Some believe Caylee Anthony was a product of incest. Could it be possible, or are people just grasping at straws to make sense of a senseless crime?

Or, if you're one of the many people following the case, you might believe that little Caylee was actually the product of an incestuous relationship between Casey and her brother Lee. One clue of the illicit sibling coupling, says believers, is that "Caylee" is a hybrid of names Casey and Lee. Hmm. For some, this Casey-Lee incest could unravel more than a few mysteries.

"As for the incest story ... it sure would explain a lot of Casey's behavior, the lies for one," writes one armchair detective on a Casey Anthony message board. "Her sociopathic behavior. And why Cindy is going to such lengths to protect her. Denial would have been something Cindy's been used to dealing with, denying her children are having sex."

The hypothesis doesn't come out of nowhere. Jesse Grund, Casey's former fiance, told investigators that Casey once mentioned receiving unwanted advances from her brother:

Is it possible that the breakdown of the Anthony family unit is due to a child conceived by two siblings, and a grandmother hellbent on raising the child as her own? Even though it's been speculated that Lee himself is involved in aiding and abetting his sister, incest still seems pretty far-fetched; more like the imaginative musings of conspiracy theorists rather than actual reality.

But incest is more prevalent than any of us would like to believe. In fact, 10-15% of the general population have had a least one incestuous experience. say sources, but less than 2% involve intercourse or attempted intercourse.

According to Dr. Charles Sophy, Medical Director for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, sexual relationships between siblings start early in 70-90% of cases. "Sexual contact would be initiated somewhere before adulthood," he says.

Kids, after all, will be kids. And kids are curious. "There is an appropriate range of inquisitiveness," explains Dr. Sophy,  "but there's a fine line to when it becomes an ingrained pattern of behavior." At that point, a parent might want to bring in an expert to assess the situation, suggests Dr. Sophy.

When presented with the scenario that Cindy Anthony forced Casey to have the offspring of an incestuous relationship, Dr. Sophy seems to think it's at least plausible. "These are disturbed families that don't make judgments on solid ground," he says. "They don't get genetic counseling. By allowing their children to have children, they don't understand incest's biological and social impacts."

One of those impacts that's generally assumed is automatic genetic abnormalities. But if Caylee was indeed conceived from an incestuous relationship between Lee and Casey, "it's not a guarantee that the brother and sister are going to have a retarded child," Dr. Sophy says.

All of this speculation seems moot with DNA technology available. Have investigators looked into the possibility that Lee is the father of Caylee? We asked Carlos Padilla of the Orange County Sheriff's Office. "They did get DNA from him [Lee] but I don't know what it was for,"  says Padilla. When asked to confirm or deny the incest rumors, Padilla tells momlogic: "I can't say [the incest rumor]  is true or I can't say it's not true. We've never approached that subject, but many, many people have called us with that suggestion."

What do you think? Comment in the momlogic community.

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