After #MeToo, Why Are So Few Talking About Incest Abuse?

This post discusses incest abuse, if you’re seeking resources please visit Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

My body began to stretch, to shake awake, to resurrect from hours oscillating between sleep and sleeplessness. Like any other day, I pulled my hands free from the constraints of sheets and a heavy comforter, reached across my body to the bedside table, grabbed my phone, typed in the passcode, and scrolled through my  various social media apps. On this morning though, #MeToo had been posted over and over again by friends and family, acquaintances and colleagues, influencers and other influential people in society. 

“What is #MeToo?” I quickly inputted the query into Google Search. It returned a definition to me immediately along the lines of, “#MeToo is a public disclosure by an individual of sexual abuse.”

My heart felt like it stopped. My body froze in bed. My mind synthesized every person who had already disclosed that day. My innermost self screamed silently, “Finally.” After years of survival and recovery from incest abuse by several individuals in my family, I grieved the frequency of #MeToo posts sliding up on my screen before me, while suddenly feeling a sense of survivor solidarity I had been seeking without even knowing. 

As the days passed, then the weeks, then the months, I kept waiting for sexual abuse in the home to be included in the now global public conversation about the commonality of sexual violence in the workplace, in churches, in recreational programs, in schools, in the media, etc. However, as I began to dive deep into the history of the Incest AWAREness movement, I learned that the issue has been systemically repressed in past and in present social discourse. The stories I longed to see at the forefront of a global anti-sexual violence movement never emerged. Then one day, I decided to stop waiting and instead ensure that the issue of incest would be represented by sharing my story. 
 

What is incest abuse?

Incest is taboo, but it hasn’t always been. The history of the issue extends back into myths and monarchies. Roman and Greek folklore explained that rape between divine family members was the reason for the creation of humanity. Additionally, many monarchies once required that marriage and procreation be restricted to family members to preserve blood line purity and the passing down of power to the next generation. Still today, communities located in remote areas marry and procreate between relatives as there are no other options. But incest written in myth and historical memory, as well as defined in the present as consensual relations among adults, is entirely different than incest abuse.

The word incest has been used to represent both consensual and abusive sexual relations between family members. In legal contexts, incest often refers to consensual sexual relationships within the family specifically, while phrases like sexual battery, assault, and/or child sexual abuse represent the alternative. In order to clarify the confusion caused by this word that has referred to so many different things, many academics and researchers will use the phrase “Intrafamilial Sexual Abuse” to describe incest abuse, or “Intrafamilial Child Sexual Abuse” (ICSA) when it happens to a child.

Today, the Incest AWAREness Movement, defines incest as the sexual abuse of a person by a family member or someone considered family. For centuries, people have been incested by parents and grandparents, stepparents and foster parents, live-in partners and caregivers, in-laws and offspring, aunts and uncles, siblings (including step, half, and foster) and cousins, or even close family friends. 

 

How common is incest abuse?

As it often is, incest abuse was intergenerational in my family. Many of the parents and grandparents, siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, and everyone in between had experienced multiple forms of abuse including incest in my family. But the incest story is so much bigger than us.

Incest abuse has been proven to start younger, be more serial, continue for longer periods of time, and be more aggressive than other forms of child sexual abuse. Due to lack of disclosure and reporting, as well as ease of access to children within the home, anti-incest activists estimate that incest abuse is much more common than other types of sexual violence.
 

Why are so few people talking about incest abuse?

If incest abuse is so common, then why are so few people talking about it? More importantly, why are so few people doing anything about it? This is what I’ve learned throughout my own healing and activism journey. 

HISTORICAL BACKLASH

Throughout history, incest abuse survivors have disclosed their stories publicly in large groups in order to raise awareness and invite society to address the issue. In response, those in positions of power have instigated backlashes by claiming that survivors were liars. 

In medical literature as recent as the 1980s, which was the decade in which I was born, physicians still questioned whether or not incest is harmful and if children were at fault for seducing their family members. A number of researchers noted that some texts even endorsed abuse, one arguing that incest ,“  [...] diminishes the chances of psychosis and allows better adjustment to the external world.”

People are often surprised to learn how common the pro-incest movement is even today. Try something for me: type in any incest-related keywords into a search engine, then see how far down you have to scroll before you see results that offer pro-incest content. Likely, algorithms will answer incest queries with pornography, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), Quora and Reddit chatrooms that encourage people to abuse, as well as outdated articles and medical literature that create confusion around consent instead of defining the acts as abuse.

SOCIAL STIGMA & SILENCE

These repeated historical backlashes have left society silent and the issue of incest stigmatized, including the use of the word itself. Without proper terminology and collective conversation around the topic, survivors lack the language to describe their experiences. Families and communities struggle to receive disclosures and respond safely. Physicians and clinicians never receive the education necessary to support survivors in their healing journeys, and justice systems lack the ability to transform those who have already caused harm. This absence of resources has come to be called, “The Incest Gap,” or the ineffective methods of incest prevention, intervention, recovery, and justice.

DELAYED & REJECTED DISCLOSURES

Without common language, children most often do not disclose the abuse while it’s happening, including me. When they do, families frequently support the person who harmed instead of the victim, just like my family. Other survivors wait to disclose until they are adults, safely established away from the dependency on family through economic independence or the interdependence of a new family. The average age of disclosure for child sexual abuse survivors is in their 50’s. I disclosed at 24, which makes me feel strangely…lucky?
 

How and where can we begin to talk about incest abuse?

When I went public with my incest story after the #MeToo movement went viral from over a decade of work by Tarana Burke—I was not alone. Since then, survivors and allies within the Incest AWAREness Movement have joined together to improve methods of incest prevention, intervention, recovery, and justice. Collectively, we want children to be safe from sexual abuse in their homes, for survivors and families to be supported throughout their healing journeys, and for people who are at risk to harm to be guided through processes of transformative justice to prevent and end offenses.

Our movement needs survivors and allies to help us address this issue so that we can, as the Incest AWARE motto states, “Learn about it. Talk about it. End it.” You can join the conversation in the following ways:

Call a Hotline & Helpline
You can call or chat with the National Sexual Assault Hotline. Stop It Now! offers chat, email, and text helplines to support adults and youth to navigate questions about sexual violence and sexuality, including people who may harm. 

Read Incest Awareness Literature
Incest AWARE has gathered a trusted collection of anti-incest related books, podcasts, and other resources. You can also find our library on Bookshop.org. Our recently published Incest AWAREness Guide: Obstacles & Opportunties to End Intrafamilial Child Sexual Abuse can also be read or listened to.

Review Services and/or Join The Incest Aware Alliance
The Incest AWARE Alliance is a great gathering of individuals and organizations that offer educational, consulting, and direct services. We also have resource lists for teens, incest survivors, people who may or have harmed, as well as those who want to learn how to support a survivor in their healing journeys. 

Partner With an Incest Aware Sexual Abuse Clinician or Coach
Learn how to find the right healing methods, as well as a sexual abuse therapist or counselor who best suits your needs.
 
 

THANK YOU

Thank you for holding space for my incest story and the stories of other survivors. Reclaiming the erasure of our history and breaking patterns of isolation by healing, writing, speaking, and organizing are our first steps to ending incest. Please, join us!