The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘My Sister Is Pregnant and We Don’t Know Which of My Brothers is the Father’

Posted on | September 23, 2014 | 146 Comments

The quoted sentence was spoken by a child on a school playground. Overheard by a teacher, this triggered an investigation that exposed a multigenerational horror story in rural Australia:

Police raided the Colt family home in rural south-western New South Wales in July 2012 after a teacher alerted authorities to a conversation overheard in the playground that detailed the incest. . . .
The raids found 38 adults and children living in filthy caravans and tin sheds without electricity, town water or any plumbing. They were the result of four generations from grandparents who were brother and sister. . . .
When the raid occurred Betty Colt was found sharing a marital bed with her brother Charlie and her children, same only as young as 10, were the result of sex between Ms Colt and her brother, father or another close male relative.
The five family groups comprised of sisters, Rhonda, 47, Martha, 33, and Betty Colt, 46, who slept every night with her brother, Charlie, and two of Betty’s daughters who each had children who proved to be from unions of related parents. . . .
Eight of the Colt children have parents who were either brother and sister, mother and son or father and daughter.
A further six have parents who were either aunt and nephew, uncle and niece, half siblings or grandparents and grandchild.
Interviews with the Colts revealed the family saga began back in New Zealand, in the first half of last century when June Colt was born to parents who were brother and sister.
June married Tim and in the 1970s the couple emigrated to Australia. . . .
Tim and June gave birth to four daughters and two sons.
Three of the daughters — Rhonda, 47, Betty, 46, and Martha, 33 — and at least one of the sons, Charlie, form the elder members of the family group in the NSW bush camp.
Betty had 13 children. . . .
Betty’s eldest child, Raylene, now aged 30, has a 13-year-old daughter, Kimberly. . . .
Testing identifies Kimberly’s father as either her half brother, an uncle or a grandfather.
Betty’s second oldest child, Tammy, now aged 27, has given birth to three daughters, one of whom died from a rare genetic disorder, and all of whom, she eventually admitted, were fathered by her closest brother, Derek, 25.
Betty’s younger sister, Martha Colt, 33, has five children, four of whom were fathered by her own father, Tim, or by her brother, and another who is the product of a union with a close relation.
It was the 10 youngest of Betty and Martha’s children, and Raylene’s daughter, Kimberly, 13, who ran wild in a sexual spree about the property. . . .
The children were sexually involved with each other and only one, the youngest, a five-year-old girl, had parents who weren’t related.

In case that’s not enough to give you nightmares, here’s a report detailing the squalid conditions in which this family lived.

When my brother Kirby (follow him on Twitter) called to tell me about this story, I was a bit impatient because his call interrupted my research for the “Sex Trouble” series on radical feminism.

At the time Kirby called, however, my work was somewhat stalled because of another odd story from Australia: In 2008, a 19-year-old Irish girl named Rosemary Nolan traveled to Brisbane, where she became the lesbian lover of 24-year-old Melissa Keevers. In 2009, via artificial insemination, Keevers became pregnant and gave birth to a girl named Lilly. In 2010, while being treated with a drug to stimulate ovulation, Keevers was inseminated again with sperm from the same donor and this time conceived quintuplets. In 2011, Keevers gave birth to two boys and three girls. In 2012, Nolan and Keevers split up.

Here’s what struck me about that story: It was celebrated with a worldwide publicity campaign by journalists who did not seem the least bit skeptical — or even curious — about glaring omissions of basic biographical information on Nolan and Keevers. Evidently, the Australian publication Woman’s Day had purchased exclusive rights to the story of this “miracle” — the first quintuplets ever born to a lesbian couple. The coverage by Woman’s Day (which seemed to be the only source for direct information in news accounts by other media outlets) emphasized that the odds against conceiving quintuplets without in vitro ferilization (IVF) were 60,000,000-to-1. However, the fact that Keevers was being treated with a drug to cause hyperovulation was omitted from the glowing stories about the lesbian couple’s “miracle” babies; so far as I could discover, it was only in a TV interview with Karl Stefanovic that this highly relevant detail was even mentioned.

