When one thinks of a mother’s relationship with her son, one thinks of being a role model, providing unconditional love, helping him through school, and attending extracurricular activities. For mothers who have been separated from their sons for a long time, once reunited, usually try to do all of those things in efforts to make up for time lost.

While that is the case with Mistie Rebecca Atkinson, 32, resident of Napa County in California, and her sixteen-year-old son, the relationship between the mother and son took a sick and twisted turn, which involved incest.

Atkinson claims that this is not a case of incest but instead a case of “genetic attraction.” According to MailOnline, “She was found in a Ukiah, California motel room with the 16-year-old boy, who had recorded his mother giving him oral sex on his phone.” Also recorded on her son’s phone was the two of them having sexual intercourse.

Atkinson, who had not seen her son since he was only one-year-old, after losing custody rights to him, tracked him down on the social networking site, Facebook. Soon thereafter, she began texting him nude photographs of herself. While Atkinson and her son had no contact for 15 years, the son claims he was aware that she was in fact his mother.

According to police reports, Atkinson began her intimate relationship with her son after several domestic violence reports were filed against her at the time by a live-in boyfriend.

The son and mother were then found in the motel room on March 2, 2012.

Yet Atkinson sees nothing wrong with her behavior. She wrote a letter to the court in Napa County stating, “I don’t feel like I should have the charge of incest because there is something called genetic attraction that is a very powerful [phenomenon] that happens to 50 [per cent] of people becoming reunited with a long-lost relative,” she wrote.

DailyMail described genetic sexual attraction as “a phenomenon where close biological family members, such as siblings or cousins, become attracted to each other when they meet as adults. If family members do not know each other during the critical years of development, they risk finding each other attractive. Little research has been carried out into the phenomenon but some psychologists claim it exists due to shared personality traits, which are desirable in a partner. GSA is rare between people brought up together, due to reverse sexual printing, where people become desensitized to finding family members attractive to prevent inbreeding.”

In May Atkinson pleaded no contest to incest, oral sex with a minor and obscene contact with a minor.

She was found guilty on all counts and was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison, and will serve her time behind bars in Napa, California.

She can get out in half the time with good behavior.

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April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Jenny Lynn Anderson is encouraging women to speak out and acknowledge violence against women. Her advocacy is supported in her recently published book ‘Room 939: 15 Minutes of Horror, 20 Years of Healing’.

Her story is based on surviving a brutal robbery and sexual assault in a downtown Atlanta hotel 22 years ago. She offers steps leading to healing and restoration for women who have experienced sexual violence.

Every two minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Anderson’s two minutes came when she was sexually assaulted at the age of 28 while attending a convention.  In the two decades since that assault, she’s gone through all the emotional stages (shame, denial, anger, avoidance, post-traumatic stress, depression, and forgiveness).  It took 20 years for her to seek counseling to start the healing process and to find the courage to help others by sharing her story.

Today, Anderson is encouraging those who have been sexually assaulted not to consider themselves as victims – but rather as survivors.  “It’s a matter of choice in how you think about it,” she explains, “and I choose to call myself a survivor.  It’s a key to recovery.”

“Women are not empowered on this topic,” Anderson continues. “First of all, going through a sexual assault turns the woman who has been traumatized inward – they are not comfortable talking about it even with close friends.

Understanding what you’re going through is the first step to any kind of recovery.  More than anything, sexual assault and rape victims don’t want to be labeled as such – it makes you feel branded for life with something so hideous and nasty no one will talk about it,” she adds.

Opening up and going to a counselor or other professional for help is critical to the healing process.  “But there’s a hesitation,” Anderson explains.  “You don’t want to re-open wounds, yet if you don’t, you could possibly suffer other mental stresses such as depression.”

Victims of sexual assault are six times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.(1) “Post-traumatic stress can keep survivors of sexual assault from recovering,” Anderson says.  “It was 20 years before I sought counseling and that was much too long to wait,” Anderson adds.

Entering counseling began the healing process and speaking out publicly is helping to complete it. Since publishing Room 939, she has travelled the state speaking to womens’ groups, rape/sexual assault crisis centers, book clubs, recovery groups, civic organizations and others.

Anderson’s advice to those who are sexually assaulted – three steps to healing:

For more information about Jenny Lynn Anderson and her book, go to www.jennylynnanderson.com

(1) World Health Organization, 2002

Image Courtesy of  http://www.jennylynnanderson.com/

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