More than one in seven families have been affected by incest, according to a shocking new analysis.
The taboo subject is increasingly being discussed as at-home DNA tests by Ancestry and 23&me reveal uncomfortable truths about their family lineages.
It was once estimated that about 0.2% of marriages in the United States occur between first cousins or closer. But a review of hundreds of studies this month by a sexual health company estimated that 15 percent of American families have had an “incest event,” the equivalent of about 12 million families.
Events of incest in a family are often cases of sexual abuse of a child, the victims most often being girls: one in five girls has been a victim of incest, compared to one in 14 boys.
A quarter of cases involve two people who are not biologically related – such as a stepfather and stepdaughter – but the rest involve two people related by blood.
Incest is legal to some extent in 19 states, some of which are hot spots for the practice.
Incestuous family relationships gained increased public interest after a 2004 documentary as well as exclusive DailyMail.com reporting on America’s most inbred family, the Whittakers.
A portrait of the “blue” Fugate family depicted by artist Walt Spitzmiller for a 1982 edition of the magazine Science
Incest is still legal to some extent in 19 states, where it is legal for first cousins to marry. Most states are on the coasts and in the South.
Newly revealed data suggests that this practice is quite common. BedBible, an intimacy and sexual health company, performed an analysis of more than 290 published peer-reviewed articles, including data from more than 11 million people spanning 1980 to 2023.
At that time, 15 percent of families had incest events in their family tree. Of that 15 percent, 32 million people are believed to have been victims of incest as children, but only 20 percent of these crimes are reported to law enforcement.
At-home DNA tests to determine a person’s ancestry have been popular for years, and companies like 23&me and Ancestry DNA have helped people discover disturbing truths about their origins.
The companies themselves won’t explicitly say whether a person’s family had an “incest event,” but submitting DNA to third-party genealogy labs can answer that question.
Father-daughter incest is the most common type, followed by sibling incest. Meanwhile, incest and first cousin marriage are quite common and even legal in 19 states.
About 35 percent of all incestuous encounters take place between a girl and her biological father. Twenty-three percent occur between a brother and sister, while 25 percent occur between a mother and son. Twelve percent occur between daughter-in-law and father-in-law.
First cousin marriage is permitted in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Carolina North, Rhode Island. , South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia,
Some states allow first cousin marriages, with some exceptions.
Ray, who can only communicate through barks and growls, insisted on showing journalists around the property.
However, several states have skirted the law.
Data aggregator World Population Review and legal and estate planning firm Hive Law named the following states as hot spots for inbreeding: Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, South Dakota, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Montana.
The Whittaker family of Odd, West Virginia, lived in relative obscurity until a 2004 documentary, followed by an exclusive report on DailyMail.com, revealed how years of inbreeding had affected different generations .
One family member, Ray, could only communicate through barks and growls; others were intellectually disabled and suffered from other physical conditions. Many family members suffered heart attacks, while two of them did not survive childhood.
Siblings Ray, Betty, Larry and Lorene, along with son Timmy, live on a rundown farm in West Virginia. A set of identical twin brothers sparked the family’s history of incest, with the children of Henry and John Whittaker marrying and having their first child in 1937.
It is unclear whether the early Whittakers were motivated by a desire to keep their bloodline pure, as the motivation of European royals was, or whether this was due to living in a remote location with little educational opportunities and financial improvement.
The latter is believed to have inspired the Kentucky-born Fugate family to intermarry.
Commonly known as the Blue Fugates, the family settled in the United States, beginning with Martin Fugate in 1820, who arrived in Troublesome Creek with blue skin, the product of a certain genetic mutation. He married Elizabeth Smith, who carried the same gene, although it was recessive.
Of their seven children, four are said to be blue.
Normally, a child receives an equal number of chromosomes from each parent, each encoded by specific genes.
If one parent has a recessive gene, such as blue eyes, it will be beaten out by the dominant gene from the other parent, brown eyes.
But in cases of incest, the parents can have these same recessive genes, which are then passed on to the child.
37-year-old mother and 20-year-old son plead guilty to incest and avoid prison
Mother and son Monica Mares, 37, and Caleb Peterson, 20, of Clovis, New Mexico, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree incest and were sentenced to three years of probation.
The recessive gene in the Fugates case was for a blood disorder called methemoglobinemia, which turned their skin blue.
The course of incestual relationships in which family members married their cousins was due to the fact that they lived far from other people, surrounded by dirt roads and without railways or access to major cities.
However, reproducing with a cousin is known to increase the risk of stillbirth and other problems for the child.
An Egyptian study in 2013 examined more than 8,100 patients at a children’s hospital in Cairo.
More than 93 percent of deaf patients had related parents. More than 76 percent of patients with mental retardation had related parents and 92 percent had limb abnormalities.
Children of two cousins are likely to have lower IQs and higher rates of mental retardation.
A 2014 study published in PLOS One which examined the IQs of 408 children found that those who were the product of inbreeding were 10 to 25 IQ points short of those whose parents were unrelated.
DailyMail spoke to family members who said they were delighted with their new comfort. Pictured: Timmy, Betty and Lorene. Pastor William Plumley told DailyMail.com that Timmy and Lorene had been members of the Good Hope congregation for many years and enjoyed getting involved in the sermons.