In a study of sexual abuse in New York City covering the period 1966 to 1969, the so-called victims varied in age from a low of seventeen to a high of sixty-eight years of age. Almost 40 percent of the cases involved persons closely related to the victim. The offender was a stranger in less than 25 percent of the cases studied. In many cases, the offender could rely on his pre-existing relationship with the victim to gain compliance. This is especially true since the offender was older than the victim, and in many cases, they were relatives or close friends prior to the encounter. In approximately 40 percent of the cases, the sexual encounters were repeated over periods of time ranging up to seven years. In roughly a third of the cases the victim was an active participant in the sexual experience, but their participation does not necessarily imply consent. Sixty percent were physically coerced, and many were enticed by offers of money or other gifts.
Many incestuous relationships occur at homes where the social worker or the
police officer never have occasion to enter. For example, the college student, if asked to
write a term paper in marriage and family classes, often chooses to write candidly of
his own sexual encounters currently or from childhood. Not infrequently students
report on incestuous encounters during childhood, preadolescence, or adolescence that
have never come to public attention. This is true for students from all socio-economic
classes.
As reported by Professor Herb Seal (personal correspondence), based on
numerous autobiographies collected over a number of years, most incestuous
encounters are between brothers and sisters, followed by uncle and niece, stepfather
and daughter, father and daughter, aunt and nephew, with no cases of mother-son
incestuous encounters. When reporting on incestuous encounters, most students do not
write negatively about these experiences. One girl wrote, "I'm so glad my first sexual
experience was with someone who loved and cared for me and treated me tenderly."
She was writing of an encounter with her uncle. A boy, writing of intimate experience
(not including coitus) with his slightly older sister writes, "I remember no
embarrassment about the act, nor revolution at the incestuous overtones. I only feared
that my brother had seen us naked together." Some do, of course, find the experience to
be threatening or frightening even though it never does come to the attention of public
authorities.
One night when I was thirteen, I woke from a very happy dream to
discover that I was being fondled by my brother. I was very scared
and pretended that I was asleep. It was usual for me to fall asleep
with the light on and he would turn it off every night when he came
in. I was so scared that I slept on the other side of the bed for a few
weeks and stuffed the side near the door with pillows. I would
scream out in the night and wake my parents. I think they realized
what was going on, and soon the nightly visits stopped.
Adolescent-Parent Sexual Encounters
The family experiences of the adolescent are an important factor in establishing
the control the adolescent exercises over their behavior. The sex-related experiences,
as such, of the adolescent with their parents are almost exclusively through parental
example, through verbal communication and admonition, and disciplinary (restrictive
or covertly permissive). In other words, the sexual encounters involving adolescents
and their parents are seldom incestuous or overtly permissive in the sense that the
parent openly encourages intimate sexual encounters between the adolescent and the
adolescent's peers.
Adolescents are, by and large, highly sensitive to the attitude of
their peers in regard to many things, but conformity to parental norms is also
prevalent in dilemmas posed in what are perceived to be important and difficult areas
of life choices (Brittain, 1963, p. 389). Seventy-one percent of all adolescents report
that they do not talk "pretty freely" about sex, yet 50 percent of boys and 63 percent of
girls would like to talk with their parents about sex (Sorensen, 1973, p. 71, 389). The
parent generation traditionally finds much fault with adolescents and adolescent
society. What this means is that adolescents are often adversely criticized by those
whom they respect greatly (Kluckhohn and Murray, 1948; Sorensen, 1973).