ABSTRACT
This chapter examines an extraordinary cultural transformation in public and private knowledge: the ‘(re)discovery’ of child sexual abuse in the late twentieth century.2 It draws on interviews and focus group discussions conducted during the 1980s and 1990s to explore how dramatic changes in mass media coverage influenced public and personal perceptions of this issue. Focusing on the experiences of women and girls in the UK, my research highlights the media’s role in helping to shape the way we understand and frame sexual abuse. Media coverage made a crucial contribution to a spiral of recognition. It encouraged the formation and expression of private identities around previously fragmented and silenced experience. It helped sexual abuse, particularly incest, to enter public discourse. This research throws into question any simple and inevitable division between those with ‘recovered memories’ and those who ‘always knew’ by exploring the complex processes through which individuals come to recognise, name and articulate experience in the light of a changing cultural context. Media coverage of sexual violence continues into the twenty-first century. However, the lessons from this research – conducted through a time of radical transition – highlight the way in which cultural resources are mobilised in constructing memory/experience and narratives about the self.
