I wanted to share this with you. In my "Bodywork Continuing Education Class," the instructor told a story about incest and sexual molestation, how it's defined and who defines it. He had been involved in taking a class on managing SER's (spontaneous emotional releases during bodywork -- quite a common phenomenon) and there was a woman who had a recurring and disturbing memory from her childhood. She recalled being in bed one night and feeling afraid, screaming and her father being there with his pants down around his ankles, feeling hot breath on her cheek, and then there was a blank after which she recalled looking over to see her father pulling up his pants and asking her if she was ok, kissing her on the cheek and leaving her alone. She shared this memory with the class and they were all totally convinced that she had been sexually molested by her father.
During the course of the workshop, her memory became more and more clear until she had a full memory of the events. When she was a child, she was asleep in her bed in her own room when she felt something warm and fuzzy on her cheek. She turned and saw that there was a huge spider on the pillow next to her face and she screamed. Her father, who was in the midst of getting undressed in his own bedroom down the hall, came running to see what was wrong. Seeing the huge spider, he brushed it away and killed it, held her to him (hence the memory of his hot breath on her cheek), kissed her and asked if she was ok. In his haste to get to his screaming and distressed child, his pants, which he had quickly tried to put back on as he was running and had not had the chance to fasten, had fallen down around his ankles, so as he was leaving her room, after being assured that she was ok, he picked up his pants, pulled them back around his waist and left her room.