As a journalist, the omission of this detail about Keevers being treated with an ovulation drug — a treatment that obviously was the secular cause of this alleged “miracle” — was striking, as was the apparent lack of journalistic curiosity about other details. If you are writing a human-interest feature about two lesbians, for example, wouldn’t you want to include their personal accounts of when and how they became aware of their same-sex orientation? You know, did they always feel “different” from other girls (as one sometimes hears in such narratives) or was this a surprising adult revelation, in which a woman  just happened to meet and fall in love with another woman (another standard lesbian narrative)?

If any reporter asked those questions about Nolan and Keevers, the answers never showed up in any of the coverage I could find online. And a lot of other stuff you’d expect to find in human-interest features was missing, too. Where did they go to school? What do their friends and siblings have to say about the lesbian couple and their “miracle”? Most of all, I wondered, how could the Irish teenager Nolan afford to travel to Australia for a backpacking excursion during which she reportedly met her lesbian lover Keevers by sheer coincidence?

Answer: We don’t know. There’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about that story, including how much Woman’s Day paid for the exclusive rights to the story, and I am dumbfounded by the credulity of journalists in Australia and Ireland who did not seem the least bit curious about the missing details. The Nolan-Keevers Miracle Quintuplet story was reported in much the same way an Orlando Chamber of Commerce spokesman might “report” about Disney World.

And after the lesbian miracle moms split up in 2012 — Nolan cited stress from her job as a police trainee — when the quintuplets were 2 years old, a Cone of Silence descended on the story. For more than a year, it seems, no journalist followed up on this story that once made worldwide headlines until, in August, Keevers gave an update to a TV station:

Ms Keevers met her current partner Nicole, a full-time student studying nutrition, 18 months ago through an online dating site.
With Nicole’s seven-year-old son now living with them, Ms Keevers now has seven children living under her roof.
Nicole has “as much responsibility for my children as I do” and loves them “like her own son”, Ms Keevers said.
“She feels like a mother to them.”

All this struck me as strange, but it’s one of those dead ends you sometimes encounter: You find a story that seems vaguely suspicious, but there is no way to check it out yourself. I have no contacts in Ireland or Australia, so unless other reporters share my skepticism, the mysterious gaps in the Nolan-Keevers Miracle Quintuplet story may never be filled in.

Such was the impasse I found myself in Monday, after hours spent trying to figure it out and write it up for the “Sex Trouble” series, when Kirby called to tell me about this horrifying tale of multigeneration incest in New South Wales, Australia.

“Depravity,” Kirby said. “That’s the only word I can think of.”

Yeah. We talked about it, how it was that this Colt family (“Colt” is a pseudonym the authorities are using to protect the identities of the children involved) could have descended into such total depravity. Once people lose sight of basic moral principles — when people start acting like all that “Thou shalt not” stuff from the Bible doesn’t really mean anything — you never know how far down the slippery slope they may eventually slide. Then one day an Australian school teacher overhears a kid say a sentence like, “My sister is pregnant and we don’t know which of my brothers is the father.”

Depravity is the only word that can describe what Australian officials uncovered in the Colt family. Their decades-long descent into total depravity began, we are told, when the incest taboo was ignored by a brother and sister who married and gave birth to June Colt, who then married her own brother Tim, and somehow this depravity continued generation after generation until 2012.

Anyway, I was kind of peeved when Kirby called me Monday, because his call interrupted me while I was trying to find the answers to questions about the Australian lesbian miracle moms, questions that other journalists apparently never bothered to ask. It’s always annoying to encounter a dead-end story like that, where you can’t get the answers you want, and I was already frustrated when Kirby interrupted to tell me about the Colt family — a distraction that has nothing to do with radical feminism and lesbian motherhood.

Nothing to do with it, I tell you. There is no relevance, no analogy, no correlation between these two stories — none at all.

What are you, some kind of hater?




 

 

Category: Australia, Crime, Sex, Sex Trouble

Comments

146 Responses to “‘My Sister Is Pregnant and We Don’t Know Which of My Brothers is the Father’”

  1. Anamika Reddy
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:09 pm

    Apologies, I should have been more careful with my phrasing. But my point remains. It should better read, “Sexual desire is seen as a ‘consequence’ of Original Sin.”

