South Australian couple John and Jenny Deaves with their daughter, Celeste. Picture: Channel 9

In case you have missed this stomach-churning news story, John and Jenny Deaves are a father and daughter who were estranged for thirty years – since Jenny was one – and then met up again as adults and started having sex within two weeks.

If you can bear to put aside the morality of that for just a second (yes, it’s hard), the most disturbing part of this disturbing story is that the couple chose to have a child.

And then? It died within a few days due to birth defects. And then? They tried to have another child. This time, there were no birth defects and the child has lived. Her name is Celeste and she is now 11 months old and appeared healthy when they paraded her on Sixty Minutes last night. But this poor, innocent little girl will forever wear the mental, emotional and social scars of her parents’ selfish, selfish decision. They say they’re ‘consenting adults’. But did that child consent to being brought into the world in such circumstances? Did her dead sibling consent?

Bear in mind Celeste’s father John, 61, is also her grandfather. And her mother Jenny, 39, is also her sister. Oh, and now the whole world knows all about it. Add to all that the unknown physical and mental consequences of her incestuous genetics and it sounds like a recipe for a totally messed up life. It boggles the mind.

I wonder how many more kids they’ll try to have? And how many more of them might die? Oh well, so long as they’re IN LOVE, as they say. Funny how they never mentioned their first dead child to 60 Minutes.

There’s a name for this: Genetic Sexual Attraction Syndrome. Great article about it here.

I’m trying to have compassion. Trying trying trying…..

Quotes from the couple after the jump. And a link to the video of the interview.

From The Sydney Morning Herald: