DNA Tests are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/dna-tests-incest/677791/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/Y35uu

When Steve Edsel was a boy, his adoptive parents kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings in their bedroom closet. He would ask for it sometimes, poring over the headlines about his birth. Headlines like this: “Mother Deserts Son, Flees From Hospital,” Winston-Salem Journal, December 30, 1973.

The mother in question was 14 years old, “5 feet 6 with reddish brown hair,” and she had come to the hospital early one morning with her own parents. They gave names that all turned out to be fake. And by 8 o’clock that evening, just hours after she gave birth, they were gone. In a black-and-white drawing of the mother, based on nurses’ recollections, she has round glasses and sideswept bangs. Her mouth is grimly set.

The abandoned boy was placed in foster care with a local couple, the Edsels, who later adopted him. Steve knew all of this growing up. His parents never tried to hide his origins, and they always gave him the scrapbook when he asked. It wasn’t until he turned 14, though, that he really began to wonder about his birth mom. “I’m 14,” he thought at the time. “This is how old she was when she had me.”

Steve began looking for her in earnest in his 20s, but the paper trail quickly ran cold. When he turned 40, he told his wife, Michelle, that he wanted to give the search one last go. This was in 2013. AncestryDNA had started selling mail-in test kits the previous year, so he bought one. His matches at first seemed unpromising—some distant relatives—but when he began posting in a Facebook group for people seeking out biological family, he got connected to a genetic genealogist named CeCe Moore. Moore specializes in finding people via distant DNA matches, a technique made famous in 2018 when it led to the capture of the Golden State Killer. But back then, genetic genealogy was still new, and Moore was one of its pioneers. She volunteered to help Steve.

*snip*

[RandySF]

1. Do the genes wear red caps?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. I find it really frustrating when people see stories like this and make a knee-jerk MAGA comment.

People raping family members is as old as families. How much better it would be if we could address the root cause instead of using it as a bludgeon to make a cheap-ass political point.

[FirstLight]

5. thank you

Human tragedy is not just something we can blow off and assign to those we think less of...

[Ms. Toad]

7. Thank you.

You saved me the trouble of responding in a similar fashion. I spent a decade in pretty much every volunteer position (including board member and trainer) at a rape crisis center in a major metropolitan area. I can tell you from that decade of direct experience - rapists come in all political affiliations, class, gender, race and religion (or lack thereof).

[ShazzieB]

11. This times 1000!

Such comments are pointless, useless, and a complete waste of time. Not to mention hurtful to those who have been abused (or conceived) in this manner.

[democrank]

12. Thank you, WhiskeyGrinder.

Incest is such a horrible, life altering thing. I’m 78 years old….a lot of time has passed….and just seeing that word made me cry.

[Orrex]

19. Besides which, MAGA fuckheads prefer to sodomize livestock.

[Raine]

24. Yes exactly. nt

[FirstLight]

4. Fascinating...

I'm in my last year studying Anthropology and it would be interesting to see how this played out in ancient times as well.

I can vaguely recall some groups of poeple found in Ice Age times who had shared DNA, but it was like they traded first-relatives off between tribes/clans to prevent direct incest. LIke they had either seen birth defects or maybe culturally they had developed enough to have that be a taboo?

[madaboutharry]

6. These stories are tragic and have caused many a lifetime of suffering.

It is hard to think about the despair these people experience, most of all the mothers.

[marble falls]

8. I think that incidence of incest is lot higher than anyone knows. It's the dirtiest secret the US has.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

9. It is probably not limited by geography.

[robbob]

21. I remember a radio documentary I heard years ago

Discussing the cultural history of incest. Apparently back in the old old days (1700’s? 1800’s?) it was quite common in middle and lower class households, where extended families lived under one roof, that after one grandparent died it was common for the remaining grandparent (often the grandfather) to grab a child to sleep with so they could “keep warm” at night. Made me shudder to realize pedophillia was once considered “normal” ( the way the documentary presented it).

You know, we’ve still got a long way to go (on many issues), but at least there are some things once considered normal that we now find morally repugnant.