  2. Anamika Reddy
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:09 pm

    How foolish, childish, and completely superstitious (not to mention ridiculous) it is to think that somebody, anybody, even before emerging from the mother’s womb is already tainted by some “Original Sin” or fundamental flaw, and that somebody then needs to be brutally beaten and hung from a cross until he finally bleeds to death from the spikes that were driven into his body, in order for that child’s, or that person’s, “sin” to be erased from his or her “soul.”

  3. Antarctic Ice Pack Sets New Record | Regular Right Guy
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:36 pm

    […] ‘My Sister Is Pregnant and We Don’t Know Which of My Brothers is the Father’ […]

  4. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:46 pm

    While those who accept Augustine as a legit theologian may see a new born as tainted by Adam’s sin, the idea is not biblical. Everyone who is born, however, is born cut off spiritually from God which is a result of Adam’s sin. No one will pass through the gates of hell for any sin other than their own.

  5. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:48 pm

    I’m guessing you’re picking on WV to divert attention from KY.

  6. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:50 pm

    “We” don’t argue that queer “marriage should be forced on the states via the 14th amendment, the depraved idiots in the FedGov’s “judiciary” say it must be done.

  7. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:51 pm

    Pull the pin first.

  8. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:52 pm

    I think nukes would appropriate, but they tend towards too much collateral damage. If they go off in DC it would fine as the whole place is a legit target.

  9. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:54 pm

    Libertarians are better labeled Libertines.

  10. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:55 pm

    It really wasn’t common. Polygamy has been practiced overwhelmingly by the powerful.

  11. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:56 pm

    RSM can be obtuse at times, Nicht Wahr? 🙂

  12. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 3:58 pm

    A lot of us are “haters.”

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:02 pm

    Australia is the Southern Hemisphere’s Florida.

  14. kbiel
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:19 pm

    The judiciary does not act without an advocate. I challenge you to find even one of these cases where the claimant and/or the amicus curiae did not invoke the 14th amendment. I’m not excusing the judges who cannot apply the 14th correctly, but it usually takes the SCOTUS to make up legal arguments out of whole cloth.

  15. Rob Crawford
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:27 pm

    Stacy, do you really see any value in hosting the nasty bigot “Anamika” on your site?

    Make it get its own site for its hateful filth.

  16. Father, Father, Why Have You Forsaken Me? | Anamika
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:39 pm

    […] wondered how Jesus could have died for your sins before you were born or had committed any? I commented at The Other McCain […]

  17. Kirby McCain
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:45 pm

    Ohio touches both!

  18. Kirby McCain
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:46 pm

    My impression is that it is the sister.

  19. Anamika Reddy
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:50 pm

    QM, I’ve blogged my response to your comment at AnamikaReddy.wordpress.com:

    My larger view on the subject of “Original Sin” is that in the confusing
    array of Christian sects, there is a division between those who take
    the bible stories as literal fact and those who see them as symbolic. […]

    You can read the rest here.

  20. Paul H. Lemmen
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:51 pm

    Good touch or bad touch?

  21. Kirby McCain
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:51 pm

    Virginity is bad now.

  22. Anamika Reddy
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:57 pm

    I got my own blog “Anamika“. Blogged my longer response, check it out:

    Father, Father, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

  23. Kirby McCain
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 4:59 pm

    When a monster like Tyler Kost emerges from the shadows we can brush it off as a one off freak. When groups of people engage in sexual depravity with total disregard for the consequences the vandals are at the city gate.

  24. Kirby McCain
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:05 pm

    Don’t forget the polyamorous …

  25. trangbang68
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:06 pm

    Stacy, are you sure that that group of caravans wasn’t parked in the parking lot at Bryant-Denny Stadium? Just kidding! War Eagle!

  26. Kirby McCain
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:09 pm

    Exit 50 I-85 Technology Pkwy Auburn Alabama and there’s a huge trailer park right there. Roll Tide!

  27. Phil_McG
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:11 pm

    I don’t know of any libertarians who are in favour of incest.

  28. Phil_McG
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:18 pm

    You raise an interesting point. In polygamous societies, it’s the rich and powerful men who have the most wives.

    Osama bin Laden’s dad, the billionaire Mohammed bin Laden, had 57 children by 22 wives. Though being a devout Muslim, he discarded his older wives through divorce so he never had more than 4 wives at a time.

