36-year-old Boise woman and 30-year-old half-brother arrested, charged with incest

Brian L. Reed, 30, and Marilyn R. Lee, 36, are both being held in the Ada County Jail on felony incest charges.

Boise police say they arrested Lee at her workplace just before noon Wednesday. Reed, Lee’s half brother, is a registered sex offender who was already in jail on a probation violation when he was arrested on the same charge Tuesday — the same day the arrest warrants were issued.

Boise police officials didn’t release much information about the case Thursday other than saying they began their investigation earlier this year after Idaho Department of Probation and Parole agents asked for help with an ongoing case involving Reed.

Boise police say the sexual activity between Reed and Lee is reported to have taken place over the last several months at various locations around Boise, and that Ada County prosecutors made the decision to file the incest charges.

Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Roger Bourne said Thursday while he could not comment on the pending case, he said in general terms that “when we have a case presented to us where there is probable cause for a crime and we can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, we would charge that — unless we have some good reason not to.”

Bourne acknowledged that while the charge of felony incest is not commonly charged, there have been other incest situations which have been charged under other code sections, like lewd conduct or sex abuse of a minor in a cases where minors were involved.

Reed is on felony probation following an a conviction for sexual battery of a minor between the ages of 16 and 17 from 2002, according to the Idaho State Police sex offender registry. Details on what led to that conviction were not available Thursday.

Idaho Code defines incest as “Persons being within the degrees of consanguinity within which marriages are declared by law to be incestuous and void, who intermarry with each other, or who commit fornication or adultery with each other.”

The charge of felony incest is punishable by up to life in prison.

Incest is rarely charged as a crime in Idaho, according to the annual statewide crime reports issued by the Idaho State Police.

Only 16 people have been arrested in Idaho on the charge of incest between 2004-to-2008 — a list which includes only one woman.

Eight of the 16 arrested have been juvenile males, according to ISP reports.

Statewide figures for 2009 are not yet available.