Father-Daughter Incest

With a New Afterword

Judith Lewis Herman

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780674076525
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Human Sexuality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Through an intensive clinical study of forty incest victims and numerous interviews with professionals in mental health, child protection, and law enforcement, Judith Herman develops a composite picture of the incestuous family. In a new afterword, Herman offers a lucid and thorough overview of the knowledge that has developed about incest and other forms of sexual abuse since this book was first published.Reviewing the extensive research literature that demonstrates the validity of incest survivors' sometimes repressed and recovered memories, she convincingly challenges the rhetoric and methods of the backlash movement against incest survivors, and the concerted attempt to deny the events they find the courage to describe.

Three

BREAKING SECRECY

8

The Crisis of Disclosure

We’re not just a churchgoing family, we have very strong faith and belief and conviction. So for this to come out was really a shock. I could not believe what my children were telling me. It was like watching some wild horror movie. I felt like I wasn’t just in the valley, I was down in the pit.

—a mother, 1977

Most incest victims both long and fear to reveal their secret. In childhood, fear usually overcomes any hope of relief; most girls dread discovery of the incest secret and do not reveal it to anyone outside the family. They believe that no recourse is available to them and that disclosure of the secret would lead to disaster. But as the daughters grow up, the burden of secrecy becomes increasingly difficult to endure. The child who has remained silent for many years may finally be driven to seek outside help.

Unfortunately, given the current state of law enforcement, child protective services, and the mental health professions, the child victim has good reason to fear exposure. Too often, because of bias and ignorance within the helping professions and the criminal justice system, the intervention of outsiders is destructive to both parents and child. The victim who reveals her secret implicitly challenges a traditional and cherished social value, the right of a man to do as he pleases in his own home. And in effect, if not by intention, society punishes the child who has the temerity to accuse her father. In a rural county in Idaho, for example, a team of child protective workers observed that the general community response to discovered cases of incest was initially a punitive reaction, followed by avoidance and inaction:

While the reaction of the community has been volatile and unpredictable . . . little, if any thoughtful planning has been initiated . . . Most often, the community’s response initially is one of extreme anger with frequent comments to the effect that “they should castrate the bastards; they ought to take them out and kill them; they are all crazy and they should be locked up.” In the more protracted involvement with these families . . . these initial intense emotions eventually evolve to either conditional acceptance or avoidance. We have seen spouses, lawyers, judges, and doctors assertively question the possibility of such distasteful acts having occurred when more than a preponderance of the evidence supports the legitimacy of the allegation . . . The same avoidance mechanism which disallows the mother/spouse from conscious awareness is also operational in the community at large.¹

This common reaction of initial shock and outrage followed by denial disrupts and threatens the family, provoking the father’s wrath, without offering any adequate protection to the child. Thus the child is left even more at the mercy of her father than she was before she dared to disobey him. The picture is not uniformly bleak, however. In the past few years, comprehensive programs for the treatment of incest victims and their families have developed independently in a number of centers. Organized by a few dedicated and imaginative mental health workers, these programs appear to offer a more promising model for social intervention when an incestuous family is discovered.

In order to learn from their experience, we visited five treatment centers across the country. They were chosen because each had been in existence for a number of years, and each had developed a distinct approach to the problem of intervening in incestuous families. At each center we interviewed staff members, and in some we also observed therapy groups and interviewed individuals who had participated in the treatment program. The oldest and best known is the Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program in San Jose, California. This program, based in the Juvenile Probation Department of an urban county court, has treated upward of one thousand families in the past eight years and has been given a mandate by state and federal child protective agencies to teach professionals how to deal with sexual abuse. The four other programs, though smaller than the one in San Jose, have each developed an effective, systematic way of intervening in incestuous families. Two programs—the Harborview Sexual Assault Center in Seattle, Washington, and the Center for Rape Concern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—grew out of rape crisis centers in private institutions. The two others—the Sexual Trauma Treatment Program in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Child Protective Service in Tacoma, Washington—developed within the state agencies that have mandatory authority to deal with child abuse. The mere fact of their existence is encouraging, for it demonstrates the possibility of a more enlightened and humane institutional response to the child victim.

The five treatment programs vary considerably in their theoretical base, their ideology, their internal structure, their staffing, and the populations they serve. Nevertheless, they have developed a remarkable degree of commonality in their practice. From observations of these programs, as well as from interviews with other clinicians and from our own experience, it has been possible to develop recommendations for the treatment of incestuous families. These suggestions are offered tentatively, as they are based upon impressionistic data in a field which is new and developing rapidly. Still, they represent a decided improvement over the most common current practices.

