Do you want to know what incest is? What it really is? No ...

More than 80 percent of the women and all the men in Evert's study had sexual
problems as adults that they attributed to the abuse by their mothers. And almost two
thirds of the women said they rarely or never went to the doctor or dentist because to be
examined was too terrifying for them. Thus they are unable to avail themselves of the
diagnostic benefits of modern medicine, such as pelvic exams, PAP smears, breast
examinations, and mammography.
Some victims are unable to feel physical pain. Some self-mutilate—they bum or cut
themselves. Mariann told me that the impulse to cut herself is almost constant and
almost uncontrollable. "You get to feeling like your body is full of something rotten," she
says. "If you can make an opening, somehow the pressure will be relieved and
everything will come out."
Cynthia
Dr. Roland Summit says that a victim of incest "will tend to blame his or her own body
for causing the abuse." Some victims may go so far as to seek repeated cosmetic
surgeries in an attempt to repair physically the damage that was done to them
psychologically, according to a 1990 paper written by Elizabeth Morgan, M.D., a plastic
surgeon, and Mary L. Froning, who holds a doctorate in psychology. (Dr. Morgan herself
had made headlines in the late '80s, when she sent her daughter into hiding to keep her
away from the father that Dr. Morgan alleged had sexually abused the child.) Perpetual
plastic surgery, in fact, was to become one of the consequences of incest for Cynthia,
who was raped by her father and her brother Eugene but had blocked all memory of the
assaults.
Even when her brother sexually abused Cynthia's daughter Kit, Cynthia failed to recall
her own assaults. Kit was three and a half when Eugene came to visit and, one
afternoon, took her upstairs to the bathroom. When Cynthia discovered them, both were
naked. Kit was sitting on the sink and Eugene, standing between her legs, was slowly
rocking back and forth. Cynthia threw her brother out of the house. Then she said to the
confused child, "This never happened. Understand? Forget it ever happened." By the
time Kit was 20, she had only vague memories of childhood trips to the doctor for pelvic
examinations and ointments.
Cynthia spent years in psychoanalysis, which didn't seem to help her severe
depressions—nor restore her memory of having been sexually assaulted as a child. She
kept telling Kit—who didn't understand why she was being told—that incest is so rare
that it almost never happens. Kit was in her 30s when she remembered that afternoon
in the bathroom with her uncle, and she understood then that he had probably given her
a sexually transmitted disease.
Cynthia began to have plastic surgery in her middle 40s. She approached each
operation as if it were The Solution, and she was briefly delighted with the results.
Within months of each lift, tuck, or suction, however, she began to prepare for the next
one.
Cynthia didn't remember her own abuse until she was in her late 60s and a
grandmother. Now in her middle 70s, she is planning on having a breast reduction as
soon as she can find the right surgeon.
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