More than one in seven families have been affected by incest, according to a shocking new analysis.
The taboo subject is becoming increasingly discussed as at-home DNA tests from companies like Ancestry and 23&me become more common, revealing uncomfortable truths about family ties.
It was previously estimated that only 2 percent of Americans had had sexual contact with a family member.
But a review of hundreds of studies by a sexual health company earlier this month estimated that 15 percent of American families have had an “incest event.”
Incest often involves sexual abuse of a child, and the majority involve girls: one in five girls has been a victim of incest, compared to one in fourteen boys.
In a quarter of the cases, it concerns two people who are not biologically related – such as a stepfather and stepdaughter – but in the rest it concerns two blood relatives.
According to World Population Review, a data aggregation site, inbreeding is most common in the red-colored states
Incestual family relationships have gained increasing public attention following a 2004 documentary and the 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 Science magazine
Incest is still legal to some extent in 19 states, where it is legal for cousins to marry. Most states are located on the coasts and in the south.
New data coming to light indicates that this practice is quite common among even closer relationships.
BedBible, an intimacy and sexual health company, an analysis performed of more than 290 published peer-reviewed articles, including data from more than 11 million people between 1980 and 2023.
At that time, 15 percent of families had incest events in their family tree.
At-home DNA tests to determine one’s ancestry have been popular for years, and companies like 23&me and Ancestry DNA have helped point people in the direction of uncovering disturbing truths about their ancestry.
One person who discovered the disturbing truth about her family history was 39-year-old Victoria Hill, who at a high school reunion started talking about family trees with an ex-boyfriend with whom she once had an intimate relationship.
Meanwhile, Virginia native Steve Edsel discovered through AncestryDNA that his parents were first-degree relatives, siblings or father-daughter.
He radiated anger at the thought of the origins of his conception, likely the result of his grandfather’s sexual assault of his mother.
Ray, who can only communicate through barks and growls, insisted on showing reporters around the property
The companies themselves won’t explicitly say whether someone’s family has had an “incest event,” but submitting DNA to third-party genealogy labs could answer that question.
Father-daughter incest is the most common form, followed by incest between siblings. Meanwhile, incest and cousin marriages are quite common and even legal in 19 states.
About 35 percent of all incestuous encounters occur between a daughter and her biological father. Twenty-three percent occur between a brother and sister, while 25 percent occur between a mother and son. Twelve percent happens between stepdaughter and stepfather.
Incestual relationships appear to be more common in areas that tend to be further away from larger metropolises.
The Whittaker family of Odd, West Virginia, lived in relative obscurity until a 2004 documentary, followed by exclusive DailyMail.com reporting, revealed the extent to which years of inbreeding had affected several generations.
One family member, Ray, could only communicate through barking and growling; others were mentally retarded and suffered from other physical ailments. Many members of the family suffered heart attacks, while two did not survive childhood.
Siblings Ray, Betty, Larry and Lorene, and her son Timmy, live in a dilapidated homestead in West Virginia. A set of identical twin brothers led to the family’s history of incest, with Henry and John Whittaker’s children marrying and having their first child in 1937.
It is not clear whether the early Whittakers were spurred by a desire to keep their bloodline pure, such as the motivation of European royalty, or whether it was a function of living in a remote place with few opportunities for education and financial improvement.
It is believed that the latter was the impetus for the Kentucky-born Fugate family to marry.
The family, commonly known as the Blue Fugates, settled in the US beginning with Martin Fugate in 1820, who arrived in Troublesome Creek with blue skin, the product of a certain gene mutation. He married Elizabeth Smith, who carried the same gene, although it was recessive.
Of their seven children, four were reportedly blue. Today, most descendants descend from the Fugate family have lost their blue coloralthough the tint still shows up on their skin when they get cold or their mood flares.
Normally, a child receives an equal number of chromosomes from each parent, each encoded with specific genes.
If one parent has a recessive gene, such as one for blue eyes, it will be defeated by the dominant brown eye gene from the other parent.
But in cases of incest, the parents may have the same recessive genes, which are then passed on to the child.
Mother, 37, and son, 20, plead guilty to incest and avoid jail time
Mother and son Monica Mares, 37, and Caleb Peterson, 20, of Clovis, New Mexico, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree incest and received three years’ probation.
First cousin marriages are allowed in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina , Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia,
Some states allow first cousin marriages, with some exceptions.
However, several states have circumvented the law.
Data aggregator Overview of the world population and legal and estate planning firm Beehive law named the following states as inbreeding hotspots: Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, South Dakota, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Montana.
The recessive gene in the Fugates case was for a blood disease called methemoglobinemia, which caused their skin to turn blue.
The course of the incestuous relationships in which members of the family married their cousins arose from the fact that they lived far from other people, surrounded by unpaved roads and a lack of railways and access to larger towns and cities.
However, cousin breeding is known to increase the risk of stillbirth and other problems for the child.
An Egyptian study in 2013 looked at more than 8,100 patients at a children’s hospital in Cairo.
DailyMail spoke to members of the family who said they were happy with their new comfort. In the photo: Timmy, Betty and Lorene. Pastor William Plumley told DailyMail.com that Timmy and Lorene have been members of the Good Hope congregation for many years and enjoy being involved in the preaching
More than 93 percent of the deaf patients had parents who were related. More than 76 percent of patients with an intellectual disability had related parents, and 92 percent had limb abnormalities.
The children of two cousins are likely to have a lower IQ and a higher degree of mental retardation.
A 2014 study published in PLOS One that examined the IQs of 408 children, found that those who were the products of inbreeding had a deficit of between 10 and 25 IQ points compared to those whose parents were unrelated.
