A 35-year-old man has been arrested for having intercourse with his 13-year-old daughter. The court has sent him to you. The intercourse took place with the mother’s knowledge and the daughter’s consent. How do you handle the situation?
While the possibility that a 13-year-old girl would consent to having sex with her father with her mother’s full knowledge, sounds unlikely, I would approach the family as if what happened was not unusual. I would do the best I could to create an atmosphere of understanding empathy. I’d begin by trying to find out the circumstances. Was this an initiation? Whose idea was it? Is the father a stepfather? (It’s quite unusual for biological fathers to have an erotic interest in their children (Westermark 1894)). Why did the mother agree to this happening? Do she and her husband have a satisfactory sexual relationship? Why did the daughter consent? Prior to this act of sexual intercourse had she had erotic contact with the father? What’s her social world like? Does she have close friends? Does she have a boyfriend?
Next, I would try to find out the beliefs and values of the family. Are they new to America? Are they members of a subculture in which adult-child sex is considered a reasonable activity? Do they associate with others who also engage in such activities? Prior to it coming to the court, did they consider what had been happening as normal?
After developing a sense of the social and cultural aspects of the situation, we’d discuss legal aspects. How did the case come to the courts? Did the daughter tell someone who is a mandated reporter? Did she want this activity to stop? Do they all understand that what happened is illegal in the United States? Apart from addressing the legal consequences, what do each of them want? Do the daughter and father have an interest in continuing to have sexual contact? Does the mother want this to continue?
I’d then explain mainstream American beliefs and understandings. I’d discuss that 13-year-old girls are typically considered not mature enough to be having sexual intercourse (Haroian 1994). In California when an adult has sex with a child or adolescent under 18 it is considered statutory rape. (In other states the age of consent ranges from 15-18.) The law does not recognize that underage girls (and boys) might consent to having sex. Under conditions of adult-child sex, the adult is considered the perpetrator (subject to imprisonment) and the child is presumed to be an abused victim. Some psychologists believe that adult-child sex can disrupt the balance of power in a family. If a child can successfully seduce it’s parents, then parental authority can be undermined. When a parent seduces a child it is generally believed that the child was coerced and that its self-esteem may be compromised. American parents are expected to present themselves to their children as solid, stable and reliable; eroticism is presumed to be too volatile an arena to mutually engage. Children are supposed to wait until their later teens or twenties to express their sexuality and then only with an age appropriate mate.
I would then explain that all cultures have rules about adult-child sexuality, but they’re certainly not all the same. In some places like rural Mexico it is considered normal for a mother to calm her baby son down by either masturbating or fellating him (Taylor 2002). Amongst the Sambia and Ettoro of Papua New Guinea boys believe that in order to successfully grow up, they must ingest mature semen by fellating the important adult men in their villages (Herdt 1984).
Despite that humans are supposed to be hard wired for incest avoidance, e.g. we’re not supposed to find the close relatives we grow up with to be sexually interesting, there are countless cultures where “incest” openly occurs (Leavitt 1990). In some cultures it is considered desirable to marry one’s first cousin while in 31 states of the U.S., such unions would be considered incestuous. Perhaps the reason human cultures have had so many (different) rules about incest is because deep down engaging whatever is taboo may be quite exciting.
In the mid-1970s author Warren Farrell began to research a book on incest in America. Rather than presuming that it was a dangerous, psycho-emotionally debilitating experience, he invited adults who had experienced incest and who had not sought therapy to contact him (Nobile 1977). His findings that were confirmed by Kinsey and Pomeroy suggested that in many cases, especially if there was no outside intervention, the “survivor” often enjoyed the experience. They enjoyed the attention and often reported that adult sexual expertise was preferable to the fumbling of fellow teens.
While the sexual revolution of the 1970s may have opened up the gates to greater acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, swinging and BDSM, incest remains a very charged taboo in America. Farrell (1989) reported that despite that he’d invested several years researching the positive side of incest, his manager determined that if he were to openly publish his findings he would forever be a persona non grata. In quest of a peaceful and prosperous life, he shoved his manuscript in a drawer and went on write bestsellers including Why Men Are The Way They Are (Farrell, 1986).
My final suggestions to the family would be to seriously evaluate what they want to do in lieu of the cultural and political climate they live in. While Farrell reported on families such as themselves who felt they all profited from a shared erotic connection, this still remains a huge American taboo. Being that their case ended up in court, it’s likely that the daughter told someone who was a mandated reporter. Research does show that adolescent girls are the least likely to consider father-daughter sex to be a positive experience (Nobile 1977 and Haroian 1979). If this is true for the 13-year-old in question, then I’d suggest sexual contact between the father and daughter stop and that the family seek therapeutic intervention. If the family prefers to keep it a “family matter,” I’d remind them of the very inhospitable political-sexual climate in which we live and to do everything they can to be sure no one ever finds out about it again. Finally, if they consider it to be a single-time initiation (which is common in a number of world cultures), I’d suggest the family pursue a more hands-off approach, using age appropriate books and videos to further their daughters sex education. In the end I’d remind then that American rules don’t make any more sense than any other culture’s rules, but being that they live here in American, it’s necessary to either live by them or be very careful to not get caught again.
Farrell, W. Why Men Are They Way They Are. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986.
--- Personal Communication, Los Angeles, CA. October 1989.
Haroian, L. “Sexual Development in Children and Adolescents,” Workbook Part 1 for Associate in Sex Education and Clinical Sexology Certificate, Appendix A. San Francisco: Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, 1994
Haroian, L. “Contemporary Issues and Questions of Incest and Sex Education” videotapes 5 and 6, San Francisco: Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, February, 1979.
Herdt, G. Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Leavitt, G. C. “Sociobiological explanations of incest avoidance: A critical review of evidential claims, American Anthropologist, 92, 973, 1990.
Nobile, P. “Incest: The Last Taboo,” Penthouse, December 1977.
Taylor, C. Sexual Anthropology Class Lecture, San Francisco: Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, June 2002.
Westermark, E. The History of Human Marriage. New York: Macmillan, 1894