Incest World

Incest World

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Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.
Incest, or sexual relationships between biologically close family members, is an idea that may make your skin crawl. But it has often been practiced around the world throughout history. Royals often married close family members to keep their bloodline pure and to protect the throne politically and economically.
Cultural attitudes toward incestuous relationships vary more than one might imagine; while one group may warn of supernatural repercussions to the act, another may see spiritual virtue and deem such relationships a form of worship. The variety of examples from around the world may surprise you.

In the long-gone empire of Monomotapa in Zimbabwe , one king had over 300 wives. His “main wives” were close relatives, often sisters or even daughters, and only their children could one day inherit the throne. These special children could only become royal heirs because of their exclusively royal bloodline, having not been made impure by nonroyal unions. Only the king could partake in this exclusive kind of incest—nonroyal noblemen would have faced death if they tried it themselves. [1]
Royal incest also occurred in the Fon kingdom of Dahomey (located in present-day Benin), where the king could mate with whichever woman took his fancy: single or married, foreign or native, free or slave. Even women from his own family were allowable, including cousins but not full sisters .

In pharaonic Egypt, it was believed that the dowry of the royal heiress would include the throne. Not only that, but they believed that the bloodline would be strengthened by a brother-sister union. While we cannot easily genetically test the offspring of these unions today, we do know that quite a few 18th-dynasty pharaohs married their sisters or half-siblings, and Ramses II in the 19th dynasty certainly did.
Akhenaten (aka Amenhotep IV) received some attention when he married his sister, Nefertiti, and it was claimed their parents were also close relatives. From his appearance in artwork from the period, experts have speculated he may have had genetic conditions and abnormalities. This was later confirmed following genomic analysis on DNA samples from Tutankhamun, his son. His abnormalities may have been from mutations resulting from the commonplace marrying between brothers and sisters in the royal bloodline. [2]
In Roman Egypt, those outside of the royal family were engaged in brother-sister marriages. In contrast, the Romans were against incestuous unions, and the marriages outlined in records were of people marrying outside the Egyptian ruling classes at the time of the Romans.
Incestuous marriages occurred across the economic and social divides. The most astonishing example recorded was between twins , a union which was said to have produced an heir. These unions, although in great number, were concentrated in the Greek settler community, which may account for the limited number of possible partners. [3]
Zoroastrianism was the religion in Iran until the invasion of the Muslims, and the incestuous marriages of the time were tied to the religious beliefs that marriage was favored by the gods, and the act was similar to worship. Mother-son, brother-sister, and father-daughter unions were outlined in the Pahlavi texts (sixth to ninth century AD) as having a special religious integrity.
Incestuous unions were one of the ways Zoroastrians believed one could enter heaven as well as expunge the sins of the soul . There is little to no evidence left of Zoroastrian people actually having incestuous relationships in this way, but there are plenty of references to how it was seen from a religious perspective. [4]
From the 15th to the 19th centuries, European royalty often married between cousins. We see this happening with the Spanish Habsburgs , the Prussian Hohenzollerns, the French Bourbons, the Russian Romanovs, and the British royal families .
Some experts believe that the decline in families like the Spanish Habsburgs was due to inbreeding, as mental as well as physical problems began to cause family members to deteriorate. [5]
In more recent history, anthropologists have examined the Malagasy people and their relationship with incest definitions. They found the Malagasy have different views on what constitutes incest; in some pockets of Madagascar, first cousins can be man and wife, but in other regions, that is strictly taboo .
If the line is crossed into incest, either intentionally or unintentionally, they believe terrible things will happen as a result. Their crops might fail, canoes at sea will overturn, their children may die, women may become infertile, and birth defects like horns or humps may follow. These consequences may happen whether the couple realize they are related or not and may not affect the husband and wife themselves but their village or community. The seriousness of the disaster befalling the community will let them know how much atonement must be done. [6]
The Incas thought they were direct descendants of the gods. Believing their ancestors were celestial bodies, royal families mirrored the stories of the Sun, who married his sister, the Moon. When the Inca king Topa Inca Yupanqui married his sister, he was attempting to join both the father and mother’s claim to the throne in the heir they would produce, and all the inheritance that would include, into one union.
If a royal marriage was childless, the king was then expected to marry his second, then third sister until an heir was produced. If there were no sisters to choose from, he could select a first cousin to procure a reasonably pure bloodline. Royal incest ceased when the Spanish conquered the Inca people. [7]
For royal brothers and sisters to produce an heir was considered to be very fortunate, and the offspring was thought to have extra mana, or power and prestige. No other claims to the throne would be considered if a strong union like this took place, and primogeniture was strictly enforced even if the firstborn was female.
The 19th-century Hawaiian writer David Malo describes the power hierarchy of Hawaiian royalty as interconnected with how related the parents of the new heir to the throne were. To keep the lineage as high-ranking as possible, suitable partners for a chief were his own sister or (if a sister was not available) a half-sister or niece. This kind of union was called a “loop, a thing bent on itself” and was so sacred that the offspring would be called divine . This way, the child was fit to become the next chief, without competition and powerful beyond question. [8]
Thai royal men had many wives and were much more inbred than their subjects, with large harems of women from different social classes, including those of their own kin.
In 1907, the reigning king, Paramindr Maha Chulalongkorn (aka Rama V), had two queens who were his half-sisters in order to procure an heir with the highest political status possible. Incest was not expressly forbidden to those outside the royal family as it was in other cultures. King Paramindr’s father had 84 children by 35 wives in his lifetime. Marriages were made for the royal family by “ kingmakers ” who were not close relatives, and unions between uncles and nieces and between half-siblings were common in order to maximize the political royal lineage for the next generation. [9]

