The Colt Family (TW: Child molestation)

[Osama bin Bambi]

Here's the link, if you can stomach it. Please note that it contains descriptions of child molestation and all-around fucked-up shit.

On A rough block of scrub hidden in the hills above a quiet NSW country town, the Colt family had a terrible secret.

Living in a row of ramshackle tents and sheds which had no showers, toilets or running water were 40 adults and children. But the Colts kept to themselves and kept their relationships within their family group.

Neighbours on one of the large properties or hobby farms occasionally heard a chainsaw, but no laughter or play.

The men occasionally sold firewood and two of the adult men worked as council labourers.

Occasionally, the womenfolk would come into town in a four-wheel drive.

Out would pile a dirty troupe of ragtag children, some of them rail thin, wearing dirty clothes.

The town people didn't even know their names.

Occasionally, when the welfare officers came visiting, the children would be forced to attend a few days of school, where they needed remedial teaching.

It wasn't until a squad of police and child protection officers arrived unannounced on the property one day in early June last year, that the shocking truth about the Colts would be revealed.

It turns out that the Colt family (their real names and the town they were living in have been suppressed for legal and privacy reasons) is the product of four generations of incest, starting with the marriage of a brother and sister in New Zealand. For years, they lived a reclusive life away from the rest of society, and moved states if social workers started noticing something wrong. Three of the women were also involved in an earlier abuse case in Boorawa.

The result is this family tree:

[TheUnknown]

I wonder how the mothers' lawyers are going to try to spin this to convince people to give them their children back.  Then again, I don't know how courts in Australia work.

[Osama bin Bambi]

I wonder how the mothers' lawyers are going to try to spin this to convince people to give them their children back.  Then again, I don't know how courts in Australia work.

It's pretty much impossible for the mother to get the children returned to her. Both the child protective agency and the courts so far have apparently agreed that she has too many problems of her own to adequately care for the children.

[starseeker]

Oh god that's one screwed up family tree.

[Art Vandelay]

This is the sort of stuff horror writers wish they could come up with.

[Barbarella]

Great, I need a shower, now!

I always assumed that weird, backwoods, Deliverance people were either exaggerations or something from a bygone era but sadly, I WAS WRONG!

I would love to know what possessed that brother & sister, generations ago, to run off into the boonies and start a deranged inbreeding-fest like this?! Were their parents like this?!!!

I'll bet there's all sorts of weird birth defects, Downs Syndrome, Habsburg King Carlos II-type issues!

[Osama bin Bambi]

Great, I need a shower, now!

I always assumed that weird, backwoods, Deliverance people were either exaggerations or something from a bygone era but sadly, I WAS WRONG!

I would love to know what possessed that brother & sister, generations ago, to run off into the boonies and start a deranged inbreeding-fest like this?! Were their parents like this?!!!

I'll bet there's all sorts of weird birth defects, Downs Syndrome, Habsburg King Carlos II-type issues!

All the children but one have severe physical defects and developmental delays. The youngest child (who is also, according to the social workers, a very sweet little girl) does not seem to have these defects, and genetic tests showed she is also the only child in the family with two unrelated parents.

And you're right about the rare disorders; one of the infants died shortly after birth due to a rare congenital condition called Zellweger syndrome.

[Dakota Bob]

There was an episode of X-Files almost exactly like this.

[Barbarella]

I would LOVE to know what the heck possessed the original brother-sister couple that got this whole ball rolling to start this to begin with? Why have the incest, the moving out to the boonies, not caring or minding that everybody's a deformed, mentally/intellectually-impaired, filthy mess....WHAT THE HELL MICHIGAN IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!

Is there a weird religious component? Were brother & sister also the product of incest? Perhaps they got the hots for each other and ran off into the wilderness to get away from disapproving family and peers.

I'm just curious as to why, years ago, Tim & June thought this was such a smashing idea!

Congratulations, you've spawned a dynasty of people too messed up even for the denizens Deliverance! There's a reason for an incest taboo! It's not sexual bigotry....it's a matter of good health & genetics!

[Witchyjoshy]

Though apparently, mating with your cousin is genetically fine so long as your kids don't mate with their cousins and their kids don't mate with their cousins, then we start getting into problems.

Or at least so I've heard, I'm no expert in the ways of acceptable incest.

[Osama bin Bambi]

Though apparently, mating with your cousin is genetically fine so long as your kids don't mate with their cousins and their kids don't mate with their cousins, then we start getting into problems.

Or at least so I've heard, I'm no expert in the ways of acceptable incest.

I know someone whose parents were cousins. She turned out fine, but she is disgusted by it even though the marriage was completely consensual. 

[SpaceProg]

It's just continued procreation from within the same gene pool (more like cesspool in this case) that problems arise.   Even a brother and sister can have a healthy child as long as there was no inbreeding before to produce the brother and sister.  If the child born from them also has another child with a close relative, then you REALLY start to get some double-dominance problems.

Cousins, well... pretty much the only problem with that, is society's general view of inbreeding. 

[Witchyjoshy]

So basically, "incest is fine as long as your parents haven't practiced incest and your kids won't practice incest."

[SpaceProg]

To lower the chance of genetic double dominance problems, yeah.  If you want to be in an incestuous brother/sister relationship and desire to make a baby instead of adopt, you have to take in the possible incest that existed before you. 

[Yla]

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