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Analysis of court documents by The Sun suggests that four people have appeared in court since November charged with having sex with adult family members.
A further two – including a woman – face incest charges, dating back to the 1990s.
The cases can be difficult to prosecute, with barristers and judges navigating a complex family dynamic.
Top silk John Hardy KC said: “As a barrister you have to keep in mind the need for objectivity and not appear sympathetic to one party over another.”
Alamy‘Incest’ was on the list of over-18s website Pornhub’s most popular searches by 2014[/caption]
IMPACT OF ABUSE
The impact of the abuse can last a lifetime.
Sick Jehovah’s Witness Dennis Cottee, from Wiltshire, was too ill to go to jail after a jury found him responsible for 12 counts of sexually assaulting his daughters in the 1980s. His son Jacques was locked up for almost four years for incest.
Cottee’s younger daughter – abused by him from the age of four – said after the trial: “Justice for me was not a search for a long sentence, it was a search for closure and the truth.”
Four decades on from her awful ordeal she said: “I grew up unable to talk to him in a way that a normal daughter-father relationship should.
“It is sad that as he has got older he couldn’t say sorry for his actions.”
Some men have claimed they are unable to stop committing incest.
Robert Cole, from Melksham, Wilts, was jailed for 18 months in 2020 after CCTV caught him performing a sex act on his estranged daughter – who was also charged with sex with an adult family member.
The claim that incest porn is fantasy without real-world effects assumes incest is rare, abhorrent.
Prof McGlynn
He was sent back to prison three years later for having sex with a second daughter, with the judge branding it a “dreadful act”.
Cole’s barrister suggested he was the victim of “genetic sexual attraction” – a psychological flaw that results in close relatives “falling in love”.
That supposed psychological condition has been debunked by scientists.
Dr Sophie King-Hill of the University of Birmingham said: “Portraying this behaviour as biologically expected is incredibly damaging.
“If ‘genetic sexual attraction’ is used as a reason for these behaviours it risks normalising something that is damaging and abusive.”
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