German couple fight to legalise incest

A brother and sister from Zwenkau, Sachsen, are currently in the centre of a case to go before the Bundesverfassungsgericht, Germany's highest court, regarding §173 of the Strafgesetzbuch.

Patrick S., aged 30, and his sister Susan K. aged 22, are currently fighting previous court rulings against Patrick, who has already served over two years in prison for incest.

The couple have four children, two of which are handicapped, three of whom are currently in care, the youngest child currently lives with Susan K.

Patrick S. has since been sterilised, by his own choice it should be noted.

Lawyers respresenting the couple are fighting §173 SfGB on the grounds of an unconstitutional involvement in sexual self-determination, a right enshrined in the German constitution (Grundgesetz).

The couple did not grow up together and only met as adults, as both were taken into care as children. There's an interesting topic in today's Guardian about genetic sexual attraction (GSA) which covers this couple and contains a interview with them and their legal team.


Bild.de interview with photographs of the couple concerned.

i think those kids need help. i mean, the parents need help. they need serious psychological counseling. that woman is, as i can intepret it from the article, still a child.

@Elfenstar: the woman was a minor when the 1st child was born, but she is now 22.

I remember reading this story last year, it's all rather sad really.
and they know their kids have a high risk of being born severely disabled yet they continue to have them.
seems the dude has voluntarily been sterilised which is a sensible thing I think.

The relationship began when she was 16. Under present german law incest is only punishable after 18 years of age.

The man received initially a suspended jail sentence and then an actual jail term of 25 months because they continued the "relationship".

The girl had another child while he was serving...

In my opnion they need treatment real bad!

Are the kids handicapped due to the interbreeding?

Good question Johnny. I think most of us are assuming that's the reason, and it's highly likely. But I don't know.

Are this brother and sister from the same pair of parents? If so how come they've got different surnames, "Patrick S. (30) und Susan K. (22)"?

From newspaper reports thay are not stating that the hadicaps have been proven to be genetical defects. Only presumption.

He was adopted, and lived in Potsdam and searched for his birth Mother when he became an adult.

More here:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1773672,00.html

So is it incest at all if they are not genetically related?

Keydeck, Katrina's bit says, "The couple did not grow up together and only met as adults, as both were taken into care as children. "

They ARE related, they didn't grow up together however.

Ahhhhh, twas t'other way around, gotcha. Dirty feckers!

No that would not be incest.

He was adopted - hence the different name - but they are TRUE genetic brother and sister.

She's not even decent looking.

That's rather unlikely as inbreeding only really causes problem if it's repeated over many generations.

Fascinating Guardian article. Thanks for posting, Katrina.

Frankly, if we're talking about sex between two consenting adults, I can't really see the problem. There is no victim here.

Now, the issue of having children together is a bit different. Obviously there's an increased risk of birth defects and other problems; but then again, there's no law that forbids people with other issues that may result in congenital disorders from having kids. For example, HIV+ women can and do often have perfectly healthy babies.

Morality and legality are two different issues that are easily confused.

I don't quite get the age-limit. The incest taboo is an age-old law in most (Western) civilizations, the Old Testament, the Greeks, the Romans all forbade incestuous relationships (not that they didn't have them ...) regardless of age. Why does something forbidden that I did at 17 years, 364 days suddenly become legal two days later? If incest is prohibited then it is prohibited, basta.
By the way, it seems that the ancients had things sussed long before Mendel and his Genetic Laws turned up. The incest taboo was meant to prevent the concentration of the same strain of DNA in the gene pool in ancient tribes, and once organized religion raised its ugly head it took over the law as the gods' will.

Regardless of the fact that both are consenting adults, and there is no victim here, the question is one of public policy-do you want brothers and sisters shagging?

To be an incestuous couple is one thing, to have children and in that matter four of them is irresponsible and selfish... There is a biological reason why incest is a tabu/forbidden in almost all societies, the closer related people are, the smaller the gene pool, hence the much higher chance to have a handicapped child, which happened two times already...

Some would argue that having four children at all is irresponsible and selfish. World's overpopulated as it is.

Again, as I said, lots of people with conditions that they know may be passed along to their children choose to reproduce anyway. There's no law against that.


As much as I find incest distasteful, I always get concerned when governments try to dictate who, as consenting adults, we should or should not be having sex with. Incest, homosexuality, whatever - I don't want politicians telling me who I can shag.

The age limit comes into play due to being able to consent.
Because otherwise you'd be criminalising victims so to speak.
But I guess other laws about coersion or misuse of positions of power could also come into play.
It's an interesting point in any case.

So a relative is only worth screwing if she's a stunner. Go sit in a corner.

That's a salient point: If there is no victim there is no crime. That's what their lawyer is on about as well. I think that the Legislation wants to uphold this law as a deterrent towards adult-minor relationships in general, so the paedophiles can't claim that their desires are as justified as those of incestuous relations. Or claim relationship through ancestors long dead and turned to dust.
@ Katrina: Then they should install the same consent rules as in other laws regarding sexual self-determination.

@sarabyrd: it's not legal at 18, it's punishable at 18. My guess is, teens under 18 are considered victims in such cases rather than criminals.

I don´t mind if adult and consenting relatives shag and frankly, each to their own, but I do mind when they end up having biological children. And to me yes, adults with a known transmittable and impairing health condition having biological children act irresponsible and selfish toward them. It doesn´t mean it doesn´t happen everyday...

No.
God said that in the most ancient book of the Bible, since He knew about DNA. He made DNA.

--Runs off for cover--

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, Oleron. But again, don't confuse morality with legality. Just because we shouldn't do something for moral reasons does not mean there should be a law against it.

Example: People shouldn't cheat on their spouses. But they shouldn't go to jail for it either.

