The proliferation of historic allegations of sexual abuse following the outbreak of a scandal about the late Jimmy Savile in October 2012 is extraordinary, even by the standard of historic abuse claims.

These originated in the USA in the 1980s, and have continued relentlessly ever since in English-speaking countries round the world. The abiding theme of these claims is one of childhood innocence violated, and trust betrayed. The public reaction to the revelation of such abuse is, predictably, one of shock and outrage, coupled with a demand for retribution and reparation. When American feminist campaigners began to draw attention to the gross minimizing (as they saw it) of the problems of rape and intra-familial sexual abuse in the 1970s and 1980s, they used the technique of personal testimony. In the nineteenth century, this was a popular device deployed both by the antislavery movement, and by Christian revivalist movements, to promote their cause. Such ‘speaking out’ is characterized by highly emotive and graphic content, designed to shock the listener into horrified acceptance. This rhetorical technique was not without its critics, sensitive to what nowadays we would call the pornography of misery.

As early as 1855, a reviewer for The Athenaeum of John Brown’s Slave Life in Georgia remarked: ‘we scarcely see how the public is to be instructed by repetitious accounts so piteous and so harrowing’.

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