Secrets and Silence: Child Sex Abuse from Cleveland to Savile and Beyond

Secrets and Silence reveals that the enquiry that followed the Cleveland child abuse scandal of 1987 was a cover-up.

When paediatricians in the English county of Cleveland identified evidence of rape in 121 children in 1987, they were discredited. Children were sent home and the public assured that there was no widespread problem of sexual abuse. Renowned journalist Beatrix Campbell shockingly reveals the government’s deliberate cover- up of expert findings that most of the diagnoses were correct: ministers misled the public, doctors and social workers were denounced and the children were denied their own stories. The legacy of the Cleveland controversy lived on in child protection practice policing for 30 years. Some children were left unprotected, others died - until the government was finally forced to launch the current Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, whose outcome will determine whether the public can be certain that children will be protected in future.

‘Beatrix Campbell is one of those rare writers in whom a passion for justice is matched to a brilliantly forensic intelligence. In this gripping illumination of the long shadow of the Cleveland child abuse case, she shows the disastrous consequences of a pernicious myth.’ - Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times

‘A shocking indictment of state neglect and complicity in child sexual abuse. Essential reading for anyone who cares about truth, accountability and justice.’ - Harriet Wistrich, lawyer and director of the Centre for Womens Justice