Father & Daughter Jailed for Incest in Alabama

[U2Bama]

I know there are plenty of jokes about relatives marrying each other down here, especially in Alabama, the Carolinas and West Virginia. Well, it seems to have come true in a much closer relationship than I would have imagined. It seems that a father and his daughter, both of legal age and consentually, have been having marital and sexual relations for quite a while in Mobile County.

Such topics usually tend to get interesting down here; even on the national hot topic issue of "defense of marriage" legislation vs. homosexual marriage rights, a state legislator used a bizarre analogy in opposing a ban on homosexual marriage; specifically, State Representative Alvin Holmes, a Democrat from Montgomery, said, ?Government has no business trying to regulate people?s lives. If a person wants to marry a mule the state should not be trying to prohibit that." Of course, this gives us Alabamans the risk of more jokes about our relations with farm animals. Thank you, Congressman, for your brilliant example.

A colleague of his brought up the topic of people with sex changes in yet another interesting comment: ?I don?t think government should be getting into that," House Speaker Pro Tem Demetrius Newton, Democrat from Birmingham, said. ?With all these sex change operations, how do we decide what is a man and what is a woman?"

So back to this topic of incest, what does everyone think about consensual adult relatives, even parents and their children, getting married and having such relations? The article on the specific Mobile case from the MOBILE REGISTER is below:

Incestuous couple locked up
Carroll Ferdinandsen and his daughter, Alice, discovered together at motel despite judge's order
02/05/04
By KAREN TOLKKINEN
Staff Reporter
A father and daughter who created headlines last year after marrying each other in Mobile County were arrested again this week after police caught them together at a Saraland motel.
A Mobile County Circuit judge voided the marriage in December and ordered Alice Ferdinandsen, 30, and her father, Carroll Ferdinandsen, 53, to maintain separate residences after they pleaded guilty to incest. They were released from jail Jan. 22. On Monday, they checked into the Bamboo Motel for two nights, according to a motel clerk.
Saraland police said a tipster told them Tuesday that the couple was at the motel. The department sent two officers.
"The lady opened the door and there they were together," said police Sgt. Steve Stafford. "She opened the door wide enough and they saw him, too."
They were charged with violating probation.
The couple's battered white Toyota pickup was still parked at the motel Wednesday afternoon. Long-stem silk red roses sat on the dashboard and a large Bible rested on the front seat.
Last May, the couple were married in Mobile County Probate Court. At the time, they were living in a run- down trailer home in Theodore. They were indicted in June and arrested in July on incest charges, as well as charges of cruelty to animals and forgery.
It's not the first time the Ferdinandsens have been accused of having an improper relationship.
In 1989, Carroll Ferdinandsen pleaded guilty to second-degree rape in Mobile County Circuit Court.
"Accused of raping Alice," says a note in his case file compiled by his attorney, Claude Patton, said.
Alice Ferdinandsen was 16 at the time.
Ferdinandsen spent almost a year in jail.
Patton said Carroll Ferdinandsen is mentally ill and that he was taking "nerve pills" that he ran out of while incarcerated.
"They need to leave that poor old man alone," Patton said. "He needs mental health treatment. He cannot read. He cannot write. He cannot drive."
Circuit Judge John Lockett ordered Carroll Ferdinandsen to get mental health treatment, according to court records. It was unclear Wednesday whether he had done so.
Ferdinandsen lost his disability benefits while he was incarcerated, Patton said.
Alice Ferdinandsen's attorney, Deborah McGowin, could not be reached for comment.
In January, when Alice Ferdinandsen was sentenced, Lockett told her that if her probation team thought necessary, he would order mental health treatment for her.
Incestuous relationships are banned in all states because of concerns about child abuse and genetic mutations.
Katherine Ferdinandsen, married to Carroll Ferdinandsen's estranged son, David, said she believes the couple ought to spend more time locked up.
"They only got six months," she said. "You get more than six months for a traffic ticket around here."

~U2Alabama

 

[bonosloveslave]

This is a case where I think one or both parties need to be institutionalized, not put in jail (although you could argue that the two are not very different) - mental help of some sort

 

[U2Bama]

It seems that mental help has been attempted for the father/husband in the past, but it is unclear if it happened other than medication.

Did you see the part about their cruelty to animals charges? I hate to imagine what that involved. Considering Representative Holmes' comments on people marrying donkeys, strange things must be going on in this state.

~U2Alabama

 

[Sue DeNym]

This is a case where I think one or both parties need to be institutionalized, not put in jail (although you could argue that the two are not very different) - mental help of some sort

I agree. Something is very, very wrong with both of them. They both need a lot of help, likely permanent institutionalization.

I hope they don't have any children.

 

[verte76]

These people are messed up. Our politicians would be a bad joke if they were funny. This is serious. I have a whole slew of cousin marriages in my ancestry. No wonder I'm nuts.

 

[STING2]

verte76,

"I have a whole slew of cousin marriages in my ancestry."

I think everyone does if your able to take it back far enough. Technically, all humans alive today are cousins with everyone's nearest common ancestor being a man living in Africa 60,000 years ago according to DNA analysis.

 

[verte76]

Sting, I have two cases of cousin marriages four generations back, one in South Carolina and one in what is now West Virginia, before the Civil War. It was fairly common because communities were very small. In one case (BTW this happened in Alabama) a couple got married, had two children, then the husband died of typhoid fever. Her sister-in-law also died of typhoid; the two widowed spouses then got married. My mother has both her engagement rings.

 

[sue4u2]

God forbid, this is so embarrassing. I am sick to death of this story on the local news. They are making way too much about this whole thing. This is such a sick, sad case - but there is nothing anyone can do but get them some help or leave them alone. I don't think making specials like the one this tuesday night, is helping anyone in any way. If the local news would leave it alone I believe it would go away. I've already written and called the paper with my opinion, for whatever that's worth. I swear every picture that shows up on TV or in national newspaper article is of some toothless, illiterate bumkin married to his daughter or something absurd like that. Alabama really is about much more than that. Sorry for the rant! But geez it's just so exasperating sometimes.

 

[verte76]

You're not kidding Sue. It seems like there's always something peculiar going on here and it makes national headlines, and gosh, is it ever embarrassing. Really people most of us are pretty sane no matter what the press claims.

 

[OzAurora]

Have they ever been on Jerry Springer???? sorry, I know that in reality it is sad, but not being American and whenever I see snippets of the Jerry Springer show, you wonder if the people are real or actors and hearing stories like this makes one go, yep their real......


anyway sad story, I think what has to happen in circumstances like this is that the culture of the place needs to be looked at, like ask yourself, why is it that so many of those deep south states have that 'deliverance' kind of tag associated to them, when in fact it is probably only a small proportion of the people who are like this......I dont know how you change cultural conditioning, but there is something sad going on in the world today when stuff like this happens and the people involved dont see it as being wrong.....