There are some things I simply fail to understand.I understand drug dealing, as illegal and dangerous as it is.
I even understand intellectually that there are warped individuals who have sex with their children.
What I do not get AT ALL is the idea that one or both of those intertwined in an incestuous relationship would explain it as consensual.
This, from Friday's Spec, which apparently broke the story on the arrest of Columbia poli sci prof David Epstein on grounds of incest.
Political science professor David Epstein, 46, was charged Thursday with having a sexual relationship with his daughter, 24.
He was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with one count of incest in the third degree at an arraignment hearing on Thursday. According to police, the relationship appears to have been consensual.
In which realm could a child properly consent to have sex with a parent? At the heart of parental love is an utterly different kind of emotional bond, one entirely devoid of sexual involvement. Consent given by a child even in those cases where the sex is the result of the seductive initiation of a child is not actual consent. The shunning of incest is not some fusty old taboo. It is there for a psychological, spiritual and biological reason. Obviously, it is a form of abuse on the part of the offending parent. The worst kind...next to murder.
Having read this story now on several news sites, my chief reaction is that I wish to soak my brain in a big vat of Clorox. The consensual claim adds another dimension of creepy.
Sure makes the drug ring on campus busted earlier this week look downright wholesome.
2 comments:
Thank you for posting this, Shira.
I so appreciate you posting this. I have been so utterly disturbed by this case. It's driving me bonkers. I keep saying that it's ridiculous to be MORE disturbed by this than hearing about child molestation and I can only think that it's because we are used to that/a bit desensitized to it? It's one thing to write someone off as completely insane and evil (molesting a child) but to consider it a "relationship" is just beyond bizarre. A new level of creepy, like you wrote. I'm so mad that I found out about it. I even wrote Yahoo asking for some way to disable the news feature so I won't see these sorts of headlines. They wrote back --there's apparently no way to do that.
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