​Historically, the criminal punishment system has failed to prevent incest, support survivors and families through recovery, end recidivism by people who harm, and restore safety to communities. Incest leaves survivors vulnerable to health conditions and economic insecurities, as well as relationship challenges with themselves and others. Although the consequences of sexual violence may be obvious in some cases, many times the harm done is internal so cannot be seen by others. This makes community intervention more challenging in cases of sexual assault, while placing the burden and consequences of disclosure on the survivor.

 

Due to secrets and shame caused by the threats of people who harm to gain and keep access to the victim, as well as a lack of social and systemic supports, often survivors of sexual abuse never disclose. Others delay disclosing incest abuse until much later in life. Sometimes this is due to Dissociative Amnesia, also known as recovered memories or delayed recall, where the severity of the trauma causes the brain to forget or store the memories for a long period of time. 

 

The gap between the time the offense/s occurred and the survivor reported can make it difficult for them to provide direct evidence of the abuse to support their case/s for the criminal or civil legal processes. Additional barriers to reporting and disclosure by survivors have been disbelief of non-offending bystanders, the retraumatization of the criminal and civil legal processes, as well as statute of limitations laws that restrict reporting after a period of time has passed. Disclosure is particularly uncommon for survivors who are/were harmed by people within their family system, or who they are economically or ontologically dependent on. 

 

Without a criminal conviction, survivors do not receive victim compensation to aid them in their recovery process, forcing them to take financial responsibility for the consequences of the harm done to them. Additionally, survivors who share their stories publicly without a conviction are more vulnerable to lawsuits due to defamation laws. 

 

For the people who harm who do receive a criminal conviction, incest abuse and child sexual abuse counts have temporary, not lifelong sentences. Although these people who harm are isolated from children during their time in the prison system, they are then released back into the public without any assurance that they will not harm again. As sexual violence is so common within the prison system, many may leave their sentences as survivors. Some suggest the best solution is to make incest abuse and child sexual abuse offenses lifelong sentences. However, due to the complex relationships survivors, families, and communities have to people who are responsible for harm, harsher sentences become another deterrent to disclosure, safe intervention, reporting, healing, and justice.

 

When systems like the criminal legal process have been oppressive to historically marginalized populations, communities themselves have reimagined and created visions for transformative justice that ensure everyone is safe in all ways. Incest abuse has been difficult to center and focus as one issue exacerbated by all other social injustices that are so prevalent in our communities like racism, classism, adultism, sexism homophobia, transphobia, etc. In order to end incest, we have to end all social and systemic harms by promoting equity. We join the transformative justice movement to contribute to this great vision of a world that centers the safety of children.