Challenges of Father-daughter Incest Survivors: Taboo, Coping and Survival

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Introduction
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is one of the various forms of sexual crime that has existed for a long period of time and involve children as victims. According to the statistics, the number of reported incidents of sexual abuse committed against minors across the globe is currently on the rise (United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 2022). In the year 2020, UNICEF reported that one in ten children (around 120 millions) around the world had been the victims of sexual abuse before the age of 20. In fact, the data reveals that, as compared to boys' involvement in this crime, the number of victims recorded by girls was significantly higher (UNICEF, 2020). This can be seen when the world has been affected by COVID-19 pandemic, where the frequency of sexual abuse involving minors shows a significant increase (Tener, et al., 2021;United Nations, 2021). CSA has been variously defined by experts. Buchbinder and Sinay (2020); Finkelhor (1980) define child sexual abuse as coercive and involuntary sexual behaviours by adults against children. Ortiz-Ospina and Roser (2019) emphasised that this is a contemptuous activity that occurs when the caregiver or their neighbour forces them to have sexual intercourse with them against their will, exposing children to any sexual statement and pushing them to engage in any sexual activity by giving them gifts or money or pressuring and threatening them.
Prior to addressing CSA, the following types of CSA have been identified in the literature (Finkelhor, 1997), which are: (1) intrafamilial abuse; (2) non-family caretaker's abuse; (3) youthful perpetrator's abuse; and (4) female perpetrators. Although there are many types of CSA, this paper will only focuses on intrafamilial abuse, commonly known as incest. Incest has existed for a long time despite being illegal in several countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Japan, Portugal, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and Sweden (World Population Review, 2021). Since the 1980s, incestuous relationships have been on the rise globally (Morrill, 2014). Incest is disgusting, immoral, destructive of human rights and affecting family members' dignity. Most incestuous relationships will be kept secret, which leads to a big drop in the number of incidents reported.
Incest is any sexual behaviour that takes place between close blood relatives who are not permitted to marry under the law (Celbis et al., 2019). While there are various definition of incest depending on cultural and ethical practices; the common understanding of incest refers to sexual abuse where perpertrators are among people who know the victims but cannot marry them, such as: parents, relatives, or siblings. According to the literature, there are several types of incest: (1) incest perpetrated by biological parents (Ramli, 2021;Celbis et al., 2019); (2) incest perpetrated by step or foster parents (Ramli, 2021); (3) incest perpetrated by siblings (Tener et al., 2020); and (4) incest perpetrated by relatives (Celbis et al., 2019). Incest cases that involve parents as the perpetrators are most frequently discussed and garner the most attention. Thus, this paper focuses on the issue of incest perpetrated by biological parents, particularly FDI. It aims to explore the research gaps and recommend future research directions related to the issues and challenges of faced by the survivors of father daugther incest particularly taboo, coping mechanisms and survival.

Literature Review Father-daughter Incest
Incest cases involving biological father and daughter have established the largest record. Biological fathers are the most common incest perpetrators reported, followed by stepfathers. Literature shows that there are numerous factors that contribute to FDI. Among the factors are: poverty (Gupta & Garg, 2020), abuse history (Williams & Finkelhor, 1992), drug or alcohol use and others. In addition, before the perpetrators started abusing their children, they utilised a variety of methods to interact with the victims. According to the literature, there are four steps and procedures discovered commonly occured and lead to CSA, including: (1) engagement; (2) sexual interaction phase; (3) secrecy; and (4) disclosure. Cole and Putnam (1992) stated that some fathers instruct and intimidate their daughters not to inform others. They will use a range of strategies, such as threatening to abuse or harm their mothers, limiting their children's ability to attend school (Gqgabi & Smit, 2019), and others. As a result, the children or victims will grow frightened, powerless, and guilty of disobeying their fathers' or perpetrators' demands. In relation to the FDI issue, there are four common scenarios that explain the complexity and seriousness of FDI, which are: (1) incest perpetrated by the biological father; (2) incest perpetrated by the biological father and discovered or known by the mother; (3) incest perpetrated by the biological father toward the victim who has experienced sexual activities; and (4) incest perpetrated by the biological father who groomed her children to be his incest victims.