Certainly, I could see Karlsruhe looking at the age limit for consent, I just can't see the Bundesverfassungsgericht lifting the incest restriction.
Let's look at the current law: SfGB
You'll notice that for certain things (§176 for example) age limits apply.

It should also be noted that only Beischlaf is strafbar.
Why is this interesting?
Well Beischlaf can only mean vaginal sex and vaginal sex only. Other laws would need to be applied to other forms of sex. Guess that the presence of children is the proof of that specific pudding then.

So there's no victim but there's the potential for victims when incestuous couples have kids.

It would be a weird law that said it's Ok to have sex with a sibling if one is infertile.

I thought it was legal in Germany and Norfolk

So would two sisters getting jiggy actually count as incest?

Does oral sex therefore count as incest?

Is anal sex therefore incest?

In those cases no it wouldn't count as incest, but could count as sexual abuse according to the individual circumstances.
Which takes us back to the specific act of reproduction and the concept of Blutschande.

If feasibly (taking the age out of it) a child could be produced, then it is incest.
If not, it isn't.

That's the exact interpretation of the law. Which would explain quite a bit of German porn, really.

@ Georgiagirl
As much as I understand the human dimension behind incest, I admit that in this special case, it is difficult for me to draw the line... And I also admit that I don´t know which solution would be best to make sure that incestuous parents won´t have biological children without criminalizing their choice of sexuality.

I still think you can't criminalise the having children bit either. That could open the door to all sorts of laws which could prevent people from having children. For example, I myself have a hereditary condition in which some of my permanent teeth did not develop, so I still have baby teeth in my mouth. It's caused me quite a bit of pain, hassle and expensive dental work. I'll likely pass this condition along to my children. Does that mean I should be legally barring from getting pregnant?

I realise that example is absurd, but it was deliberately so. The point is that once you've set a legal precedent you can get into all sorts of other trouble.

Sorry, got my data wrong. Comes from getting distracted by work when reading TT.

Jebus, you're safe from me, I never discuss lost causes of any color.
Slight digression into symantics here:


So Beischlaf used to be vaginal sex practiced by a heterosexual couple. Nowadays, however, it is used for the "penetration or intensive sexual stimulation of the reproductive organs by a homosexual couple". So yes, sisters doing it for each other can be done for incest, brothers as well.

Incest - a game the whole family can play.

Correct. He was sentenced to jail for the "beischlaff", i.e. sexual intercourse but NOT for actually having the children.

I understand that. I should have made it clear that I was responding to Oleron's post about how to prevent incestuous couples from having children.

***

An interesting related bit from Slate magazine: What's wrong with marrying your cousin?

Christ, some weird things happening in Eastern Germany all the time. How many weirdos out there killed their kids and kept them in fridges? Maybe it's something they put in the tap water over there or maybe it's their schooling system. Just the thought of sleeping with my brother makes me want to barf. I would have thought that our genetics would naturally ensure us finding our own siblings sexually unattractive for breeding purposes.

@ Georgiagirl
I am not for criminalizing as such and I don´t think it actually works as a preventive measure for incestuous couples. I just wish incestuous adults or for that matter adults with known hereditary and impairing (and I mean like seriously imparing or/and lethal) health conditions would act responsibly about the offspring question*. I know I am an idealist here but, hey, we all need a little dreaming...

EDIT: and not have biological children.

I was about to write this exact post, but georgiagirl beat me too it. Needless to say I agree entirely..

Bullshit.

Obviously, my ass.

Defects caused by single-generation inbreeding are rare. In fact, there is evidence to show that in limited populations it's actually beneficial¹. We are attracted to others for all sorts of reasons, but we're starting to find common denominators. Experiments using T-shirts worn by people for a day were sniffed by members of the the opposite sex who were asked to place them in order of attraction or "niceness". All participants submitted themselves to a number of tests. Without exception, the T-shirts found to be most "attractive" by all participants were from those most genetically and -- this is important -- immunologically different from themselves.

It's not just the British royalty which is heavily inbred; Jews are, too, especially those of the Kahn/Cohen and Levine lines. This is the reason Jewish couples are urged to get tested for Tay-Sachs prior to making babies: if both parents are carriers, each offspring has a 25% chance of being born with that horrible, debilitating disease. And there are a lot of diseases (Neiman-Pick, Chrohn's, Canavan) more prevalent in Jewish populations thanks to the "inbreeding" caused by shunning of marriage outside the faith which often limited choices to a very small group.

While brothers and sisters normally share a lot of common traits, it's always possible for them to share almost none and be attracted in almost the same way as their own parents. A single generation of inbreeding never produces offspring with statistically significant anomalies, meaning the chance of something "bad" happening is the same with the incestuous pair as with a non-incestuous pair.

Laws concerning age of majority are also flawed and hopelessly outdated. Legally I was raped many times before I was considered an "adult" in the eyes of the law. Every single time I knew what I was doing. There's no reason to believe the girl didn't. The guy didn't use any sort of coercion to bed her nor was he in anything position considered to be of any sort of authority (teacher/counselor/coach).

There is no evidence to show that the handicapped children they had were born so as a result of inbreeding. In fact no people predisposed to genetic problems nor even those born with such genetic defects are prevented from mating and procreating with whomever they choose.

I'm rootin' for 'em.

woof.
¹Leavitt, G. C. "Sociobiological explanations of incest avoidance: a critical claim of evidential claims", American Anthropologist 92: 971-993, 1990

Unnecessary nastiness removed by poster

Cool, everybody posted exactly the way I thought they would respond to a topic like this.

Me too.
What else can you expect from a "everything is relative" world...

I guess none of us is that surprising after all...

hmm...it seems that evidences can differ depending where one looks I guess.
found this link in English outlining this case. it mentions that

From a PM exchange with BadDoggie: