posted by admin on Mar 27
The average (median) offense was committed by an offender thirty-nine years old. The range in age, however, is quite wide: from twenty-seven to the late sixties.
As far as their marital status is concerned, the picture is like that of the incest offenders vs. children: 84 per cent of the offenders were married and with their wives present, 10 per cent were married but their wives were absent at the time of the offense, and the remaining 6 per cent were separated, divorced, or widowed.
There is nothing remarkable about their previous histories of sex offense. For nearly two thirds this was their first offense; for one fifth it was their second. One can only say that while they are more sex offense prone than the incest offenders vs. adults and less so than the incest offenders vs. children, they are intermediate in this respect when compared to all the sex-offender groups.
They are similarly undistinguished with respect to their mental state prior to the offense—only a moderate number had had prior mental treatment and/or institutionalization or were evaluated as neurotic or psychotic.
While alcohol played a strong role in the offenses of the incest offender vs. children, the incest offenders vs. minors and the incest offenders vs. adults are alike in that three quarters of their constituents were sober and about one fifth were drunk at the time of offense, these proportions being moderate ones in comparison to all sex offenders. Drugs played no consequential part in the incest offenses vs. minors.
Considering the nature of the offense, it may be at first surprising that some 6 per cent of them involved a third person who constituted an accomplice. None of the other incest offenders had such copartners. However, the surprise vanishes when one learns that the copartners were all wives of the offenders, who were charged with abetting or allowing the activity. The question remains: why of all incest offenders is this true of only the offenders vs. minors? The answer is probably that in cases of incest offenses vs. adults the authorities felt that the wives’ attitudes were essentially irrelevant and that their control of and responsibility for the grown daughters were much less than they would be for younger daughters; hence the wives who knew Of the offenses and kept silent were held to be morally reprehensible but not meriting legal punishment. In the incest offenses vs. children, as we have seen, the mothers tended to be more protective of their daughters, and collusion in the offenses was less likely to occur. But one can envision the mother of a just-pubescent daughter rationalizing that incest at least kept the deplorable sexuality within the family and saved the daughter from scandalous promiscuity with her peers (and also relieved the mother of part of what she regarded as her marital sexual chores). However, this rationalization would scarcely apply to prepubertal daughters.
A moderate number of the incest offenses vs. minors were clearly premeditated (84 per cent); few (3 per cent) were opportunistic; and a relatively large proportion (8 per cent) were committed when the offender was rum compos mentis as a result of serious emotional upset and/or alcohol. As anticipated, the great majority (90 per cent) of offenses occurred in the family home.
In only about 54 cases can the duration of the incestuous activity be ascertained even roughly. The official records and the convicted men often give duration data in some form—e.g., “for the last two years” or “since she was eleven years old.” Actual frequency data are, except for those cases of isolated, rare incidents, uncommon and vague. In 43 per cent of the cases, including nine men with only one such act, the incest was confined to a period of six months or less. Fifteen per cent had incestuous relationships for between seven and 12 months; 18 per cent between 13 months and two years; 7 per cent between 25 months and four years; 11 per cent between 49 months and six years; and 6 per cent for more than six years.
The average daughter was just fourteen at the time of offense, but the number of cases was rather evenly distributed in each of the years from twelve to fifteen inclusive. This suggests that the offenders had no strong age preferences, but simply took what was available. However, it is worth noting that in at least 13 cases the incest began when the daughter was less than twelve years old and continued for at least several years before the father was arrested and convicted.
The sexual behavior involved in the offenses included coitus in about 72 per cent of the cases—a proportion larger than that for the incest offenses vs. children but smaller than that for the incest offenses vs. adults.1 Since coitus was obtained more often, there was less emphasis on genital manipulation and mouth-genital contact. Offenses consisting only of simple nongenital petting are rare (not quite 3 per cent), for physical contact of this sort falls almost within socially acceptable limits and hence social difficulties and convictions are seldom the outcome. Moreover, few incest offenders would be willing to limit themselves to minor petting.
With a crime such as incest, especially when the daughter has not reached the age of consent, the question of the degree to which she voluntarily participated is seldom raised. Consequently, we have the official record of the daughter’s participation in only about half of the cases. Both the officials and the offenders agree that in 12 per cent of the cases the daughter resisted her father’s sexual advances. In nearly half of the offenses the fathers claimed their daughters either encouraged them or were passive, while the official record is that they resisted. In one third of the cases both sources of information agree that the daughters were encouraging or passive. Generally speaking, the girls were distinctly less cooperative than those involved with nonincestoffenders vs. minors, but still showed far less resistance than the victims of the aggressors vs. minors.
Although the daughters may have been displeased, or at least initially displeased, by their fathers’ sexual advances, there was little force or threat involved in the relationship; these elements are lacking in from 83 to 86 per cent of the cases. In only two instances was major physical force used, and cases of threat may be counted on the fingers of two hands.
The probability that the offense would be brought to the attention of law-enforcement officers hinged almost wholly upon the silence of the daughters. As is usual in incest offenses, the wife reported the matter to the police in about half of the cases—a percentage less than that of the incest offenders vs. children but more than that of the incest offenders vs. adults. Slightly over one fifth of the offenses were reported by relatives and friends—essentially the same number as in the case of the incest offenders vs. children. The girl herself brought the incest to official attention in about one offense in ten. The remaining 16 per cent consists of a miscellany—police accidentally learning of the incest while investigating other matters, social workers discovering the situation, etc.
In something between one half and three fifths of the cases the offenders made full confessions, and another 11 to 12 per cent gave qualified admissions of guilt. Denials ranged from 21 to 29 per cent, depending on to whom the denial was made—to us or to the authorities. This is a high denial figure, though surpassed by that of the incest offenders vs. adults. Why the percentage who deny their guilt increases as the daughters’ ages increase is puzzling. Perhaps the more forgivable the offense is in terms of age, the less the burden of guilt and hence there is less inclination to confess, but this is sheer speculation. The denials generally involved lengthy and rather illogical stories, often with paranoid overtones, and frequently there were references to the daughter’s physical maturity, as though the offender were offering a mitigating circumstance in case his denial was not believed. The customary small percentage (5 per cent in this instance) claimed to have been so disturbed or intoxicated that they were personally unable to claim either innocence or guilt.
*149\161\2*