Incest perpetrated by the biological father-This is the most common type of incestuous relationship that is frequently reported. The majority of these incidents occur without the knowledge of any party, including close family members. Most victims of biological father incest have been sexually abused since they were children (UNICEF, 2020), whether they were aware of the illegal relationship or not. Typically, the perpetrator or biological father will employ a variety of strategies to ensure that their dirty tactics will not be not disclosed. As previously mentioned, the perpetrator will utilize force, threats, or pay the victim to ensure that their tactics are not caught by others.
Incest perpetrated by the biological father and discovered by the mother-This scenario of FDI can be classified into two scenarios. The first scenario is when this incident was discovered by the victims' mother and mother took action to file a report about their father's cruel actions. In this case, the victims' mother will be responsible for assisting the victims in recovering from the trauma suffered by their daughters. As emphasised by World Health Organization (2020), one of the most significant aids in assisting victims of sexual abuse to cope with the painful experience is support from family members especially parents as they are among the closest persons to children (Abd Hamid et al., 2020). The second scenario is when an incestuous relationship occurs and discovered by mothers; but the mothers do nothing to help the victim. This situation will deteriorate as sometimes mothers begin to blame their children and accuse the victim of being the cause of the this horrible incident. Thus, the victim will suffer tremendous trauma as a result of this situation.
Incest perpetrated by the biological father towards the victim who has experienced sexual activities-A victim of incest perpetrated by her biological father may confront a different situation if she has engaged in sexual activities with her partner or boyfriend. In some cases, a victim who has a conflict with her spouse or boyfriend may leverage the power of her father's sexual interactions. Victims will enjoy the sex if they seize the opportunities to have consensual sex with their fathers on a continuous basis. According to Hinds (1981), incest victims initially detested having sex with their fathers; however, when they have no choice and are frustrated with their spouses, lovers, or boyfriends, the frequency of engaging in sexual acts with their father increase. Even though the daughter is willing to have consensual sex, this scenario is nonetheless deemed incestuous. Nevertheless, the victim's thoughts of loving her sexual relationship with her father may change into an unpleasant situation when she discovers that her father has sexually abused her.

Incest committed by biological father who groomed her children to be his incest victim-
This situation occurred when the father was in charge of taking care of children while they were young. The father or perpetrator will use the amount of time spent with the children to groom the daughter to be his victim in the future. It can be even worse if the father is a single parent and raising his daughter on his own. The girl's sexual activities (touching, caressing, embracing, kissing, and others) may be contaminated by her father's instruction that they are apart of the child's games in the beginning stages . At some point, the girl may become involved in their sexual experiences.

