Incest Father
May 5, 2008 by archanaraghuram
Hello everybody,
I apologize for the long gap in my writing. I have been going through a rocky phase with respect to my health. I have not been able to write as regularly as I wanted. Thank you for commenting regularly and keeping my blog alive.
Ever since the story of Josef Fritzl broke out, I have been reeling under shock. I am sure most of you must have heard this story of a 73 year old man who imprisoned his 18 year old daughter in cellar and sexually abused her for 20 years. He bore 7 children with her, one of whom died. He had been sexually abusing his daughter from when she was 11 years old. I find it so impossible to comprehend how a father can do this to his own daughter.
I like to believe that he must be completely mad and these kinds of incidents are not something which occurs commonly. However, this illusion was shattered when I spoke to my sister about this incident. She is a doctor and used to work in a rural hospital during her internship. She was not at all shocked by the story. She said that fathers abusing daughters and brothers abusing sisters is very common in rural areas. She also said that she does not believe it is limited to rural areas. In urban areas people tend to be more informed and easily avoid getting caught.
My dad, who also is a doctor, joined the conversation and the stories he told me made my stomach churn. A gynecologist told him about a 11 year old girl who came to her. She was bought by her parents because she was throwing up often. When the doctor examined her she found that the girl was 8 months pregnant. On further enquiries she found that her own brother was the father of the baby. What was even more shocking was attitude of the parents. They discovered pregnancy on 22nd Dec and 25th was Christmas. They would be visiting their relatives and they wanted the pregnancy terminated before that so that their daughter would be presentable when the guests arrived. From what I understood, they went through some illegal procedure which involves injecting something into the uterus that kills the fetus and then removing the dead fetus.
Another friend of my dad told him about a young girl who was accompanied by her father. She had scars on both her hands like someone had slashed them with a knife. He requested the father to step out and tried to find out what the problem was. Apparently, her mother had passed away a few years back and since then her father has been sexually abusing her. The doctor called the father back and confronted him. Can you believe what that man said, “She is my fruit and I can enjoy her. It is my right”
To me, relationship between father and daughter is very sacred. If you cannot trust your own father how can you trust any other man? Is it just me or are you also shocked by these stories. I really want to understand why things like this happen. If it is such a common occurrence then surely there must be something fundamentally wrong with our society.
Amit has some interesting insights into the subject. He asks if we should make concensual incest legal. Read his post more more details
Welcome back Archana. Incest is utterly disgusting and shocking to the say the least, especially of the type you wrote about in your post. I am sure what your sister and father said is true. However, given the social stigma attached to incest, which is even greater that the stigma we attach to most other othings, i find it difficult to believe that incest is that pervasive. For us to truly understand how pervasive it is, we need some more evidence (surveys etc). Otherwise, we will be forming an incorrect conclusion.
Thank you Sukumar. I also heard another startling piece of statistics, only 27% of rape cases are convicted in India because most of the rape victims are reluctant to testify due to the stigma attached.
I hope you are right. I hope these are just aberrations.
Archana,
Thanks. That 27% statistic i fully believe. I am sure many rape victims don’t complain and even if they did, they may not receive justice, thanks to the male chauvinistic system that exists in our country.
Welcome back Archana ! Was wondering about the long hiatus. Yes incest is a taboo topic everywhere. It is inhuman on the part of a father to violate his own children. Imagine the scars the child is going to bear throughout her life. Terrible !
Thanks for remembering Krishnan.
Good to see you back Archana! Was missing you in the blogging world. Hope you are doing well now.
I read this story too and I was so depressed about it. It is shocking to know that such cases are not rare but happen in our society. No words to describe this behavior. It is utterly disgusting.
Thank you Saraswathi. Yes, utterly disgusting.
Welcome back Archana.
When I heard about this news, I was under the impression that this is something which rarely happens. Your post is a sort of eye opener. I am still not able to understand why such an incidence could have happened in a country in which people are not as sexually oppressed as in India? Is it a pure case of mental imbalance? Is it just so easy for our carnal desires to take a precedence to our moral and ethical values?
Hi Archana
I wish draconic laws were in place to ensure such deranged folks are stoned to death. The number of such reports has drastically gone up in the last month and half. Delhi and back home in chennai too reports are throwing light on people who pretend to be holier than thou. They should not be given the option to continue their lives.
I shirked when I read about the crude methods adopted on 22nd Dec to make the girl presentable on 25th Dec.
Amit - Thank you. From what I heard it is quite prevelent in the west too. I heard some mind blowing statistic - 1 in 8 children abused by family members!!!
Gopal - Completely agree. There should be no sympathy for such people.
[...] Fritzl did is something unpardonable as it was forced and ruthless. While reading Archana’s post, I realised that such incidences are not something uncommon, although not so extreme in nature but [...]
This is indeed shocking, Archana!I don’t quite know how to express my anger and disgust on this topic!
Ranjini/ Suda - Thank you for your comments.
Even I wonder what will happen to these children.
Archana,
Yes - it was horrifying to hear this news.
And I can believe the 27% statistic with regards to rape conviction in India.
And Sukumar is absolutely right - the male chauvinistic society combined with social stigma and perhaps burden of proof being on the women leads to this pathetic number.
Hopefully, DNA tests will become mandatory in such situations.
Ganesh
Thank you Ganesh. I hope laws are made more stringent and some sort of privacy protection is offered to the victims.
a year back, i met a women’s Hostel which takes care of destitute women (i dont want to name it in open forum) .. when i visited them, they told lot of acute stories.. one of that is this incest story.. the girl had a child out of her cousin brother.. and now the child is taken care of by the hostel.. the hostel warden told its the rarest of rare in her entire life of 50 years..
