By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.

The vast majority of incest begins years before the earliest conceivable age of consent. p4

It is regarded as axiomatic that parents have more power then children. This is an inescapable biological fact; young children are completely dependent on their parents or other caring adults for survival.

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.

..[The] disclosure of the incest secret initiates a profound crisis for the family usually...the abuse has been going on for a number of years and has become an integral part of family life. Disclosure disrupts whatever fragile equilibrium has been maintained, jeopardizes the functioning of all family members, increases the likelihood of violent and desperate behavior, and places everyone, but particularly the daughter, at risk for retaliation.

Since most sexual abuse begins well before puberty, preventive education, if it is to have any effect at all, should begin early in grade school.

As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.

The horror of incest is not in the sexual act. but in the exploitation of children and the corruption of parental love. p4

Maternal absence, in one form or another, is always found in the background of the incest romance. Womens literature on incest generally treats the theme of maternal absence tragically. Mens literature trivializes it or treats it comically. And clinical literature tends to treat it judgmentally.