Issue and Challenges of Father-daughter Incest Taboo
One of the challenges of FDI is that it is taboo and forbidden in society globally (Teodor & Cătălin, 2022;Sharaby, 2019). Most people refrain from talking regarding this issue because they are frightened it will occur in their families. Consequently, many incidents of incest (notably FDI) are taboo and remain unreported (Ahmad, 2018;Kassim & Kassim, 1995). This paper categorised that there are several categories consider FDI as taboo, which are: (1) genetic factors; (2) disgraceful sexual conduct; (3) breaking family hierarchies. Genetic factors-According to Sharaby (2019), children born as a result of sexual interactions between family members are more likely to inherit genetic illnesses. In accordance with this study, if an individual has been sexual abused by their biological fathers and cause pregnancy, the baby has a greater risk of developing numerous genetic illnesses such as premature birth, mortality and others. When this occurs, the children suffer tremendously since they are unable to live and survive like other children. This makes the survivors hard to cope with the painful experience as the perpertrators are their own biological father. Disgraceful sexual conduct-Another reason that FDI is taboo is that it is perceived as a disgraceful thing. A father figure is seen as noble as he holds the great responsibility of protecting, educating, loving over their children and hold strong authoritative role (Kar & Swain, 2019). As a consequence, once this horrible incident occurred, the vast majority of the population cannot tolerate this. Several people who are aware of the situation will remain silent and refrain from interfering (Ahmad, 2018). Even more heartbreaking when family members, especially moms, remain silent and refrain from taking action after discovered that their husbands have sexually abused their children. This is because they desire to keep their husbands' and family members' dignity from the local community. Breaking family hierarchies-The incidence of FDI does indeed have a significant impact on the family harmony (Kar & Swain, 2019). The victims will start to feel ashamed to face other family members because they are worried about the social stigma given to them; and thus makes it hard for them to cope with the situations and survive in the future. Indeed, good relationships between family members and perpetrators will be harmed as a result of the abuse. Hatred and wrath will start to spread across the family, wreaking a havoc situation. Furthermore, if the incest incidence results in a pregnancy, the flow chart of family members will begin to change and disintegrate (Sharaby, 2019). From an Islamic standpoint, this will pose issues and give a significant impact on Islamic religious legislation especially pertaining to the marriage issue.

Coping Mechanims
Coping mechanisms are also one of the challenges associated with the suvivors of FDI. While most victims endure a variety of negative consequences as a result of the abuse, they must find the best coping mechanism to enable them to cope with their traumatic experience. This paper has categorised three categories of coping mechanism applied by many sexual abuse victims which are: (1) emotion-focused coping; (2) problem-focused coping; and (3) avoidant coping.
Emotion-focused coping-By incorporating this coping mechanism into this study, many victims will be able to control their emotions in response to the abuse. Victims of FDI will divert their thoughts by redirecting it to other things. Even though the pain and suffering experienced were not very memorable, incest survivors employ a variety of coping mechanisms to keep themselves from grieving deeper. According to Cheng et al. (2015), there are several types of emotion-focused coping strategies are used which are: self-blame, feeling management, distractions, emotional disclosure, prayer for direction and strength, meditation, and binge eating.
Problem-focused coping-Problem-focused coping refers to how incest survivors deal with obstacles and stress after traumatic events. Incest sufferers may seek social assistance from their families. Phanichrat and Townshend (2010) found that many sexual abuse victims utilise problem-focused coping mechanisms such as expressing their difficulties with others, disclosing the problem to the responsible person, joining a survivors' group, and praying more for spiritual support. Moreover, many sexual abuse victims utilise problem-focused coping to cope with their grief by thinking positively all the time, building self-reconstruction strategies, and preparing how to actively respond to the problem (Phanichrat & Townshend , 2010).
Avoidant coping-Victims of FDI will strive to detach and distance themselves from the individuals and the horrible crimes (Kate et al., 2021). The victims will detach from people around them. This is due to the fact that some of them will be scared and uncomfortable in front of other people. In the worst-case situation, when the victim distance themselves, they are more likely to do horrendous things, such as contemplate suicide. This type of coping mechanism is not suitable to utilise because it will cause incest victims to experience severe depression and make them sadder. Furthermore, it can be seen to be a less adaptive coping reaction, and it has been consistently associated to psychiatric issues.

Survival
In relation to the FDI issue, one of the issues and challenges that incest victims confront is surviving after being abused. Victims who have escaped abuse must continue to live their lives. This paper has classified various aspects that contribute to survival issues for survivors of FDI, including: their acceptance of the abuse, re-victimization, and societal stigma.