People in Tibet do not discuss incest lightly, and some say it does not exist in their land at all. However, if and when it occurs, there is a special pilgrimage that may be done to purify the sins of the couple. Nal (“incest”) is a word found in rituals texts and exists today with the same meaning it has for the rest of the world.
One Tibetologist, Katia Buffetrille, recalls an account from 1989 in which a couple in a Tibetan village was found to have committed incest. They were beaten by the villagers and sent to the sacred place of Chorten Nyima, a mountain on the eastern ridge in the Himalayas, bordering India and Tibet. After they bathed in the sacred lake and spring, they obtained a sealed certificate of compliance to the ritual in the monastery and were then able to prove to the villagers they were now purified. Afterward, they returned to their families and previous social positions.
Incidentally, in Tibetan culture, had the man been of superior status, his mother would have gone to Chorten Nyima with him, and the woman would have gone with her father. One Sherpa told Buffetrille that on the journey to the sacred mountain, the couple rode on a bullock accompanied by a man on horseback but had to walk back to the village after the ritual. No stigma was attached to the couple after the sealed certificate was presented on their return. [10]
Alexa MacDermot is a psychology, sociology, and anthropology researcher living in Ireland.

German ethics council calls to make incest legal

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Josef Fritzl accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years
A SHOCKING map showing where incest is legal in Europe has been released.
The multi-coloured map created by on mapchart.net and shared on Reddit, lists out where incest is legal and where it isn't.
Sex between immediate family members in England, Scotland and Wales is illegal under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
But surprisingly, it isn't in several other countries across the Channel.
For example, a boy can have sex with his brother and a girl can sleep with her sister in the Republic of Ireland.
That is because The Punishment of Incest Act 1908 only covers sex between males and females and doesn’t consider same-sex siblings.
It also distrubingly, doesn’t refer to sexual relationships between a grandson and grandmother.
However, incest between a man and a woman is punishable for seven years for the female and up to a harsher life sentence for the male.
But what comes as a bigger surprise, consensual incest in Spain, Russia and Portugal is completely legal under Portuguese law.
However, under the Family Code of Russia, people who are related as siblings, half-siblings, a stepparent and a stepchild, are not allowed to marry.
There is no law prohibiting consenting relatives from having sex in France, Belgium and Luxembourg either.
What’s more, it is also legal in Latvia and Lithuania, though laws in the countries protect adolescents from sexual abuse.
Closer to home, in Italy, incest is illegal – but only if it provokes public scandal.
This means if couples lie low, they could very well be able to get away with it.
But if it becomes a public issue, it suddenly becomes punishable from two to eight years in jail.
The Netherlands also has no law making incest illegal – it however, does specify that immediate family members cannot marry each other.
Ambiguity in Greek laws means incest is outlawed for adults, but there is nothing to stop minors.
Though incest is legal in many European countries, news from such countries continues to shock the world.
Last week, a school girl in Murcia, Spain, reportedly gave birth to her teenage brother’s baby.
The tot was fathered by the 11-year-old girl’s brother, when he was 13, according to police.
Spain raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 in 2013.
But an exception can be made if the boy is of a similar age or stage of development and maturity.
Consensual incest between adults is legal in Spain and it is unlikely the boy will face charges unless the girl did not consent to sex.
Murcia health minister, Manuel Villegas, had described the case as “exceptional”.
It came days after it was revealed how a dad and daughter conceived a child together.
The pair – who plan to marry – are facing incest charges, but their relationship reportedly could be considered legal by a judge.

