The charged conversation around incest in Jamaica has reignited in recent weeks, after a former national parliament member was taken into custody and formally charged with the crime. According to official allegations, the former lawmaker brought his 13-year-old female relative to his residence after running errands together in January of this year, where he is accused of sexually assaulting her. The minor victim filed a formal report with law enforcement, leading to the suspect’s arrest; his name has been withheld by authorities to protect the child’s privacy, in line with local protective legislation.
Following the public emergence of this case, Dr. Sapphire Longmore, a consultant psychiatrist based at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), has outlined key contextual and psychological drivers that push perpetrators to commit incest, the taboo act of sexual intercourse between close family members. In an interview with the Jamaica Observer, Longmore framed incest as a fundamentally harmful act rooted in multiple overlapping factors, ranging from intergenerational trauma to inherent sexual deviance, moral breakdown, and deep-seated power imbalances.
Longmore explained that when an adult commits incest against a child, the behavior often mirrors patterns seen in cases of paedophilic abuse, frequently linked to unaddressed trauma the perpetrator experienced during their own childhood. Unresolved early-life trauma, she noted, can disrupt healthy sexual development and create cycles of harm that pass between generations. “To commit such an act, it is usually related to sexual deviance, a reflection of power and control, and even sometimes there can be some motivation around revenge for some unrelated incident, unfortunately targeting the child,” she said. “Quite frankly, it is an act of evil.”
She expanded on this framing, explaining that incest violates the most foundational bonds of family and trust: it shatters a child’s sense of safety, belonging, and connection to their kin, inflicting long-term psychological damage that can last for decades. In many cases, Longmore added, the perpetrator themselves were survivors of incest or childhood sexual abuse, creating a self-replicating cycle of trauma. If survivors do not undergo appropriate therapeutic intervention to process their abuse, they may internalize harmful beliefs that normalize the behavior, leading them to repeat the pattern later in life, even if they consciously understand the act is wrong.
Longmore also emphasized that Jamaica’s post-colonial history contributes to the persistent stigma and underreporting of incest across the Caribbean. During the colonial era, enslaved people were treated as property, and enslavers routinely forced inbreeding to increase their holdings of enslaved people. This legacy, she argues, has fostered a subtle cultural normalization of the abuse across the region, and the problem is not unique to Jamaica. That said, she clarified that not all perpetrators were abused themselves: some commit incest as a result of innate sexually deviant urges that fall far outside accepted social and cultural norms. For these individuals, the abuse often centers on power and control; many paedophiles, she noted, target children for the sadistic pleasure of dominating a vulnerable person, representing a clear psychopathological pathology.
For survivors of incest abuse, Longmore argues that a holistic, spiritually centered approach to healing is critical to long-term recovery. While conventional medication and talk therapy can help survivors process trauma, incest abuse strikes at the core of a survivor’s sense of self-worth and identity, she explained. To fully recover, survivors need support to rebuild their sense of inherent value, unconditional love, and purpose — work that requires attending to the spiritual dimension of healing alongside clinical treatment. “It is not to say that other methods don’t work, but they take a very long time, and they’re not guaranteed, and sometimes they carry their own adverse effects,” she noted. “That is why the holistic approach is necessary, and specific attention to healing the individual’s sense of self and value is really very critical.”
Official data from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) shows a steady downward trend in reported incest cases across the country over the past five years: 33 cases were reported in 2019, compared to just 8 reported incidents between January and mid-November 2024. Historical JCF data mirrors this gradual decline: 30 cases were recorded in 2016, 29 in 2017, 23 in 2018, according to a 2020 Jamaica Observer analysis of incest hot spots across the country. However, researchers and public health experts warn that falling reported case numbers do not mean incest has been eliminated. Experts note that significant social stigma around the crime often discourages survivors and their families from coming forward, meaning the true prevalence of incest is likely far higher than official data suggests.