Acceptance of the abuse-After being abused, incest victims (especially FDI) survive when they accept the painful experience. If survivors are unable to forget the abuse, the trauma they endure will give a significant impact on their daily lives, particularly if they intend to have a relationships with their spouse in the future (Abdul Aziz et al., 2020). Apart from that, the survival of FDI victims is affected when they suffer from mental health problems. Even though the victims survived the abuse, some of them suffer from serious mental health issues such as depression (Celbis et al., 2019;Stevens & Wood, 2019;Suyanto et al., 2018;Finkelhor, 1980), which required medication and consultation of psychiatrists.
Revictimization-The issue that comes with the survivor's survival can be identified when they have a proclivity to become victims again or become involved with any type of sexual problem. This can be viewed as a two-edged sword. According to Plummer and Cossins (2018), the majority of people who escape sexual abuse as children are more likely to become victims again as adults. This could be due to a number of factors, including an addiction to sexual interactions (Slavin et al., 2020), and a lack of moral support provided to them. Thus, to ensure that the survival of the survivors can be achieve, it is vital to address the issues and challenges related with their survival.
Societal stigma-The local community's stigma also has an impact on the survival of survivors of FDI. There are a number of scenarios in which society blames the victims and accuses them of being the primary cause of the abuse. As a result, the victim usually experiences severe dread and guilt whenever they are in public. In light of this, many victims of FDI will hesitate from reporting the abuse as they will fear of stigmatization (Celbis et al., 2019;Suyanto et al., 2018), if the issue is brought to the attention of the local community. As a result, the number of incidents of incestuous relationships between a father and a daughter has indeed been underreported.

Method
Without examining relevant past studies, research is incomplete. It is indeed one method of gathering data and synthesise the issue's key points. This enables it to portray the issue accurately (Lame, 2019). There are several types of literature review commonly used in a research, which are: (1) the classic or narrative literature review; (2) systematic literature review; (3) meta-analysis (4) meta-synthesis; and (5) others. Many researchers utilize classic or narrative approaches to analyse literature, identify gaps in knowledge, and develop research questions. However, many scholars argued that the traditional or narrative literature review has many limitations, including: thoroughness or accuracy; consistency; transparency (Haddaway et al., 2020); and selection bias (Haddaway et al., 2020). Step 1: Identification-In the context of identification, the scope of the study was identified to produce some pertinent research questions in relation to the topic addressed (Mengist et al. 2019). In the context of this study, the scope has been narrowed to focus on the problem of incestuous relationships between fathers and daughters. In light of this, the research questions pertaining to this issue have been developed after taking into account all of the relevant data and knowledge pertaining to this issue. The main argument of this paper which refers to the research question is: "What are the issues and challenges faced by the survivors of father daughter incest?" Following that, this step also applies the search strategy and the delivery (Mengist et al., 2019). This step involves combining all words, numbers, and symbols before entering them into a search engine in order to look thoroughly any linked documents and data (Bramer et al., 2018). This step helps figure out the best search string and the best database to use to find all the relevant documents and information about the topic discussed (Mengist et al., 2019;Bramer et al., 2018). In the context of this study, the search string utilized were based on the terms and keywords associated with the subject discussed. Among the search strings that were entered into the database were as follows: (1) "Father-daughter incest" AND "Challenges"; (2) "Fatherdaughter incest" AND "Taboo"; (3) "Father-daughter incest" AND "Coping"; and (4) "Fatherdaughter incest" AND "Survival." All these research strings have been run separately by using the Scopus database entirely. Scopus is one of the international databases that publishes articles from all around the world that have been subjected to peer review. As a result, the collection of multiple related publishing papers related to the issue of FDI are valuable to this study. The search strings that were utilized and the selected database for this study are outlined in the following table: Table 1 The searching items and Scopus database.

