Charge: Father, Daughter Married (Is it Okay With Sandra Day O'Connor?)

Mobile Register ^ | 07/25/03 | KAREN TOLKKINEN

[nickcarraway]

Authorities accuse couple of illegal incestuous union

A Mobile County grand jury has said that a Theodore husband and wife may really be father and daughter and ought to be tried for incest.

Carrol Eugene Ferdinandsen, 53, and Alice Faye Ferdinandsen, 30, were arrested Thursday and charged with incest and fraud in connection with their May 2 marriage in a civil ceremony in Mobile County. They were indicted in June.

According to Mobile County court records, Alice was the third child of Carrol and Shirley Faye Ferdinandsen, and her mother filed for divorce when Alice was only 4 months old. Her mother said Thursday that she later met and married Charles Stewart, who Alice listed as her father on her marriage license application.

Up to that point, Alice had used "Ferdinandsen" as her last name, according to court records.

Incestuous marriages are forbidden in all states, in part due to fears about genetic mutation and child abuse. They still occur, though rarely, according to a survey of news articles from around the country.

The Ferdinandsens could not be reached for comment Thursday. They were still being held in the Mobile County Metro Jail, with bond set at $8,500 for each, officials said.

Family members said they had heard about the marriage and disapproved of the relationship.

"My father is completely convinced that she's not his daughter, no blood relation at all," David Ferdinandsen, who said he is Carrol's son and Alice's older brother. He's tried to discourage his father from the relationship, he said, but his father won't listen.

Alice's mother, whose last name is now Crayne, said Carrol is definitely Alice's father. She didn't meet Charles Stewart until Alice was 3 or 4 years old, she said.

"I told her she was stupid for marrying her own daddy," Shirley Crayne said. "I told him he was crazy and stupid. I told her I didn't ever want to hear from her again."

Crayne started crying during an interview Thursday. It hurts so bad, she said, because Alice is her youngest child and she worked hard taking care of the children when they were young.

After the divorce, the couple's three children were placed in foster care, David Ferdinandsen said. They were there for five years, he said. They went to live with their mother, and later moved in with their father, he said.

Crayne said Alice sometimes called Carrol "Daddy" and sometimes just "Carrol."

Crayne said she would scold her daughter when she used her father's first name.

During the 1980s, Carrol and Alice went to Illinois, staying for months, David Ferdinandsen said. When they returned, Alice went back to school, he said.

According to Mobile County Circuit Court records, Carrol pleaded guilty to second-degree rape in 1989. The records do not identify the victim and prosecutors could not be reached for comment Thursday. He spent a year in jail.

Alice moved to Texas, where she got a boyfriend and a job at a hamburger stand, her mother said. But in the mid-1990s, Carrol came looking for her and she ended up moving back with him to Theodore, according to her mother and brother. They've been together ever since, relatives said.

Crayne said she never heard that Carrol claimed that Alice wasn't his daughter until just a few years ago. Now Alice believes it, too, she said.

[MarkL]

I just read the book "Middlesex". It's about an hermaphrodite. Apparently, his parents were cousins and his grandparents brother and sister. They came from Greece. They outlawed incestual marriage because of such mutations occurring.

Maybe being a hermaphrodite is a tough life to live, but look at it this way: It doubles your chances of getting a date on a Saturday night!

Mark

[SauronOfMordor]

I'm waiting for someone to marry a 12 year old and use it for a test case. After all, who are we to judge?

May happen sooner than you think. The minimum marriage age is 12 in places like Tanzania, Philippines and Sri Lanka. All it will take is for someone who is legally married in his home country to a 12-yo to come over to the US and be arrested for having sex with his 12-yo wife

[lowbridge]

I recall reading an Ann Landers or Dear Abby column (one of those harpies, can't recall exactly which one) in which a woman wrote in about a marriage. It seems that she was at a wedding for a 30-40 old man, to his 5 year old daughter. The little girl had no concept of marriage, except that two people who love each other, get married. So, she loved her Father, and so she wanted to marry him. Her parents, instead of informing her about what marriage really was, had a marriage ceremony in which they invited their friends and such, and all the invited guests oohed and ahhed. The woman was really disgusted, told the parents so, and the parents of the little girl saw no harm in what they were doing. (Abby/Ann agreed with this woman. That this was disgusting, and it violated the concept of marriage.

