#thingsmendothatmakesmewannasmackthem

I think incest is one of those things that instantly makes people think of the scariest, darkest, shadiest criminals in dark alleys and therefore no one they know could ever do it.

Absolutely.

How sad too.

we do it with a lot of things. Drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, depression, other mental illnesses, etc...

Hell, even homosexuality.

He's not gay! He likes football!

When we put those kinds of things into the boxes of "no one I know could do this" or "this couldn't happen to me", it becomes less real. Yes, we're not living in constant fear of the horrible things that...

are possible, but we now see those who admit to it happening to them as claimants to something fictional.

I understand believing that the world is a place of inherent good, or at least the struggle to be decent in a world that doesn't reward decency isn't futile, and the idea of someone raping their own child...

challenges that. But I believe that erasure of an issue simply allows the perpetrators of such acts to go unrecognized and unpunished.