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THE PERVERTED patriarch of the "world's most inbred family" ran an "incest" farm where he raped his daughters with his sons and fathered their children.
Tim Colt allegedly had sex with three of his daughters - known as Rhonda, Betty, and Martha - and impregnated them, adding more to the notorious barbarous brood from Australia.
The disgusting details of the "world's most inbred family" have been revealed after a gag order on the gruesome trial ceased.
The children have been given court appointed pseudonyms to conceal their identities.
Three of the late Tim Colt’s daughters have been dragged through court trials, assaulted in prison, and ostracised in communities due to their inbred children – the products of rape and sexual relations with their own father and siblings.
Tim Colt also allegedly parented his daughter Betty's 13 children, four of Rhonda's offspring, and even his granddaughter Raylene's child, Kimberly.
In another Colt trial, Tim Colt's son Roderick was found guilty of raping his niece, who was also his half-sister.
The victim, Petra, was the biological child of Tim Colt and Betty Colt and was also attacked by her uncle Frank in the back seat of his car during a visit to the family farm in February 2010, for which he was convicted.
She told police back in 2013 that she had never gone to school, lived "in a cult" and that "all my aunts, uncles and cousins have all been sleeping together".
Betty and Rhonda's sister Martha, who openly shared a "marital bed" with her brother Charlie Colt, gave birth to five children.
Ther brood were likely fathered by Charlie, her own father Tim and another brother, Roderick, it was revoltingly revealed at her trial.
She was slapped with a two-year prison sentence after concealing the paternity of her kids, who were all proven to be the product of sexual relations with a biological relative by DNA tests.
Martha gave birth to three sons and three daughters, one of whom died, between 1988 and 2006.
She claimed the kids were the product of five casual encounters, a tale a judge called "demonstrably untrue".
The court heard how police intercepts of conversations between Martha and brother Charlie were brimming with "giggling and a degree of sexualised banter."
Charlie Colt - who originally faced 27 charges – was found not guilty on two charges and acquitted, with the balance being withdrawn.
Tim Colt's other two daughters were also convicted of perjury for attempting to hide the identity of their children's fathers.
Betty was convicted of four counts of perjury, one of lying under oath and one of perverting the course of justice, and jailed for 14 months, which concludes in August.
Rhonda also received a 14-month intensive corrections order for perjury which again ends in August.
DNA testing would reveal all four women had children whose fathers were the mothers’ own father or brother, or a half brother, uncle, nephew or grandfather.
Of the original 80 charges originally levelled against eight Colts – including incest, child sexual abuse, indecency against a child and perjury – many were dropped.
Charlie Colt, who originally faced 27 charges – was found not guilty on two charges and acquitted, with the balance being withdrawn.
Although all eight family members were imprisoned after their 2018 arrest, only half have subsequently received custodial sentences.
Suppression orders had remained on the family’s interbreeding practices and rampant sexual interactions as eight family members were before the courts.
Three family members, Roderick, Martha and Derek Colt, filed notices of intention to appeal in 2020, all of which have since expired.
The horrific family history intertwined with incest only began to emerge nearly nine years ago after authorities discovered nearly 40 relatives living in inhumane conditions in an outback bush camp.
They lived amongst an uninsulated shed, old caravans and tents on a New South Wales bush block that was found in 2012.
The Colt children were sleeping in tents without running water, toilets, or electricity, had shuffling gait, and could not speak intelligible English.
The clan spread to remote parts of Australia after the NSW farm was raided.
Many of them have now reached adulthood and have shown marked improvement in personal hygiene and health - but they are still overshadowed by deprivations from their childhood.
Some have low slung ears or misaligned eyes as a result of inbreeding and they look decades older than their calendar age.
The once close-knit clan have dipped their toe in modern life by joining social media, but appear just as socially isolated as they were under Tim Colt's control.
The Colt family originated in New Zealand with Tim and June Colt marrying in the mid-1960s before emigrating to Australia.
It had been stated in the original 2013 judgment by NSW Children’s Court president Judge Peter Johnstone that the Colts descended from a New Zealand brother and sister.
The couple had seven children - five of whom were Betty, Charlie, Rhonda, Roderick and Martha.
The Colt family travelled around the country performing at town halls, festivals and country shows, and even produced records with album covers featuring the patriarch and three children.
One sickening album was even entitled a collection of family "love songs".
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