Ongoing Incestuous Abuse During Adulthood

Abstract

Individual cases of adult incestuous abuse have surfaced repeatedly in the lay and professional literature of the past 1.5 centuries without it occasioning systematic investigation, such as the reporting of a case series of individuals subjected to such extreme abuse. Yet substantial numbers of patients with dissociative identity disorder at the time of presentation report incestuous abuse continuing into the adult years, and for many the abuse is ongoing. Data relating to a series of 10 such incestuously abused women are presented. These patients were sexually abused from a very early age (typically from before age 3), with the manipulation of their sexual response a key component in conditioning an enduring sexualized attachment. Shame and fear were also used to ensure compliance and silence. The women, when able to speak of it, describe the induction by their paternal abuser of orgasm at an early age, typically around the age of 6. The women have high indices of self-harm and suicidality and are prone to placing themselves in dangerous reenactment scenarios. The average duration of incestuous abuse for this group of women was 31 years, and the average estimate of total episodes of sexual abuse was 3,320. Most women do not feel that they own their body and experience being "fused" to their father. Their mother was reported as an active participant in the sexual abuse or as having done nothing to protect their daughter despite seeing obvious evidence of incest. The fathers, despite a propensity to use or threaten violence, were generally outwardly productively employed, financially comfortable, and stably married and half had close church involvement. However, suicide and murder occurred within the 1st- or 2nd-degree relatives of these women at a high frequency. All 10 had been sexually abused by various groupings of individuals connected to their fathers.

The abused and the abuser: Victim–perpetrator dynamics

“…It also speaks of the effectiveness of perpetrators (themselves frequently the victims of similar abuse) in maintaining high levels of control of their victims. Such victims frequently had not been permitted to develop enough selfhood to establish ownership of their own bodies or to feel other than fused with their primary abuser (Middleton, 2013). Thus, further complexity is added to the abused-abuser dynamics.…”

Persistierender Täterkontakt bei einer Patientin mit dissoziativer Identitätsstörung

“…Vergleichbar mit dem vorgestellten Fall wurde bei einer Serie von Inzestopfern mit anhaltendem Missbrauch im Erwachsenenalter ein typischer Beginn um das 6. Lebensjahr beschrieben mit durchschnittlich 3320 Missbrauchsereignissen [19,20]. Charakteristisch für diese Fälle waren eine schwere traumabedingte Dissoziation sowie ein desorganisierter Bindungsstil [9].…”

Who Done It, Actually? Dissociative Identity Disorder for the Criminologist

“…Most of them explain that abuse is inseparable from their everyday life, and is practiced and suffered by every member of their family, for generations (Middleton 2013b;Miller 2012;Sachs 2011). Others report organised sexual abuse, human trafficking and group ritual abuse (Healey 2008;Miller 2012;Salter 2013;Sinason 2011), years of incestual abuse (Middleton 2013a(Middleton , 2013b and organised torture (Ross 2000). Many confess to abusing others (including family members) or to committing murders, and hold these recollections of perpetration as the most traumatic of all of their experiences (Sachs 2013a).…”