Perhaps one in every ten of the incest offenders vs. children can be classified as of the drunken variety—a variety that seemingly exists in all sex-offender types. These are men whose offense (usually one offense only) occurred only when they were extremely intoxicated.

Another variety we have seen before is the amoral delinquent: about 10 per cent of the incest offenders vs. children might be so labeled. These men differ from the other incest offenders in having more criminal records and in being more aggressive. The amoral delinquent tends to domineer in the home, and the wife and children fear him. His incestuous activity is based not so much upon an inability to obtain gratification from adults as it is upon propinquity and ease of access.

Three other varieties exist but appear to be rare: pedophiles whose sexual interest in children leads to incest with their own children, mental defectives, and psychotics. The latter two varieties are more apt to be found in mental institutions than in jails and prisons, and since our interviewing was primarily with persons “sane” enough to be subject to legal conviction (including the charge of sexual psychopathy which for all practical purposes is a conviction), our sample is somewhat biased. An example of the psychotic variety is a man aged thirty-two at the time of the offense. His intelligence measured high average and he had supported himself by clerical and skilled work. His future difficulties were forecast by his discharge from the military for psycho-neurosis. Subsequently he took to spending much of his leisure time practicing singing in nearby uninhabited foothill areas, clad in swimming trunks. When any females approached or came into view he drove them away by either exposing his genitalia or throwing stones. An attempted rape finally grew out of this hostility. On his return home after his imprisonment for this offense, his wife refused coitus and told him she contemplated divorce; this led him to seek solace in alcohol. The combination of emotional upset, deprivation, and alcohol imposed-upon a psychotic base led to his incest offense.

By far the most common variety, accounting for about three quarters of the incest offenders vs. children, is what we have termed the dependent variety. These men are generally ineffectual in their social relationships, quite dependent upon their wives for emotional and often financial support, shy, rather easily upset, and usually in the throes of marital discord. Their employment record is often poor with frequent job changes and periods of unemployment. They are not criminal: many have no criminal record and those with records generally reveal only minor offenses such as drunken driving, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, petty theft, and so forth. When depressed they tend to drink, and their few aggressive outbursts and also their initial incestuous behavior tend to be associated with such escapist drinking. The range of intelligence is wide, running from dull up to IQs of 130. Intelligence is no panacea: even those offenders with IQs well above average display a remarkable lack of insight concerning themselves, their marital situations, and their offenses. Indeed, the only contribution a superior intelligence seems to make is to facilitate the development of rationalizations, some of which are pathetically illogical. The dependent variety of offender nearly always begins his incestuous activity during a period of marital stress: about two thirds or somewhat more rated their marriages as unhappy or at least more unhappy than happy at the time the incestuous behavior began. Once the double taboo (age and relationship) has been broken, the offender almost without exception continues the activity until arrest. Guilt feelings, which are often intense at first, are later assuaged by attributing a more active role to the child, by pointing out that force was not used, and by avoiding certain techniques—chiefly vaginal coitus. Since vaginal coitus with a child is difficult and painful to the child, abstention is more often due to these facts than to any claimed moral reservation. A not uncommon guilt-relieving rationalization is the sex education excuse. This ranges from an embryonic version (“she came in when I was urinating and was curious about my penis”) to elaborate programs involving teaching sexual techniques complete with male orgasm.

In some cases (the number cannot be determined since our questions and those of the prison system psychologists were not designed to elicit specific information) there appears to have developed a pathological obsession with sex. This expresses itself in much time spent in sexual fantasy, in talking too much about sexual matters, in increasing or attempting to increase marital coitus markedly, in seeking increased visual stimuli, in unnecessary nudity bordering on exhibition, and in preoccupation with mouth-genital contact. One often gains the impression that these men, frustrated in many areas of life, seek happiness by sexual overcompensation.

The “normal,” or at least the “nonincestuous” male, when fed up with his life and unhappy marital state, seeks and usually obtains relief from stress in a number of ways that society deplores yet tolerates: he gets drunk; he discharges his aggression in barroom or party brawls; he finds heterosexual gratification either from prostitutes, pickups, or a more stable affair or with a mistress. The incest offender seems unable to utilize these time-honored methods effectively. He drinks, to be sure, but it does not seem to provide an escape or catharsis. His hostile feelings, if physically expressed at all, are expressed toward his children or wife rather than toward other adult females or males. Lastly, and most importantly, the dependent variety of incest offender does not obtain, or often even seek, coitus with adult females other than his wife. At least two thirds were not engaging in extramarital sexual activity at the time of their offense, and the remaining one third or less generally sought it with low frequencies better measured in terms of per year than per month.

A fairly typical case of the dependent variety is seen in a thirty-seven-year-old truck driver whose wife also worked to help support the family. The marriage encountered various difficulties: he suspected his wife of infidelity and frequently alluded to this, there were arguments over the children, he began drinking more, and at one point the wife filed for divorce. Sexual troubles were also involved: the husband strongly desired mouth-genital contact (both cunnilingus and fellation), the wife refused, and finally the frequency of coitus was reduced to one quarter of what it had been. The man did not seek extramarital coitus, but turned toward his son and daughter from whom he obtained the mouth-genital contact he desired, using threats, spankings, and bribery to achieve this goal. He later confessed to the officials that he had always felt inferior and insecure in life.

A somewhat more extreme case in which financial dependency and obsession with sex played an important part is that of a man, thirty-three at the time, who worked only sporadically at semiskilled labor. Relatives and his wife had to assist the family financially. He and his wife became emotionally estranged and while he had formerly desired coitus daily or more often he gradually lost interest in her and the coital frequency dropped to once or twice per month. He did not compensate by extramarital affairs (although he tried to capitalize on the opportunities afforded him as a bus driver), but became involved with his daughter when she was about eight years old. This continued for nearly four years. The wife told of how her husband complained of illness to avoid work and lay around the house reading comic books and watching television with his daughter. After the wife not only complained of what was even to her eyes an incestuous situation, but had a minister speak to her husband, he promised to behave. Soon, however, he was often to be found in a darkened room before the television set with his daughter on his lap, hugging and kissing. On other occasions they watched television while lying together on a couch under a blanket. Actual coitus was reserved for those occasions when the wife was away shopping or visiting friends and relatives. By the time the girl was eleven she was physically nearly mature and Was functioning fully as a wife—not only sexually, but in assuming household and farm chores. Indeed, the man openly stated, “My daughter was a wife to me.” The pathological obsession with sex was also seen in his desire, when having mouth-genital contact with his daughter, to observe it in a mirror, and in his attempt to arrange coitus between his daughter and the family dog.

In addition to the extreme egocentricity and dependency of this man as shown by the psychologists, some other curious and probably significant facts are to be seen in this mans history. At about the age of puberty he was deeply impressed by a local scandal involving incest and pregnancy. Fear of premarital pregnancy and scandal was the major factor in his postponing premarital coitus until age nineteen and essentially limiting it to his one girl who did become pregnant and force the marriage. This fear may also account for his turning early to animals for coitus and confining his activities with human females to petting. He was troubled before marriage by erectile impotence when attempting coitus with humans, and was successful only with the young (fifteen-year-old) crippled girl whom he impregnated and married. In fact, he seemed to be potent only with creatures whom he could consider inferior because of their species (the animals) or age (his wife, daughter, and two sixteen-year-old girls).

*134\161\2*

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.