Family law

• Pages: 55-

Page 55

A couple had adopted Patrick S. (Defendant) when he was four years old. After spending many years in foster care, he first met his sister K. in 2000 when she was 16 years old and he was 24. K has now borne four children sired by Appellant. The lower court convicted and sentenced him for the crime of incest. It also found that the Appellant had physically attacked K at least once and that K suff ers from a mild form of mental illness. Appellant duly fi led an appeal.

On February 26, 2008, the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht or BVG), Germany's highest Court, rejected Defendant's constitutional challenges to Section 173, & 2, s. 2, of the Criminal Code (StGB), which prohibits sexual relations between siblings.

The BVG gave considerable weight to a court-ordered study prepared by the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. The Study surveyed the incest laws of 20 countries, and concluded that sexual intercourse between siblings is a criminal off ense in 13 of the 20 countries surveyed. The Study notes that the statutes of some U.S. states go so far as to authorize life sentences for this off ense.

On the other hand, incest as such is not a crime in China, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Spain, France, The Netherlands and Ivory Coast. There are, however, other legal sanctions in the laws of these seven countries hostile to the mating of siblings such as a bar against marriage between siblings and the non-recognition of children from incestuous relationships.

In particular, the...