People Disgusted After Learning Elon Musk’s Father Had Kids With Own Stepdaughter He’d Known Since She Was 4

The Musk name is globally recognized for pioneering technology and ambitions that reach for the stars. Yet, a profoundly unsettling family saga has cast a long shadow over this legacy, sparking widespread public condemnation that has little to do with business or innovation. At the center of this controversy is the family patriarch, Errol Musk, whose actions have fractured his family and captured horrified public attention. In 2022, he confirmed that he had fathered two children with his former stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout—a woman 41 years her junior whom he had helped raise since she was a young child. An exploration of these events reveals the timeline of the disclosures, the deeply fractured family response, and the powerful psychological and ethical triggers that explain the public’s visceral reaction to the scandal.

The Public Unveiling of a Family Secret

The story unraveled not all at once, but in stages, with each revelation adding a more disturbing layer to the public’s understanding of the Musk family dynamic. The first confirmation surfaced in March 2018, when media outlets reported that Errol Musk, then 72, had fathered a son named Elliot Rush with 30-year-old Jana Bezuidenhout. The reports immediately highlighted the deeply problematic context: Jana was the daughter of Errol’s ex-wife, Heide, and he had served as her stepfather since she was just four years old.

Family sources speaking to the media at the time described the birth as having created a “delicate situation.” The core of the transgression, one relative explained, was the violation of his paternal role. “Errol got Jana pregnant,” the source stated. “He is the father of her baby boy. But he was a father to her… He is the only father she has ever known. And now he is the father of her child as well.”

For four years, the narrative centered on this one child. Then, in an interview with The Sun in July 2022, Errol Musk revealed the situation was not a fleeting affair. He confirmed he and Jana had a second child, a daughter, born in 2019. While he admitted this second child was “unplanned,” he offered a chillingly simplistic justification for his actions—a philosophy he would repeat in multiple interviews. “The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce,” he stated, cementing his public image as a man unconcerned with the moral implications of his behavior.

“A Terrible Human Being”: The Schism Within the Musk Family

The fallout from the revelations extended far beyond public opinion, creating an irreparable schism within the Musk family itself. While the news about Jana may have been the final catalyst, the relationship between Elon Musk and his father had been deeply fractured for years. In a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone—a year before the news of the first child became widely known—Elon was moved to tears when speaking of Errol, describing him as a “terrible human being.” He elaborated with palpable pain, “You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done… It’s so terrible, you can’t believe it.”

Given this history, his reaction to his father having a child with his stepsister was reportedly explosive. Sources claimed Elon went “berserk” upon learning the news. The sentiment was shared by his siblings. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon, his brother, Kimbal Musk, who had been trying to mend his relationship with their father, saw it as a point of no return.

He reportedly told Errol, “You’re done, you’re out. I never want to speak to you again,” and has apparently held to that promise. Errol’s daughter, Alexandra ‘Ali’ Musk, was said to have called her father “insane, mentally ill.”

The situation created an impossibly tangled family dynamic that horrified the children. Errol himself admitted the awkwardness of the situation in an interview, acknowledging his children’s feelings about Jana. “They still don’t like it,” he said. “They still feel a bit creepy about it, because she’s their sister. Their half-sister.” The affair and the subsequent children, as one family source stated unequivocally, had “split the family” down the middle.

The Backstory: Power, Vulnerability, and a Contested History

To understand the family’s visceral reaction, one must look at the history that preceded the relationship. In 1992, Errol Musk married Heide Bezuidenhout, a young widow. Her daughter from a previous marriage, Jana, was just four years old when Errol became her stepfather. Together, they had two more daughters and for a time lived as a large, blended family where, according to one source, “no distinction between children and step-children” was made.

Years after his divorce from Heide, the path to Errol and Jana’s romantic relationship began with a reconnection born from hardship. According to Errol’s own timeline, Jana, then in her late 20s, contacted him in 2014 because she was going through a “difficult time” and was “struggling financially” after a bad breakup.

He began providing her with financial support, and she eventually moved in with him for a period. It was during this time of emotional and financial vulnerability that their relationship turned romantic.

In the face of public scrutiny, Errol Musk has actively tried to reframe this history by minimizing his paternal role. He has claimed he does not consider Jana his stepdaughter because she was “raised away from the family for long periods.” In one particularly legalistic statement, he told MailOnline, “I have been single for 20 years. I have no step-daughters or step-sons. I have four ex-wives.” This narrative, however, directly contradicts reports from family members and his own earlier acknowledgments that he “helped raise her from the age of four,” creating a contested history in which a foundational family role is deliberately obscured.

Unpacking the Moral Outrage

The public’s visceral disgust is not an arbitrary reaction; it is a deeply rooted response to the violation of fundamental social and familial structures. The relationship between Errol Musk and Jana Bezuidenhout triggers this condemnation because it contains a trio of ethically fraught elements: a severe power imbalance, the transgression of a parental role, and credible, long-standing allegations of grooming.

The power differential was stark. Beyond the 41-year age gap, the relationship began when Jana was in a state of financial and emotional distress, creating an immediate dynamic of dependency. Most critically, Errol had been a figure of parental authority in her life since she was a toddler. This context dismantles any narrative of a simple romance between two consenting adults; instead, it frames it as a convergence of a wealthy, powerful, elderly man and the vulnerable young woman to whom he once served as a father figure—a classic recipe for perceived exploitation.

Furthermore, while the relationship is not biological incest, it evokes the powerful social and psychological revulsion associated with the incest taboo. The source material notes that South African legal scholarship recognizes this dynamic, stating that in psychosocial terms, sexual activity between a stepfather and stepdaughter “would closely resemble incest” because he is a “psychological parent” to the child. The disgust stems from this fundamental betrayal of the parental role, which is universally understood to be one of protection and care, not sexual pursuit.

Adding a deeply disturbing layer are allegations that surfaced in Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography of Elon Musk. Isaacson writes that as far back as 2002, “Elon was getting concerned that Errol, who was then fifty-six, was becoming uncomfortably attentive to one of his stepdaughters, Jana, who was then fifteen.” Errol has vehemently denied these claims as “balderdash,” but the existence of these long-standing concerns, voiced by his own son, lends significant weight to public accusations of grooming and transforms the narrative from an inappropriate adult relationship to one of potential long-term predation.

An Earth-Bound Scandal for a Star-Bound Dynasty

When you boil it down, the story of Errol Musk and Jana Bezuidenhout is more than just another celebrity scandal. The public’s revulsion isn’t hard to understand; it’s a gut-level reaction to a deeply uncomfortable power dynamic, the violation of a parental role, and a stunning refusal by the patriarch to show any real remorse. And that’s where the real tension lies—in the gap between what’s technically legal and what feels fundamentally wrong. Sure, the relationship might not be criminal incest under South African law, but in the court of public opinion, it’s seen as a line that should never have been crossed.

What makes this story so powerful is how it hits on one of our oldest and deepest taboos: the lines we draw to protect the family, especially the trust between a parent and a child. It’s a stark reminder that even as many social norms evolve, some boundaries are still fiercely guarded.

In the end, this affair leaves a complicated and messy stain on the Musk family legacy. There’s a jarring irony in it all—while one Musk is building a future for humanity among the stars, his father has created an inescapable controversy rooted in the darkest corners of family dysfunction. It forever ties the name Musk not just to innovation and ambition, but to a very human, and very cautionary, tale about power, personal ethics, and the unwritten rules that hold a family together.