Incest, and the problems arising from it, have increasingly come under the scrutiny of therapists and researchers. All family members are affected by incest and all have been studied. Victims are particularly devastated by sexual abuse by a family member but it is a commonly held belief that having a supportive mother can mitigate the trauma a victim experiences. In this study, girls between the ages of ten and eighteen who were the victims of sexual abuse by a father-figure were compared to a group of girls not thought to be incest victims. The incest victims were divided into two groups, those with supportive mothers and those with non-supportive mothers, with support being defined as belief that sexual abuse occurred and action taken to have the offender leave the home. The Family Concept Inventory was the basis of comparison. Family Effectiveness, the degree to which a test taker's ratings of his or her real and ideal families match professional therapists' ratings of the ideal family, and Family Satisfaction, the comparison of the Real and Ideal Family Effectiveness scores, are obtained from the Inventory. There was no statistically significant difference across the three groups 2 on any of the three measures. However, incest victims with nonsupportive mothers had significantly lower Real Family Effectiveness scores than did incest victims with supportive mothers and the control group. On Family Satisfaction the scores of incest victims with non-supportive mothers were lower than the scores of incest victims with supportive mothers, but this difference was not statistically significant. Incest victims with non-supportive mothers clearly view their families as less effective than do incest victims with non-supportive mothers and non-incest victims. However, they remain attached to their families and in need of them and cannot bear the thought of losing their families. This may explain, in part, the reason there was not a statistically significant difference in Family Satisfaction between the two groups of incest victims.

The problem of incest is beginning to receive a recognition and research attention long overdue. Becoming more evident is the prevalence and far reaching effects of incest. Currently, little distinction is made between the treatment approach for males and females, yet research indicates differences between the two sexes. This study explores possible differences between male and female incest victims in (1) their moral ethic, (2) their self-definition, (3) the basis from which they felt compelled to comply with the incestuous abuse, (4) the reasons they believed the sexual abuse was right or wrong, (5) the reasons for telling someone or keeping the incest a secret, (6) how they decided whether or not they made the right choice, (7) the manner in which they have changed since the abuse began, (8) the content and degree of their own guilt and/or lowered esteem, and (9) the ideas they have of changes which could have prevented the abuse.