Commentary

“To abuse your daughter when she turns 11 is horrible enough, but then to incarcerate your daughter when she turns 19 in order to perpetuate the sexual abuse, and to keep her in a darkened dungeon for the next 24 years, together with three of the seven children you incestuously impose on her in a mockery of normal parenthood, represents a crime against the soul,” said Mr Phillip Hodson, a Fellow of the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy. From this quote, I agree that incest is an ugly thing, not just ending with sexual relationship but laced with shame, disgust, mental and health impacts which affects the child or even the children bore from these acts of emotion.
Incest affect the mental and health state of a children, which could be clearly shown from cases of incest of recent years, with the most famous cases like Arcebio Alvarez from Columbia, who kept on the incest relationship with his adopted child, since she was 9 years old into the 30s and the case of Josef Fritzl from Austria, who kept his daughter under a hidden, windowless cellar for nearly a quarter of a century, raping her repeatedly and forcing her to give birth to seven of his children, who have just seen daylight for the first time of their life after they were released. We can see that the victims are clearly affected as they are constantly in fear of their perpetrator and they are permanently scarred for life as they are afraid to face the world after being raped by their own relatives. Diseases like AIDS, herpes and many more sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted easily through this relation of incest. Many children in Africa also had STDs as they are sold off to other people for money and beliefs of having sex with a virgin will cure the STDs. These causes massive impact to the children and even the descendants of the victim as they have higher chances of death due to congenital disease and they are affected mentally as they don’t know real family values and they are sexually “incompetent” as they are afraid of the experience after they are raped by their family members. Researches also shows that chances of the victims committing suicide is high and they rarely get into a relationship with the opposite sex due to the bad experience they recalled.
However, incestuous relationship might not be bad overall as seen from the case of John and Jenny Deaves from Australia who had incestuous relationship between father and daughter after they were married. Both of them are consensus parties and both agreed to this relationship. They given birth to 2 children, one died due to congenital diseases and the other one is a healthy nine-month-old baby girl. Even though incest is morally incorrect but the father did not “violated his daughter and used his position of authority to take advantage of her powerlessness". Even though it caused the death of his child, both of them are still fine with each other. There were no health or mental impacts due to incest and both parties agree to continue this relationship.
But incest is still incest and it’s shameful and, to many people, disgusting as they conflict with moral values of “father taking care of children” instead of “having sex with them”. Imagine that you are Mrs Dorothy Deaves, who married John Deaves, how would you feel when your husband is having sex with your ex-wife’s daughter or try imagining you being Mrs Jenny Deaves’s husband. Both Mrs Dorothy Deaves and Mrs Jenny Deaves’s husband have divorced both John and Jenny Deaves and as quoted by Mrs Dorothy, "I'm devastated — he has hurt me terribly," "It was hard to face for a long time.” "It's one of those things everyone's so upset about.” It will hurt many people involved in this and create an out roar due to this incident. As quoted by Mr. John Deaves, "Emotions take over, as people no doubt realize, there are times during your life where emotions do rule the heart, it rules the head," he said. We can clearly see that acts of incest is due to emotion and that incest is an ugly thing as many people will look down on the victims and protagonist and comments from one of the commenter on this news posted “How would the daughter feel if their daughter grows up and the Father-Grandfather decides she is desirable and wants to have a sexual relationship with her. Sick, as if there isn't enough people in the world to choose as your partner rather than steal your mother’s husband.” These types of comments will hurt the child emotionally when she grows up.
I am grateful that I live in a family that is well rounded and does not commit incest. Even as we speak, around the world there might be other cases of incest committed in this tainted world. Many are concealed, with little people knowing it except the victims and the perpetrator. Hopefully, cases of incest decreases and that people begin to understand what is morally right and what isn’t. Not using emotion to control your head isn’t a bad thing to do.