The cane beltway includes St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland and rural areas of Clarendon.
 Since the year 2000, there have been 45 cases of incest reported in the parish of St. Catherine, a whopping 17 per cent of the 262 of the total cases reported for the entire island between the year 2000 and September 2007.

 

 The St. Catherine courts are choked with cases of a sexual nature, including rape, carnal abuse and incest. 
 There was an unusual one reported in St. Catherine of mother-son incest last year when a 15-year-old schoolboy pleaded guilty to having sexual intercourse with his mentally-ill 44-year-old mother. He was remanded to a place of safety. The boys father was charged with aiding and abetting the offence, and was offered $80,000 bail with surety. The boy reportedly admitted that he had sex with his mother in the one-room shack he shared with three siblings, at least six times, opting to use a condom once.

 The boy was charged with incest and defilement of a female imbecile, while his father was slapped with charges of aiding and abetting carnal abuse and aiding and abetting the defilement of a female imbecile.
 St. James was second with a total of 31 cases, while Westmoreland had 29 such cases and St. Andrew had 27 reported cases of incest. Portland had the fewest cases in the last seven years with only five reported.
 The parish of St. Elizabeth had one of the lowest incidences of incest in the island. There was, however, a case last year in that parish which drew public attention and dominated talk radio when a St. Elizabeth farmer was arrested after his four-month-old infant daughter was sexually molested. The 46-year-old farmer was charged with two counts of indecent assault, after eluding the police for a few days.

 Investigating officers at the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) said that the mother of the child suspected that the child was being molested from February, when she was only two months of age.
 In 1990, there were only six reported cases of incest, and five arrests made. The numbers have increased dramatically since then, reaching a high of 61 reported cases in 1996, with 21 arrests. Last year, there were 40 reported cases islandwide.

 Experts feel that the crime is under-reported and that the stigma attached to the practice had led many to believe that it only happens in poor and rural communities. This is a misconception.
 Many persons tend to associate incest with people downtown, but this is a misconception, said one psychologist. It could be your minister of religion, your next-door neighbour, the father of your childs prep school friend seemingly ordinary people like you and me.
 I find a lot of the cases are in the middle-class, and it happens across all sectors of society.

Incest is more about power and less about sex, say the experts.
 Its about how a man can exert total control over someone else, playing upon her needs and wants, threatening to withhold favours from a tender age right up to adulthood, said one counselor.
 Strictly defined, incest is sexual interaction between close relatives: fratrilagnia brother; matrincest mother; patrolagnia father and sororilagnia sister.

 But these definitions are too narrow for some people. The psychological definition covers any overtly sexual contact between people who are either closely related or see themselves as such, one psychologist told XtraNews.
 A broader definition of incest is uncles who push their tongues down their nieces throats, grandfathers who fondle their granddaughters breasts, step-parents, step-siblings and even adults who are common-law, once they have assumed a parent role. If a childs boundaries and trust have been violated by anything inappropriate, she continued.

 According to experts, father-daughter incest is most common. The interaction usually begins as early as infancy with oral-genital relations, graduating into more hardcore relations and eventually, penetration.
 The Amnesty International report for 2007 stated that sexual violence continued throughout the country, resulting in severe health risks for women and girls. Sexual hara**ment and assault by strangers, friends, family, acquaintances and lovers was widespread but the authorities failed adequately to investigate and punish the perpetrators. Rates of HIV infection among women and girls continued to rise and people living with HIV faced systematic discrimination.

The child usually remains silent about the act, because she is too young to know that such behaviour is prohibited, or because shes afraid of the consequences if she tells anyone about it. Some fathers brainwash their daughters into believing that this is the way to express their love for them. The oldest daughter is usually the target, but others may be abused concurrently, or in sequence, as they grow older.
 Incest often leaves the young child emotionally scarred for life, say psychologists. She is likely to enter into abusive relationships, where the man is the undisputed head; become sexually promiscuous; have an impaired sexual self-esteem resulting in sexual difficulties in relationships; and memories of sexual abuse can lead to universal feelings of depression.
 Psychologists note that the cycle of victimisation and abuse continues far into adulthood, as the woman accepts extreme cases of domestic abuse. She grows embittered and continues to seek male attention in an effort to regain her lost identity.

Under the Incest (Punishment) Act 2 (1), any male person who has carnal knowledge of a female person, who is to his knowledge his grand-daughter, daughter, sister or mother, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and on conviction thereof before a Circuit Court shall be liable to imprisonment with hard labour for any term not exceeding five years. If it is proven that the female is under 12, imprisonment, a term not exceeding 10 years at hard labour, will apply.

 Many stakeholders believe that the law is woefully inadequate. Discussions aimed at reforming the Offences Against the Person Act and the Incest Punishment Act, ongoing since 1995 and 2000, respectively, re-started in a parliamentarian joint committee recently. Proposed amendments to both acts would offer greater legal protection to women and children, including making marital rape a criminal offence and increasing punishments for perpetrators of sexual violence. The Centre for Investigations of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse was improved and given further powers to investigate these crimes.