Mail-in DNA tests, including Ancestry DNA and 23&me, are exposing the uncomfortable extent of incest in the US.
The tests, which cost about $100, cannot explicitly tell whether someone is the product of incest, but the results can be taken to a third-party genetic testing company that can.
One person who discovered the disturbing truth about her family history was 39-year-old Victoria Hill, who at a high school reunion started talking about family trees with an ex-boyfriend with whom she once had an intimate relationship.
His family’s makeup was similar to hers and when he spoke to her he did the same test. A text message to her confirmed what they feared, saying simply: “You are my sister.” Ms Hill says she remains traumatized to this day.
Meanwhile, Virginia native Steve Edsel discovered through AncestryDNA that his parents were first-degree relatives, siblings or father-daughter.
He radiated anger at the thought of the origins of his conception, likely the result of his grandfather’s sexual assault of his mother.
A 1975 psychiatric textbook estimated the number of children born from incest at one in a million. Later research in Great Britain showed that the rate is closer to one in 7,000
Incestual family relationships have gained increasing public attention following a 2004 documentary and the exclusive DailyMail.com reporting on America’s most inbred family, the Whittakers
The prevalence of incest in the US is much more common than previously thought, with research including common genealogical testing putting the figure at one in 7,000.
Dr. Jim Wilson, from the University of Edinburgh who carried out that study, said: ‘That’s much, much more than I think a lot of people could ever imagine.’
It differs sharply from the 1975 estimate in a psychiatric textbook, which put the figure at about one in a million.
Mail-in DNA tests, including Ancestry and 23&me, can be useful tools in determining whether someone is genetically predisposed to certain conditions.
Yet every now and then they discover the disturbing truth about their origins.
Babies born from incest are at increased risk for birth defects, developmental delays and genetic conditions such as blindness, hearing loss, neonatal diabetes and limb deformities.
The risks of two siblings or a parent and child having a baby are numerous. When two closely related people have sex and the female becomes pregnant, there is an increased risk of recessive gene disorders.
This is because children receive one copy of the genes from each parent, with the harmful genetic mutations known as recessive genes being overwritten by dominant genes.
When related individuals become pregnant, they reduce genetic variations, and the recessive gene they have can become dominant together in their child, causing many types of congenital disabilities.
In cases of incestual relationships, the genetic variations of two parents decrease and recessive genes can combine to become dominant in the child, resulting in a higher risk of a range of conditions including low IQ, cleft palate, heart disease, cystic fibrosis and infant mortality.
People born from incest may feel unable to reproduce for fear of giving birth to a baby with life-threatening genetic defects.
One of those people is 64-year-old Teresa Weiler. She discovered in 1985 that her father was her mother’s brother.
She said: ‘It wasn’t until I walked through the streets in a daze afterwards that it dawned on me: I could never be a mother.
‘There was no way I could risk having a damaged baby. I would have to give up the one thing in the world I wanted most.”
Steve, meanwhile, was born with a heart murmur that required two surgeries as a teenager, a possible product of two sets of the same genes and mutations, although he and his wife Michelle, who has helped him in his search for the truth, cannot be certain saying his incestuous parentage was the cause.
Steve grew up in a foster home and was always curious about his biological family. He took his ancestry test as part of a search for his birth mother, who gave him up shortly after giving birth when she was 14, according to the Atlantic Ocean.
He also enlisted the help of CeCe Moore. Which specializes in locating people using remote DNA matches, a method that found the Golden State Killer and led to his capture.
Since working on Steve’s case, Ms. Moore now knows of more than 1,000 additional cases of people born from incest.
Most of these cases involved first-degree relatives, while the remainder were the product of second-degree relatives, such as half-siblings, uncle-niece, and grandparent-grandchild.
Steve was able to find a support group online set up by Ms Moore for people in his situation, and members have complained of a host of problems, including autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia and eye problems. However, it is difficult to determine incest as the cause.
A support group member, Mandy, whose last name was withheld for her privacy, discovered that her father was her mother’s uncle. Her mother, a cruel woman, was 17 when she gave birth to Mandy, while her uncle was in his thirties.
Her mother treated her worse than her younger brothers, and Mandy now understands that this is the reason behind her mother’s cruelty. But the situation still makes her uncomfortable.
She said: ‘When I go to the doctor and they ask about my family history, I wonder, ‘How much should I put into it?’
If someone wants to test for a possible incestuous relationship, they usually have to upload their genetic material to a third-party service. It is not something that AncestryDNA or 23&Me discloses to customers.
The third-party tests look for homozygosity, or ROH for short. The genomes of children born from incest show an ‘absence of heterozygosity’, which explains why their DNA contains large stretches showing that the genetic contributions of the father and mother are identical because they themselves shared much of their genetic code.
People born from incest may feel unable to reproduce for fear of giving birth to a baby with life-threatening genetic abnormalities. One of those people is 64-year-old Teresa Weiler. She discovered in 1985 that her father was her mother’s brother
DNA tests sent by major companies have uncovered other disturbing family secrets that have sent people’s lives into a tailspin.
In Connecticut, Ms. Hill said she was “traumatized” after realizing she had unknowingly committed incest with her high school boyfriend.
She told CNN that she only found out that the man she grew up thinking was not her biological father after she took the DNA test at home.
Mrs Hill said: ‘I’ll just put it out there, I was intimate with my half-brother.
“I was traumatized by this,” Hill added. “Now I look at pictures of people thinking, if he could be my brother or sister, anyone could be my brother or sister.”
In Denver, influencer and real estate agent Celina Quinones decided to take a DNA test in 2016. It showed that she and her husband had a genetic match of 62 centimorgan – a unit for measuring genetic linkage – meaning they share ancestors going back eight generations.
She said: ‘I was in shock. To be honest, it made me a little depressed. But this was after we already had three children, and they were all healthy.
“They have ten fingers and ten toes, but it was just a shock.”
Incestual relationships have received increasing interest and attention in recent years, thanks in part to a 2004 documentary about the deformed, inbred Whittaker family of Odd, West Virginia.
When visiting the family, DailyMail.com was welcomed by several members, including Ray, who can only communicate through barks and growls, and who insisted on showing reporters around the property.
DailyMail spoke to members of the family who said they were happy with their new comforts. In the photo: Timmy, Betty and Lorene. Pastor William Plumley told DailyMail.com that Timmy and Lorene have been members of the Good Hope congregation for many years and enjoy being involved in the preaching
Currently living in the dilapidated homestead are siblings Ray, Betty, Larry and Lorene, as well as her son Timmy, all of whom struggle with heartbreaking mental and physical conditions.
Ray seemed to suffer the most and excitedly communicated through sounds, pointing to objects in their house in a childish manner.
The siblings are the descendants of two sets of cousins who married. DailyMail.com previously revealed that the bloodline continued with a set of identical twin brothers whose children married.
John and Henry Whittaker were born in 1897. John subsequently married his own cousin Ada Riggs – the daughter of Mary Perkins, sister of John and Henry’s mother Eliza.
Ada and John had nine children, including Gracie Irene Whittaker who was born in 1920. John’s brother Henry married Sally Burton and they had seven children, including John Emory Whittaker, born in 1913.
Gracie and John were cousins, but married in November 1935 and had their first child in 1937, fifteen in all.
Many members of the family suffered heart attacks, while two did not survive childhood. Some of the fifteen children died early from a range of diseases, including heart attacks and cancer, believed to be linked to inbreeding.