ABSTRACT
Aimee Sword, an attractive thirty-six-year-old married woman, mother of five, was found guilty in a Detroit courtroom of incest with her fourteen-year-old son and sentenced to between nine and thirty years’ imprisonment. Apart from murder, incest is the most taboo crime in our society-and incest between mother and son, its most prohibited form. Reporting and convictions of mother–son incest are relatively rare, and even self-report surveys show that the incidence is low by comparison with father–daughter and father–son incest. As in the myth of Oedipus, what is horrifying about incest is that it signifies the killing of the father when the son usurps his role in his mother’s bed. The natural order is destroyed—the difference between generations is wiped out, along with the need for protection and nurturance. Boundaries and limits are eradicated, and there is no authority to curb destructiveness.