Whatever their background or theoretical orientation, professionals who have worked extensively with incestuous families appear to agree on three essential points: the need to restrict and control the excessive power of incestuous fathers, the need to reinforce and foster the power of mothers, and the need to restore the mother-daughter relationship. These points of consensus bear out our own analysis of the dynamics of father-daughter incest.

All experienced workers agree that the disclosure of the incest secret initiates a profound crisis for the family. Usually, by the time the secret is revealed, the abuse has been going on for a number of years and has become an integral part of family life. Disclosure disrupts whatever fragile equilibrium has been maintained, jeopardizes the functioning of all family members, increases the likelihood of violent and desperate behavior, and places everyone, but particularly the daughter, at risk for retaliation.

The precipitant for disclosure is often a change in the terms of the incestuous relationship which makes it impossible for the daughter to endure it any longer. When the daughter reaches puberty, the father may attempt to initiate intercourse. This new intrusion, and the risk of pregnancy which it entails, may drive the daughter to attempt to end the relationship at any cost. Another common precipitant for the breaking of secrecy is the father’s attempt to seclude his adolescent daughter and restrict her social life. As the father’s jealous demands become more and more outrageous, she may at last decide to risk the retribution which has been so often threatened rather than submit. Finally, the daughter may decide to break secrecy in order to protect younger siblings even more helpless than herself:

Rita: My younger sisters were growing up, and I was afraid he might start on them. I couldn’t see that. I could put up with it for myself, I was willing to tolerate it, but I couldn’t see him starting up with my sisters. That’s when I went to the authorities.

Once the decision to break secrecy has been made, the daughter must find a person to confide in. Often the daughter is too alienated from her mother to trust her with this secret. In an effort to ensure a protective response, she frequently bypasses her mother and seeks help from someone outside the family. In a series of ninety-seven incest cases seen at the Harborview Sexual Assault Center in Seattle, for example, slightly over half (52.5 percent) of the children first reported the incest to a friend, relative, babysitter, neighbor, or social agency. The remainder (46.5 percent) first told their mothers.²

For the mother, whether or not she suspected the incestuous relationship, disclosure of the secret is utterly shattering. First of all, she feels betrayed by her husband and her daughter. But in addition to her personal feelings of hurt and outrage, she must cope with the knowledge that her marriage and livelihood are in jeopardy. If her daughter’s accusations are true, she faces the prospect of divorce, single parenthood, welfare, social ostracism, and even the possibility of criminal proceedings against her husband. These possibilities would be terrifying to any woman, even one in good health who was confident of her ability to manage alone in the world. How much more frightening, then, must such a future appear to a woman who is physically or mentally disabled, worn down by childbearing, intimidated by her husband, or cut off from social contacts and supports outside of her family. Small wonder that many a mother, faced with the revelation of the incest secret, desperately tries to deny her daughter’s accusations. If she believes her daughter, she has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

For the father, the disclosure is likewise a threat to his entire way of life. He stands to lose not only the sexual contact he craves, but also his wife, his family, his job, and even his liberty. Faced with this overwhelming threat, most commonly the father adopts a stance of outraged denial. He does whatever he can to discredit his daughter and to rally his wife to his side. All too often, this strategy succeeds. Although the mother may believe the daughter initially, she soon succumbs to the barrage of entreaties, threats, and unaccustomed attentions from her husband.

Without active outside intervention, then, the daughter is greatly at risk within her family once the incest secret has been revealed. By defying her father’s orders to maintain secrecy, she has in effect made him her enemy. Her mother was never a strong ally, and in a crisis she cannot be depended upon. If nothing is done to protect the daughter, the chances are great that the parental couple will unite against her and virtually drive her out of the family.

For this reason, the person to whom the incest secret is revealed bears a heavy burden of responsibility. The very fact that the secret is out means that the family is in crisis, the daughter is in danger, and something must be done. But outsiders are often no more prepared than family members to respond appropriately. Most friends, relatives, neighbors, and even helping professionals find it hard to conceal their shock and distress when first learning about incest. As one social worker admitted candidly: “It makes me feel so upset, I really don’t want to hear about it. I can only give you an unprofessional reaction: Ugh!” Even professionals who work with abused children every day have a hard time with incest. A survey of the Child Protective Services staff in Florida, for example, disclosed that almost a third (31 percent) of the workers felt uncomfortable working with sexual abuse cases and preferred not to do so. The same workers perceived father-daughter incest as the most difficult type of case.³