[sonserae]

Read the book.
I never thought about it before I read the book. One actually doesn't think about what it would be like to be born a hermaphrodite. Our society is divided up between male and female....but what if you had BOTH...physically and hormonally? I actually became quite empathetic about these folks...There's more people like this in society than one thinks and the ridicule and embarrassment and confusion in their life is sad. They call themselves the "intersex" gender. Most have an operation at birth to "remove" the "mutation"...but that "mutation" actually includes all sensitivity and nerve endings...so the person grows up not having any of those feelings "down there". (I'm trying to be rated-G in my description).

[lainde]

Bump!

[Servant of the Nine]

I think marrying your first cousin is legal everywhere. I could be wrong though.

It is legal in at least some states, so it is legal in all for the price of a buss ticket.

There are also still States that allow people to get married at unbelievably young ages.

So9

[johnb838]

Should marijuana be legalized?

Who are we to judge?

[Conspiracy Guy]

I certainly haven't. I asked a simple question. If that is judging I must not understand the finer points of the language.

[philosofy123]

Yes

[MineralMan]

"I know a guy (Jewish from Noo Joisey - stereotype buster!) who's married to his first cousin. He loves to introduce her as "my wife, my cousin"."

Most states allow first cousins to marry these days. Perhaps you didn't know that.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I agree but for now it isn't legal. And you really think that incest is OK even though family members warned them they are father / daughter? Just a question.

[cogitator]

For the life of me, I can't see where the states didn't have a "substantial state interest" in banning homosexual activity. Especially in light of the known spread of disease and the high incidence of homosexual pedophilia and other perversions.

Don't construe this as support for homosexual activity, or gay marriage, or anything like that: but given both incidence of occurrence and the number of possible maladies that can be propagated, I'm pretty sure that plain old heterosexual sex is responsible for the spread of far more disease than homosexual sex. Such things as syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, genital warts, herpes, and hepatitis (can't remember if it's A, B, or C that's sexually transmitted, but one of them is) top the list.

So trying to implement a ban on homosexual sex on the basis that it spreads disease wouldn't get very far.

[ErnBatavia]

I addressed that in my #46....being legal doesn't make it any less weird!

[cogitator]

Nastassja Kinski's first movie, "Stay As You Are", was about a possibly incestuous sexual relationship.

[Hatteras]

eh, it's all relative...

[Servant of the Nine]

And you really think that incest is OK even though family members warned them they are father / daughter? Just a question.

It's OK with me, as long as none of their kids ever want to date any of mine.

So9

[MineralMan]

"Nastassja Kinski's first movie, "Stay As You Are", was about a possibly incestuous sexual relationship."

And then there was Pia Zadora in "Butterfly," where she thought she was in an incestuous relationship, but the guy turned out not to be her father.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Thats the whole point. How would you know? Unless they looked like John Kerry? I think artificial insemenation brings a whole new set of problems. Humans are attracted by nature to people that seem like they are. Artificial bro/sis meeting and falling in love is very likely in the future.

[TheDon]

Referring to a U.S. Supreme Court case that will decide the "constitutionality" of Texas' sodomy law, Santorum, an orthodox Catholic, remarked thusly:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

Within minutes, a mouthpiece from the disingenuously named Human Rights Campaign, a lobby group for sodomy, was on the blower with the newspapers: "It is stunning, stunning in its insensitivity," David Smith told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Putting homosexuality on the same moral plane as incest is repulsive."

[Chancellor Palpatine]

"I told her she was stupid for marrying her own daddy," Shirley Crayne said.

Thats a West Virginia line if I ever heard one.