LAKELAND, FLORIDA (The Daily Whatever Wire) —Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d read but since I did, now you get to as well: “Your wife told us she’s had sex with your son about 100 times.” But wait, there’s more! The sentence was spoken by a cop, to the father, who was still married to mother of his child. Yeah… you read that right, I’m sorry to say.
This particular horror came out of an investigation in Lakeland, Florida, after 46-year-old Christina Clemens called authorities to report that her 22-year-old son, Shane Clemens, had struck her during a domestic dispute. Deputies arrested Shane on a domestic violence battery charge, which would already have been a pretty bad evening for everyone involved.
Then Shane apparently decided: hold my beer, mom. If he was going down, he was taking the family secrets with him.
According to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, Shane told investigators that he and his mother had been having a sexual relationship since he turned 18. Investigators asked him to repeat the allegation, which he did. They then asked Christina whether she had been having sex with her son, and I just vomited in my mouth typing that phrase.
Then this is where the story takes a turn that would be difficult to write if the actual words weren’t sitting right there in the sheriff’s account.
Christina reportedly said they’d done it “only about 100 times.”
I need us to sit with the word only for a minute. Because I don’t think she should’ve had access to only in that moment.
Only about 100 times.
I can use “only” when I’m telling you how many slices of pizza I ate before realizing I’d eaten an entire pizza. I can use it when I’m explaining that I only spent $200 at Target because I went in for shampoo and somehow came out with a seasonal wreath, three sweaters, and a small appliance I don’t remember putting in the cart.
“Only about 100 times” is not an appropriate use of only.
No version of this sentence exists with 100 as a reassuring number.
According to investigators, Shane said the sexual relationship began after he turned 18. The two didn’t live together during his childhood, and the sheriff’s office says they reconnected when he was an adult. Shane reportedly told investigators that the relationship continued for years, and the affidavit describes an ongoing sexual relationship inside the home he shared with his mother and her husband.
Which brings us to the husband.
Because, folks, this story has a husband.
Yes, Christina is married, and investigators apparently had to go talk to her husband and ask whether he knew that his wife was allegedly having sex with her son. He said no. He told them he and Christina were happily married.
He did, however, have one little detail that suddenly becomes much more significant in retrospect: he told investigators that he had been suspicious because Christina and Shane would go into the master bedroom together and lock the door.
Sir.
I don’t know what you thought was happening in there, but I would like to gently suggest that “my wife and her adult son are repeatedly locking themselves in our master bedroom together” belongs on a very short list of household circumstances that deserve a follow-up question.
According to Sheriff Judd, that’s what the husband told investigators. He hadn’t known about the alleged sexual relationship, but he had noticed the locked-door situation.
And now I’m stuck thinking about the phrase “happily married,” because there are few situations in which those two words are followed by a police interview about your wife’s alleged sexual relationship with her son.
But mostly, I keep coming back to that word “only.”
Because “only about 100 times” is the kind of phrase that makes you wonder what the other options were.
“Only” 50 times? Still horrifying.
“Only” 10 times? Still incest.
“Only” once? Also incest, Christina.
Now excuse me while I go bleach my eyeballs and hell, my entire brain, to disinfect after reading and writing about this horror story.
Thanks for reading!
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unfortunately it probably happens way more than we know, one of 100 ways to damage kids.