Sibling incest occur primarily in families where the parents are distant and inaccessible, family secrets abound, and parents stimulate a sexual climate, studies show. The victim, usually a young female, is the devalued member of the family. The perpetrator is most often an older brother.
Even before the incest began, Dee, 46, was teased and tormented by her older brother. He'd put her up on the roof of the chicken house and remove the ladder. Or he'd take the hinges off the doors, prop them up, and laugh with the rest of the family as Dee would go to open one and it would fall on top of her. "Nothing I said or did was right," Dee said. "Everything that came out of my mouth was degraded. And it seems as if my parents paid no attention. My father was an alcoholic with a hearing problem. He always claimed he never heard anything. And my mother favored my brother and thought he could do no harm." The sexual abuse began when Dee was eight and lasted for two years. Dee endured full vaginal and anal penetration without telling anyone. "I felt nobody would believe me, that everyone would have come to his aid."
A Vacuum of Neglect
Sibling sexual abuse usually develops in the vacuum left by parental absence and neglect. It creates the opportunity for siblings to intensify their relationship. Emotionally and physically abandoned, abusive siblings express their hurt and rage by misusing their own power. They take sibling rivalry to an extreme, and the consequences are often devastating.
As a young girl, Dee painted her room black, changed her name, bit her nails, and retreated into shyness. Her parents missed or ignored all the signs. As an adult, Dee has had trouble with relationships, suffers from low-grade depressions and a weight problem, and is still unable to express anger toward her brother. Only after extensive therapy did Dee confront him. "He feigned surprise and said, 'Are you telling me you think I had intercourse with a little girl?' 'No, I don't think. I know.' It was the first time I ever stood up to him. I kept using the word incest, and he kept squirming. To this day, he's never admitted what happened and said he's sorry. I would love the validation."
No matter what form it takes, sibling abuse can never be seen as "normal." Yet there are parents and other adults who excuse such cruel and harmful behavior as the expected effect of sibling rivalry. They conclude that sibling abuse is part of growing up and competing for parental attention--even the most blatant misuse of power. The result is lack of remorse on the part of the perpetrator, which makes it impossible for many incest survivors to consider any relationship in adulthood.
"I'm writing my brother off forever," one incest survivor told me. "I've never seen any remorse or regret. And there is no reason for him to change. Besides, after all the therapy and self-help groups, my anger is too great to ever consider therapy with him. It would not be a healing experience for me."
When boundaries are crossed and the incest taboo broken, the chance for some kind of reconciliation in adulthood is remote. Yet for other adult siblings, rewriting rivalrous roles is a good possibility. Studies show that at least 80 percent of siblings over age 60 enjoy close ties with one another. Rivalry forged in childhood and carried into early and middle adulthood becomes less and less important with time.
What matters more is that as constants in our lives, siblings provide a reference against which to judge and measure ourselves. They know us in a unique way during childhood and share a history that can bring understanding and a sense of perspective in adulthood. Friends and neighbors may move away, former coworkers are forgotten, marriages break up, parents die, but our brothers and sisters remain our brothers and our sisters. As we age and begin to sense our own mortality, many siblings rediscover the values and strengths of family. "There is a real awareness," said Lewis, "that brothers and sisters are in this together." Old rivalries are either forgotten or forgiven, and siblings concentrate instead on the feelings and forces that can help us feel more human, less ashamed, and more connected.
BORN TO FEUD?
"There is sibling rivalry; it does exist," says Deborah Gold, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and sociology and senior fellow at the Center for Aging and Human Development at Duke University. "But it needs to be put into perspective, so that brothers and sisters don't think they're weird if they get along well."
For Gold and others, like Stephen Bank, Ph.D., adjunct associate professor of psychology at Wesleyan University, getting along well with our siblings is a "birthright." Rivalry is not a natural state of necessary; it does not merely "come forth from a innate wellspring of black-hearted malice." Rather, bitter conflict is originally the "fault" of a "disturbing family situation" in which parental actions or inactions play a large part."
Not necessarily, insists Judy Dunn, Ph.D., professor of human development at Penn State University. She parts company "a bit" from the idea that we have a "birthright" to get on well with our siblings. "We don't choose our siblings," Dunn says. "There are personality differences that can be very striking and, If you're stuck growing up with someone day-in and day-out who grates and irritates and provokes, then it seems very understandable that, even without the huge importance of competition for parental love and attention, some siblings don't get on well."
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