Incest do happen in india,.. but its rare, as deliberate and barbaric as in the case of fritzl..
This is where the collapse of ethics and culture leads to..
Today, we have films full of obscenes and rampant sexually vulgar scenes.. We as an adult can differentiate this.. But, how can the child receive such films?
I missed out a word in the following phrase.. i am rephrasing below.
Incest do happen in india,.. but its rare, and NOT as deliberate and barbaric as in the case of fritzl..
Thanks Senthil. Even Sukumar has expressed similar sentiment,that it is not very common in India.
Given the kind of stigma and secrecy we associate with such incidents it is really hard to know.
Welcome back!
Archana, I studied and researched sexual abuse in the family for four years in college. The things I learned were shocking. Sexual abuse in families is prevalent in most cultures and many problems go unreported until the victim becomes an adult.
It is not uncommon for mothers to know about it and ignore the problem because they are financially dependent on their husbands. I believe that those mothers are not worthy of their children and should be punished along side their husbands. They are co-abusers.
Sometimes the victim is a infant or toddler less than three years old. In these cases, the child requires reconstructive surgery and may be physically damaged for life. In all cases, the children (male and female) are mentally damaged for life.
One thing that struck me was a statement from a psychiatrist who said therapy for the perpetrator was a clinical cop out. He said that if they could get to the man before his first act, there was some chance for rehabilitation. If the act had already taken place, there was no cure. If this isn’t a case to condone and even encourage brutal capital punishment, I don’t know what is. In this case, I think Islamic law has got it right. Men who do this should die.
Good point Archana…
I cannot but agree with Janet that such people should be punished..I mean a first male a girl trusts is her dad…if he breaks the trust then punishments have to be stringent.
Janet - Thank you very much. Would love to know more about your research. How many cultures did you study? Did you find any correlation between punishments and prevalence of the crime? Is it less prevalent in islamic world?
Karthik - Thanks a lot. Completely agree with you and Janet on the punishment bit. There is tendency these days, to pass of lot of crime as mental illness. It is high time we put our foot down and recognize a terrible crime for what it is.
Archana, I’m not sure that I can give you a valid answer about cultures in the way that you are thinking because I studied the cultures as sub-cultures living in the United States. I don’t know if the U.S. culture played a part in causing the persons to deviate from their native culture but I think that it does play a role.
When I have more time I will do a post on this on my blog.
As for punishment being a deterant, it absolutely is. When I lived in Detroit, MI, I learned this in an interesting way. The metro area is like a checker board of cities where one only needs cross a street to go from city to city. In the cities where there were consequences for a criminal act, it was safe to walk alone at midnight, but in some cases it wasn’t safe to walk alone at noon on the other side of the street which was a different city without consequences.
I have heard that in some Arabic countries that some of my friends have visited, they were pushed to the front of a crowd to watch a public execution. In those places jewelry shops with valuable diamonds were left unattended without fear of theft because the crime wasn’t worth the punishment. In those countries adultry = a death sentence for a woman but men were treated differently. They could have mulitple wives and could marry close relatives.
It would be an interesting study because in those countries it is considered ok for a Muslim man to have consentual sex or even to rape a non-Muslim woman, but having consentual adulterous sex with, or raping, a Muslim woman is taboo = a death sentence.
Great information, Janet. Thank you. Crime in one side of the street being far less than the other side - it speaks volumes about the importance of proper punishment.
Regarding Arab countries, the crime rates are definitely very low, however there is a downside in terms of human rights violation. My cousin, who worked in the middle east told me that “you are are guilty unless proven innocent”. I asked him what happens if you punish an innocent man, he said that they believe Allah will make sure it does not happen.
There is another angle to this cultural aspect..
In indic conservative culture, we dont live our life.. rather play our roles in life.. An unmarried youth roams freely looking for beautiful gals, but once he marries, he started playing the different roles as husband, father..
With roles, comes the responsbility, and with responsibility, a stability of family and society..
This is one important factor distinguishing from individualized west and social east..
Even in the west, these type of crimes would be absent in conservative families..
Just my thoughts..
Senthil,
In the west role playing is much the same and the the majority of families in the U.S. are stable and conservative. What you see in movies and on T.V. are not the norm.
The sad thing about incest and crimes of sexual abuse in families is that across the board, regardless of culture, most crimes I studied pointed to families that looked normal from the outside. In many cases, incestuous fathers appeared like “super dads” to the unknowing, unsuspecting neighbors.
There is a grooming process that occurs before the crimes commence. The intended vitcims are made to feel isolated from the outside world and made to believe that they can’t trust anyone. They are dominated, mentally abused then physically abused after they believe that there is no help for them.
When they are abused, they feel like they are to blame and they believe that bad things will happen to them and to their family if they tell.
As for other violent sexual crimes of rape by a stranger, pornography had a very strong connection. In all police jurisdictions that tracked the issue of pornography, it was present and used almost 100% of the time immediately prior to the crime. Drug use was also common but not nearly as much as pornography.
Another factor was, that most often, the perpetrator of the crime had been the victim of the same crime in their youth.
Thanks for those insights Janet.
Hi Archana,
This is one very interesting post, I must say. I stumbled across it when I was checking out the reviews of Mani Bhaumik’s Code Name God.
I read a book named “Bitter Chocolate” by Pinki Virani about Child Sexual Abuse. There were several examples of incest & the impact it has on the victims. Yes, it is very,very difficult for victims to be able to trust their own people, forget trusting a stranger. And worse, their self-belief, confidence & Life itself changes for ever. Sadly, this is a reality in many homes & the stigma attached to the same keeps the family from reporting it. What purpose does the revelation serve anyway? Apart from questions raised over the victim’s character ??