Searching streams and searching items
Domain Search All Fields "Father-daughter incest" AND "Challenges" 434 "Father-daughter incest" AND "Taboo" 356 "Father-daughter incest" AND "Coping" 439 "Father-daughter incest" AND "Survival" 380 Total 1,609 Step 2: Screening-Following the first step, the next step of the systematic literature review highlighted by Mengist et al. (2019) is screening. As indicated by Lame (2019) and Polanin et al. (2019), screening is one of the techniques that is used to determine whether all the relevant articles exist fit the criteria that have been established. In the context of this study, there have been two distinct types of screening processes by Lame (2019) has been adopted, which are: (1) screening the titles and abstracts of the papers; and (2) screening the entirety of the text contained inside the papers. When the procedure of screening the titles and abstracts of the publications related to the problem of FDI was first carried out, there were a total of 1,609 publications found to be relevant to the issue. On the other hand, after screening a large amount of literature that was unrelated to the topic at hand, including grey literature, reviews, conference papers, and notes, only 928 articles that were published on the issue were found to be relevant. In the subsequent step of the screening process, only articles that are pertinent to the area of social science (particularly FDI issue) and have been published within the last 12 years (started in 2010 to 2022) are considered, which totals 101 relevant articles. Step 3: Eligibility-When the screening procedure is completed, the next step is to determine the extent to which each of the articles selected are eligible. Thus, the criteria for inclusion and exclusion are developed during these stages. As indicated by Torres-Carrion et al. (2018), there are two different kinds of criteria that can be employed in any study which are: general criteria and specific criteria. The purpose of utilizing each of the criterion categories is to serve as a guide for selecting the articles that are most pertinent to the subject area discussed.
In the context of this study, several different sorts of general inclusion and exclusion criteria have been developed to ensure that the article accurately reflects the relating topics (particularly FDI). These criteria have been divided into various subcategories. After all the criteria being applied, only 12 articles were found to fulfill all the requirements necessary to be considered eligible. The general criteria for inclusion and exclusion are listed below in Table 3. Table 3 Selection of papers based on specified inclusion and exclusion criteria Criteria Decision English must be utilized in the writing of the article. Inclusion The empirical research article only Inclusion This article has been published in a scholarly journal Inclusion Each of the specified keywords match in the title, keywords, and abstract of the paper. Inclusion When the predefined keywords exist in all fields or at least in the article Inclusion The article published before 2010 Exclusion Duplicated articles discovered in the search documents Exclusion Articles that are not even retrievable through the database Exclusion Step 4: Included-The last step of systematic literature review adopted in this study is the included. For conducting further analysis, all articles that fulfill the criteria necessary to qualify for inclusion in this study has been downloaded. The articles that were used and included only compensate 11.9% of the original articles that were discovered in the Scopus database related with the topic of FDI. Based on all the relevant articles, the topic of FDI was discussed in relation to the challenges associated, the social stigma associated with the issue, the coping mechanisms that has been utilized, and the survival strategies that were employed.

Results and Discussion
Subsequent to a thorough SLR methology in examining the issues and challenges faced by FDI; this paper further conduct a qualitative analysis of the selected articles based on: (1) methodology applied; (2) theory/ies applied; (3) site country; and (4) issues and challenges including taboo, coping and survival. Table 4 below shows the analysis of 12 articles. Step 1: Identification Step 2: Screening Step 3: Eligibility Step 4 (2010( until July 2022. Similarly, the articles discovered for FDI search string, reveals more than thousand articles especially within pandemic COVID-19 conflict. Nevertheless, with a number of inclusion and exclusion criteria, only 12 articles related to issue and challenges face by FDI, covering three main aspects, including: taboo, coping and survival were selected for further analysis. The analysis of 12 articles using the SLR approach reveals a significant pattern of empirical study related to the issue and challenges faced by FDI survivors. As shown in the table, the majority of the research (7 articles) applied qualitative approaches to collect all relevant data, including in-depth interviews (semi-structured and conversational interviews). The findings also reveal that there are two articles apply a quantitative approach; two articles utilize a case study; and one article applies the reinerd method which utilizes Lexical analysis using Iramuteq software. Furthermore, despite there are numerous theories or models that might be associated to the issue of FDI, the findings of this study discovered that only one article embedded the theory which is the article published in 2013. This demonstrates that there is a dearth of theories applied to the issue of FDI in present times. Hence, future research related to FDI, should embed relevant theories to strengthen the argument on issue and challenges faced by FDI survivors.
