Forbidden love - couple face incest charges

A woman's attempt to find her birth father on the other side of the world has ended in the pair facing incest charges in a New Zealand court. Jenny Macintyre talks to the couple who say their love for each other is not a crime.

Sarah* was 30 and a separated mother of four when she went to Britain to look for her birth father.

When she found him, she says she found her soulmate.

Both were in struggling marriages and say the feelings when they met were "overwhelming". They did not contemplate an "improper relationship".

But 11 years on, the pair face incest charges after 12 armed police raided their Auckland home just after dawn on Easter Tuesday. The police, wearing bullet-proof vests and accompanied by a Child, Youth and Family officer, arrested the couple, who appeared in court a week later.

The pair refuse to accept they are guilty of incest, saying police have no proof they are in a sexual relationship or even that they are related.

Sarah says she has never regarded Steve as her father.

When she returned to New Zealand after meeting Steve in 1996, he bought out her former husband's share of the family home, to help Sarah and to give himself somewhere to stay when he visited New Zealand as he did twice the following year.

Steve, who was chief executive of a graphic design business, then began to wind up his affairs to prepare to move to New Zealand. Sarah and her four children lived in Britain with him for six months during this time and the family returned together in 1998.

Steve created his "own bedroom space" in their home here, but Sarah says everything changed when the family shifted into a smaller home earlier this year and her birth mother wrote to Sarah's former husband, Child Youth and Family, and Inland Revenue, questioning their relationship.

The couple wanted to talk to the Sunday Star-Times because they "don't know what to do about the constant pressure being put on the children by police to testify against us in court".

"We have been through hell," Sarah says. "They have asked my kids if they have seen us in any sexually compromising positions ... if they have seen us touch in private places. The kids say they don't think so, they don't know and they don't want to go to court to give evidence.

"I said to the police: `Yes, I love him. I love him a lot. We are soulmates. But we are not in a sexual relationship. We are not guilty of this charge and I don't think you should drag the children through court."'

Steve says: "When I think of incest, it is abuse, it is children. We are denying we are in that relationship."

They say for a parent to have sex with a child is to "violate" the child and they have never felt about each other "in that way".

The detective in charge of the case, Damian Espinosa says children do not have to give evidence if they do not want to but their right to withdraw evidence depends on circumstances. "The children have given no indication they want to withdraw their statements." However, Sarah's oldest daughter disputes this.

The couple have been DNA tested. Steve claims the "inconclusive" results support the proposition they might be related but the results are "weak ... one of the lowest comparative counts. The laboratory said the results from my samples provided cannot exclude me. The DNA count supports the proposition (paternity) at the lowest level."

But Detective Sergeant Andy King says the DNA results adequately support the police case.

It was Sarah's need to know more about her birth parents that brought the pair together. She was 17 when she spent a year nursing her adoptive mother before her death. The death coincided with Sarah's first pregnancy and prompted questions about her family health history. She realised she knew nothing about her biological parents.

Sarah's birth mother was 16 when she became pregnant. Steve was 18 and says he put his hand up to her parents "to save face" but was cut out of discussions as soon as Sarah's birth mother wanted an abortion. Both teenagers had other partners and Steve warned Sarah before they met: "There is a chance I might not be your father."

Sarah was adopted out soon after birth. Thirty years later, she found her birth mother in Australia. While Steve's name is not on her birth certificate, or the adoption papers, a handwritten note in the margin of a page identifies him as someone her birth mother "might be getting engaged to" which was news to Steve.

Sarah's birth mother reacted badly to finding out about the couple's close relationship. "I got vicious, vile texts from her," Sarah says. "Things like: `You've lost your family. Your kids all think you are a tart'.

"When we came back here (to New Zealand) the kids believed he was their grandfather but we weren't in any sort of relationship that anyone would have thought was anything but close."

The couple faces a depositions hearing in January.

"Everybody we know fully supports us. We've gone through hell to be together."