Every state in the United States has a law making it mandatory to report cases of child abuse to an appropriate agency, usually the state child protective service. State laws vary in their specifications of persons required to report and in the mandated procedure for reporting. The state of Idaho, for example, requires that “any person having reasonable cause to believe that a child under the age of eighteen years has been abused . . . shall report . . . within 24 hours . . . to the proper law enforcement agency.”⁴ The Massachusetts statute, by contrast, requires only professionals to report and stipulates that the report shall be made to the Department of Public Welfare.⁵ Almost all state laws specify that the privilege of confidentiality which exists between professional and client, except the lawyer-client privilege, is not grounds for failure to report. Mandated reporters are generally given immunity from civil action as long as the report is made in good faith. Yet many professionals who learn of incest do not report it, even though they know they are required to do so by law, and even though they are often at a loss for what else to do. Professionals confronted by the reality of incest often react with the same kind of denial and avoidance mechanisms as mothers and other family members. They do nothing and hope the problem will go away.

Mental health professionals, accustomed to working in an atmosphere of confidentiality, may feel particularly uncomfortable about reporting, especially if, as is frequently the case, the child pleads for secrecy. Not uncommonly, professionals who work with sexually abused adolescents attempt to improvise their own system of intervention, avoiding the official child protective apparatus. A nurse in a community mental health center, who had extensive experience with adolescent girls, explained one such personal system:

I don’t report it initially. The kids don’t want me to, and I respect that, and besides, I don’t think the Child Protective Service is very concerned or handles the cases well. But I do call up the mother and tell her what the kid has told me, and I say I believe it and if it doesn’t stop I will report it. The mothers are very often furious with me. They say I’m crazy, I’ve got a dirty mind, the kid’s got a wild imagination and so on. Usually the kids predict what the mothers will say. Everybody denies it, but I think once there’s been a confrontation, the abuse stops. Then I just work with the kids. I help them make plans to get out as soon as they can.

This woman spoke out of a feeling of loyalty and dedication to her clients, and her arguments are persuasive. Nevertheless, this approach, and any approach which fails to report incest to the legally designated authority, creates more problems than it solves. First, it is not at all clear that a simple confrontation, such as a phone call to the mother, is sufficient to put a stop to the sexual abuse. Second, even if such an intervention is sufficient to protect the one child in treatment, it does nothing to ensure the safety of other children in the family. Third, the use of the reporting option as a threat casts the child protective service in an entirely punitive role. If, as frequently happens, the sexual abuse continues and eventually has to be reported, the possibility of a positive alliance with the protective service caseworker is already seriously reduced. Workers in the agencies which are mandated to intervene in abusive families particularly resent being cast in this role. As one caseworker complained, “People don’t know how to report. That’s the biggest error therapists make. They say if you don’t come back, or if you do it again, we’ll report you to Child Protective Service. That’s blackmail. We are set up as punishment. It’s very frustrating.”

Finally, and this is perhaps the most serious objection of all, failure to report sexual abuse places the outsider in complicity with the father. Any relationship the outsider establishes with the daughter, the mother, or the whole family must be compromised by the fact that the outsider, by withholding knowledge of the incestuous offence, is tacitly protecting the father and breaking the law.

For all these reasons, any helping professional who learns about an incestuous situation should report it. The person making the report can explain to the child and the family that the report is not a punishment but a routine matter of policy and a constructive step toward establishing a safe atmosphere in the home. The child protective service worker who receives the report should be approached as a potentially helpful person, not as a mindless minion of the state waiting to swoop down upon the family and take away the children. As one experienced therapist observed:

Most of the child protective service workers are so glad to have somebody cooperate with them instead of just dumping on them. Because normally, what professionals do is let them do their thing, and then bitch about what they did. People don’t like to be the heavies. It’s easier to let somebody else be the heavy and then you do all the nice stuff. So there’s a built-in resentment between protective workers and most mental health professionals. I think that’s why we have credibility with the protective workers, because we don’t mind being the heavies. We consider that’s part of the deal if you’re going to work with abused kids of any kind.

We advocate the reporting of sexual abuse in spite of the fact that the agency mandated to receive the report may not always respond effectively or appropriately. The reality is that most state child protective services are severely overburdened and understaffed. According to a survey by the American Humane Association, “no state and no community has a protective service program adequate in size to meet the service needs of all reported cases of child neglect and abuse.”⁶ This observation was made in 1967, even before increased public awareness of child abuse and the passage of mandatory reporting laws resulted in a massive increase in the number of reports. In some states, child abuse and neglect reports have increased over tenfold within a few years. Between 1976 and 1977, the total number of reports received by the National Study of Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting increased by 23 percent, from 412,972 to 507,494. In seven states, increases of over 100 percent were recorded in a single year.⁷

These overwhelm...