ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the ways in which questions concerning the boundaries of legitimate public intervention, and the possibility of adequate knowledge of child sexual abuse refracted into the popular political imagination by focusing on the press coverage of the Orkney case. It examines the press depiction of the relationship between public and private spheres, looking at representations of the family, community and social work intervention. The chapter takes up the press discussion of evidence, examining how the press define evidence, develop discussions of evidence discrediting the case in question, and appeal both to popular wisdom or 'common sense' and to expertise in the adjudication of what is credible. It examines how the inquiry instituted reported during and after its course, exploring how this inquiry was criticised on a number of counts, while the idea of the public judicial inquiry as a privileged route to truth and justice is actively maintained and rearticulated by the press.