[70sEraVet]

25. I was thinking, as i was reading the article, that there is another type of incest...

that wouldn't show up in the dna data banks as an incestuous relationship. A child produced by a stepfather wouldnt carry the tell-tale dna signature of incest that the people in the article are dealing with. Yet it is still incest, and so that is yet another portion of an unknown quantity added to the percentages.
And, as was pointed out in the article, this is ONLY talking about those incestuous relations that resulted in an offspring that grew to maturity. Hardly a measure of all incestuous relationships.
The emotional damage that has been done must be on an astronomical scale.
(My wife, a survivor of incest, often SCREAMS in her sleep. I hate to think about how many others do that, or how many others found tragic ways to escape from the pain)

[Raine]

26. NOT just the US, it's the dirtiest secret in any country & culture! nt

[Solly Mack]

10. K&R

[twodogsbarking]

13. Oh shit, I may come back to this. Some things are difficult to stomach.

[Duncanpup]

14. This is heartbreaking

I feel for this man

[angrychair]

15. Reminds me

Of that Folgers commercial parody with the brother and sister.

[Leith]

16. My heart goes out to his biological mother

She had a rough, rough life. I tried to imagine how she felt when she received the certified letters from the baby she birthed and abandoned so many years ago. Just guessing, but it all probably came flooding back.

I hope she finds comfort in knowing that the baby boy accepts her and showed her that his life turned out well. Her cousin has accepted him, but she seems to be shielding his mother. That's okay - even after all these years, it must be difficult beyond my comprehension for her to remember that time in her life.

I hope she found peace.

[Fla Dem]

17. Quite the story. I can't imagine what either Steve and his Natural Mom went through.

So glad he had support and was eventually welcomed by his biological family. While sad, I can understand why his biological mother kept her distance. I can't imagine the psychological trauma she lived with most of her life,

[sky_masterson]

18. I've used the same techniques to solve three mysteries

Found out my Business partners Mom was the result of an affair and found her late father, I also found my girlfriends late adopted fathers parents. It's fun doing reverse genealogy. It either comes together really easy and quick or it can take months/years to get there

[niyad]

20. Heartbroken KNR for all the victims and survivors.

[ShazzieB]

23. When I was 18, a friend of mine learned she was conceived through incest.

She had been raised by her grandmother, who she had believed was her mother. Her actual mother was a woman she had believed was her older sister, impregnated by an uncle as a teenager. She found all this out by accident, when she was looking through some papers of her mother's (for what reason, I'm not sure), and was incandescent with rage about having been lied to all her life.

I'm sure the whole thing was awful for her mother and grandmother, too. Tney had been put in a terrible situation by that evil uncle and chose to keep the child in the family the only way they knew how. I know for a fact that they both loved her dearly, and I can imagine them wrestling with the situation as my friend was growing up, wondering if they should ever tell her the truth (and if so, when and HOW?) or if they could somehow get away with never telling her.

When she found out on her own, they said they had intended to tell her at some point, but she was still angry. I can't really blame her, but I honestly can't blame them, either. It was an impossible situation, and it happened at a time when such things were NEVER spoken of. (My friend was born in 1950 and learned the truth about her parentage in 1968 or so.)

We fell out of touch, due to me moving to a different part of the state, and I haven't talked to her in decades, so I have no idea what the long term effects of this discovery may have been. I like to think they got through it somehow, that after the initial shock wore off, her relationships with both of these women who loved her so much were able to recover. At least I hope so.

[Ms. Toad]

27. I know the article uses the term incest. But that term whitewashes rape.

The vast majority of what is being discussed (and specifically what happened to the main person in the story) is family rape. Anytime a parent, parental figure, older uncle/aunt has sex with a child - regardless of whether the perpetrator (or even the victim) says there was consent. If a child does not have the ablity to say, "no," and make it stick, then his/her "yes" is meaningless beause they have no real choice.

Using the term incest whitewashes this reality.

(There are siblings who explore sex with each other, where the power dynamic is not present. But another ugly reality is that in many of these situations a parental figure (or someone else) has already raped one of the two - and that one is practicing what s/he learned from the person who raped them.

It has been a long time since I even heard family rape referred to as incest. In the anti-rape circles it has been referred to as family rape since sometime in the '80s. It is an unpleasant surprise to see it resurrected. I hope we'll work on burying it again.

[sanatanadharma]

28. Incest, it is biblical ...

Incest, it is biblical I am told, some story in the popular early parts of the Bible.
I am also told incest is a searched porn genre.

[genxlib]

29. My wife does Ancestry research

And she has found a lot of dark secrets underlying what people thought of as normal family life.

It turns out that most family trees are twisted and knarled.

Some people think that uncovering these kinds of secrets are shameful. While I feel for the victims, it is healthy for society to root this shit out. The good old days were never that good. Just secretive.