from an anonymous donor.

Dr Christopher Herndon, a former University of Washington doctor, voluntarily gave up his medical license in November after a former patient accused him of secretly fathering one of her children, according to a Washington Medical Commission report, which Forbes reported.

In October, an Idaho woman said in a lawsuit that she visited Dr David Claypool in Spokane, Washington for help getting pregnant in 1989 and was assured a sperm donor would be chosen based on traits she selected, but 33 years later, her daughter learned of her biological father’s identity through 23&me DNA test, as per The Associated Press.

Forbes reports that a woman in Vermont filed a second lawsuit against Dr John Boyd Coates III, claiming he was attempting to evade paying the $2.2 million judgment she had obtained against him for damages stemming from the conception of her daughter over 40 years prior. Cheryl Rousseau used two DNA testing firms and discovered decades after her birth that Coates was her child's father.

A second party paid $100,000 to resolve a comparable 2021 issue with Coates, according to the report which cited VTDigger.

A lawsuit alleging that Dr Morris Wortman used his sperm to impregnate several women in the 1980s was still pending when he passed away in May. The daughter of one of his former patients discovered, through ancestry DNA testing, that she had at least nine half-siblings.

With inputs from agencies