UK Still Sending Consenting Adults to Jail

There's an update in a case we last talked about here and now we have information that wasn't previously distributed in the news media. The headlines are designed to be mislead, and the reports not only published the names, but the pictures of the consenting adults, as they have before. Here's Mark Molloy's report at metro.co.uk...

A paedophile has been jailed after committing incest with his 23-year-old daughter he gave up for adoption when she was a baby.

A "paedophile?" Not for this case. But notice that is how the sentence was started.

Frank Humphreys, 51, of Cleator Moor, Cumbria, was given a 21 month sentence after pleading guilty to having sex with an adult relative.

Consensual sex. He's going to jail for consensual sex, people. There's no good reason for that. They should have taken the steps I describe here.

His daughter, Eleanor Jackson, who also admitted the same charge at an earlier hearing, had been put up for adoption when she was 17 months old.

Ms Jackson tracked down her estranged father in 2010 and went to live with him, along with her twin sister, before the pair started a sexual relationship, the News and Star reports.

So this was a case of Genetic Sexual Attraction, most likely, and he in no way "groomed" her.

Friends and family became suspicious after observing the pair behaving in an ‘overtly sexualised manner’, the court heard.

I wonder if the twin ratted them out? Someone in the family did. How sad.

Humphreys, who has a previous conviction for underage sex with a 15-year-old girl, was also put on the sex offenders register.

That came late in the report, long after the label of paedophile. It is terrible for adults to prey on minors. Let me make that clear. Notice, however, that they do not report how old he was. Was he 18? 30? Also, the paedophile label is stretching it. It technically refers to people who are attracted to, or prey on, prepubescent children.

Jackson was given a two-year community order and put on the sex offender register for five years following the hearing at Carlisle crown court.

Well then who is the victim, if she was criminally sentenced as well?!? You may not feel sympathy for him, given his past, but what about her???

Here's the report at newsandstar.co.uk by Ian Duncan, which basically gives their address...

He said that officials became suspicious when the pair were observed acting in a manner which was not just “over familiar” but in an “overtly sexualised manner”.

Why should "officials" care how consenting adults behave with each other?

The court heard that Humphreys had a previous conviction for having sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 28 years old.

Was that too hard to include in the other report? Was that terrible of him? Yes. That still does not explain why adults should be prosecuted for consensual sex with other adults.

Finally, a report at dailymail.co.uk by Jill Reilly at least has some information about GSA...

Genetic sexual attraction is a seldom-talked about phenomenon that frequently occurs between adoptees and their long-lost parents.

Not just adoptees. It can result from any situation in which someone did not grow up with a close genetic relative. That can happen not only with adoption, but with sperm or egg donation, divorce, break-ups, affairs, flings, one night stands... many different possibilities.

It describes feelings of intense intimacy between two relatives who have been separated during the critical years of development and bonding, and then meet for the first time as adults.

Essentially strangers, when an adult-child and their biological parent finally meet, the brain struggles to associate each other as family. 

It also happens to people who have no idea they are close genetic relatives.

Instead, they become captivated with one another, sharing similar physical features, likes and dislikes, which is coupled with complex feelings of intimacy. This can lead both parties to express their emotions sexually.

The phenomenon was first identified by Barbara Gonyo in the Eighties, after she a wrote book called I'm His Mother, But He's Not My Son, which recounted her personal story of reuniting with the son she placed for adoption at 16.

A sexual relationship with her son ensued, and Ms Gonyo says she fell in love - a byproduct of delayed bonding that normally takes place in infancy between new parents and their child, according to psychologists.

If I recall correctly, Gonyo and her genetic son did NOT have sex.

Researchers believe that when family members grow up in close proximity, a inherent taboo is created through reverse sexual imprinting, which desensitises them to later sexual attraction.

Called the Westermarck effect, researchers hypothesize it evolved so biological relatives would not inbreed. 

Most researchers would not quite word it that way, because it implies intent in evolution.

Again, we see law enforcement action and journalism that lumps consensual sex between adults in with adults preying on children. Rather than prosecuting these two adults, they should have been free to marry, and at the very least, they should have been allowed to live their lives together as they both desired.