    I wonder how many ordinary men in Old Testament times could afford to keep more than one wife.

  29. RKae
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:36 pm

    I do.

    They’ll say “not in favor,” and then immediately say, “but who are we to judge?” In my book, that’s “in favor.”

    And my favorite: “Just because something’s immoral doesn’t mean it needs to be illegal.”

  30. RKae
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:41 pm

    Hollywood has a huge problem with pedophilia, as does the British government, and it’s not because anyone in those instances has a strict moral code or celibacy.

    The notion that a strict moral code makes people sexually insane is a “seems like it would make sense” myth that people CHOOSE to buy into with no evidence whatsoever.

  31. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:45 pm

    Anamika, will all due respect, you are wrong. I think you have mentioned you were abused as a child and if that is the case, I am sorry you went through that.

  32. ZZZZZZZZ
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 5:57 pm

    zzzzzzzzz…..

  33. ZZZZZZZZ
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 6:00 pm

    zzzzzzzzzz……

  34. Mm
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 6:40 pm

    So, voluntary celibacy turns people into pedophiles? Oh, wait, only Catholic men, right? Buddhists, school teachers, etc., are exempt. Intellectual nonsense,

  35. M. Thompson
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 6:42 pm

    To even post here regularly makes you either a hater, or infected by us.

  36. Trespassers W
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

    Look, cupcake, if you’re going to critique Christian theology, critique *real* Christian theology, not Christian theology as it exists in your imagination.

  37. Geosystem
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 6:54 pm

    Whatever it is you’re smoking must be some excellent stuff for you to be this high off your gourd and be able to type a sentence. It’s still unintelligible, lunatic, world salad garbage, but hey, you spelled the words all correctly.

  38. Geosystem
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 6:58 pm

    What’s scary is that you’re off your medication again, buttercup. You’re not heretical, just nuttier than a squirrel turd.

  39. Rob Crawford
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 8:03 pm

    Keep your hate there, then.

  40. NeoWayland
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 8:24 pm

    Ah, side-snark.

    Not exactly accurate though.

  41. RS
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 9:04 pm

    “Short Creek” is the local name of the area north of the Grand Canyon and separated from the rest of Arizona by it and Lake Powell. It’s real name is “Colorado City.”

  42. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 9:21 pm

    I know. Mea Maximum Culpa. What can I say, but feed me to the Lions. I’m sure, if the libtards get their way, that’s what’s gonna happen too.

  43. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 9:22 pm

    True dat! And we picked on both as well.

  44. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 9:26 pm

    The difficulty with the doctrine of original sin is the church pretty much adopted Augustine’s view, but his view was unknown prior to him. Augustine was involved in Manicheeism as and Neoplatonic philosophy and imported a number of things from both into theology and the church still suffers from his baleful influence in the form of Calvinism to this day. The Roman Catholic Church and The Eastern Orthodox Churches still operate on his ecclesiology, which is also unbiblical.

  45. Quartermaster
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 9:28 pm

    The courts at all levels make decisions from whole cloth. many get sustained at the SCOTUS level without them having to make things up on their own, although they haven’t hesitated to that as they did in Roe Vs, Wade. The FedGov courts have become lawless in the last 110 years and have destroyed the rule of law by importing their political opinions into the “law.”

  46. Zohydro
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 9:45 pm

    And there’s a judge in Oz who agrees…

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10958728/Australian-judge-says-incest-may-no-longer-be-a-taboo.html

  47. ThomasD
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 10:11 pm

    Hey at least they didn’t go the full Sawney Beane and start killing and eating wayfarers.

  48. My Sister Is Pregnant and We Don’t Know Which of My Brothers is the Father « White Rock Kitchens
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 10:16 pm

    […] Via Instapundit: The Other McCain. […]

  49. Don Meaker
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 10:49 pm

    The Egyptian Pharaohs had a dynasty for 2,000 years based on brother-sister marriage. No DNA testing back then of course so there may have been occasional donkeys in the lineage of those thoroughbreds.

  50. Daniel Freeman
    September 23rd, 2014 @ 11:46 pm

    I’m surprised that no one has come on here yet telling you to leave Britney those families alone.