Dr Adrian Bingham 
(University of Sheffield)

This paper will examine the reporting of child sexual abuse in British national and local newspapers from the end of the First World War until the mid-1970s, seeking to explain why in this period, unlike in the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, the issue was rarely high on the press agenda. It will also argue that several elements of this earlier journalistic culture remain and continue to distort coverage of sexual offences against young people.

Disgusting details which are best forgotten: Disclosures of Child Sexual Abuse in Twentieth Century Britain

Dr Lucy Delap
(University of Cambridge)

Telling stories is a key method of imposing or generating meaning out of the mass of past experiences that make up human lives. This paper investigates the different genres and narrative forms that have been available across the twentieth century to narrate sexual abuse of children by those who, by the end of the century, came to be termed ‘survivors’ of such abuse. I also explore the reception and practical results of disclosure - the unpredictable effects of telling, and the strategies of containment or denial that greeted the disclosures.