Furthermore, the findings show that the majority of studies on the issues and challenges of FDI were conducted in European nations such as: Germany, France, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. In fact, the SLR process analysis reveals three articles that concentrate on Asian countries such as Indonesia, Turkey, and India. According to this, there is a dearth of research conducted in Asia country such as Malaysia as well as the Commonwealth countries, Africa, South America, North America and also . While incest is considered as a global sexual absue phenomena, this issue occurs regardless of the status of the country (high-income, middle income and low-income). The context of definition, acceptance and challenges are depending on the countries cultural and ethical practices as well as their legal framework. Furthermore, further study into the issue and challenges of FDI's survivors reveals a totally distinct pattern. Concerning the first issue and challenge, which is taboo, the finding indicates that there are eight articles that perceive this issue as a taboo subject that should not be disclosed in the local community. There is also a few articles even correlates this taboo to the social stigma, the silence of the abuse, and the power of differential family. Six articles on the topic address the issue and the challenges associated with coping. The coping mechanims highlighted by those articles can be categorized into five, which are: (1) social support; (2) develop new relationship; (3) manage emotion; (4) disclose to others; and (5) denial. Although the issue and challenges of coping mechanisms in relation to FDI is often discussed, empirical study proves that this aspect is still lacking. As a result, greater research into these issues is necessary in the future. Finally, this paper discovered that the majority of the articles (11 articles) focus on the discussion about survival in relation to the issue and challenges of FDI. Among the aspects discussed are: post-sexual abuse trauma, relationship, emotional state, incest cycle and space. This implies that this issue has gotten the attention of numerous parties such as academicians, medias, non-governmental organization (NGOs) and many others particularly after the outbreak of pandemic COVID-19, which has resulted in a significant increase in FDI incidence.
Although the issue of FDI has been explored in the articles reviewed, SLR is only limited to the Scopus database and published article. Other type of publication such as book, report and review are not included. This SLR only focuses on specified topics and some inclusion and exclusion criteria as described above. As a result, more research is needed in the future to understand more about this issue.

Conclusions
During pandemic COVID-19, incest was argued by Okwuosa (2020) to be an epidemic due to locked down or movement control order (MCO) done by many countries, to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus. This statement was proven with the rising of number related to incest cases reported in many countries such as United Kingdom (Beard et al., 2019), China (Banerjee & Rao, 2020) and Malaysia (Noorshahrizam, 2021). Interestingly, FDI was discussed mostly in European countries and Asian countries. Notably, the article selected for analysis of this study only limited to Scopus engine database and the scope of this study. Hence, this study argue that incest particularly involving father and daughter is rampant, mostly underreported and argued to have huge effect on the victims development and survival.
Notably, as the main argument of this study is based on the question: "What are the issues and challenges faced by the survivors of father daughter incest?", taboo is the main issue and challenges faced by many countries. This is because FDI is a form of sexual abuse that mostly occurred at home, within the family institutions. Furthermore, coping mechanism applied by survivors are mostly highlighted in articles discussed in developed country. This is one of the research gap for future research to be conducted in Asia as well as other developing countries. Moreover, survival is affected by how FDI victims cope. Some survivors face problems in continuing their lives due to poor health issue. Meanwhile, the survivors also tend to forget the tragedy and move forward. This effectively demonstrate them to be more positive and forget the painful incident.
In conclusion, FDI is forbidden in all countries regardless of different religious practices. Hence, there is an urgency for the world to take this issue seriously; so that FDI will be adressed effectively. What is worrying for us if the phenomenon become common and accepted by some culture. If this happen, it will damage the family institution and at the end of the day will give negative impacts on human civilization.