2025-07-23
46 分钟This is The Guardian.
and that was published in 2021.
One of the reasons that I really wanted to write this story is
because I'm really interested in the ways that our minds change and I don't mean just as individuals but I mean as collectives and as a culture and as society and I think this story is really about a mental shift
because before this story takes place the whole culture thinks one way about what we then think of as celebrity sex scandals.
They're tabloid news stories.
They're really about this powerful man who is behaving badly.
And what happens during the process of Liz McKean and Myron Jones trying to get this story out on Newsnight and failing to being stopped by their editors and then eventually kind of pushing it out by other means and very publicly revealing to the nation and beyond how difficult that was,
the structures that were in place to protect powerful men and the structures that were in our minds to stop us.
That meant that we saw these stories as about these powerful men rather than about the women who were being abused.
So I think, you know, we've seen since the Saville story broke,
just such a huge change in the culture.
on this subject and I wanted to go back and find that very moment where that change began to happen and especially
because that change was started by individuals,
very few individuals with a lot of courage and a lot of grit and Liz McKean was prepared to risk everything to get this story out and she did risk a lot but she made it happen.
And she's a hero.
And I've not seen her story told either.
So in the few years since I wrote this piece,
I think we've seen more of a backlash to this movement and to so much of the huge amounts of progress that have been made over the last few decades.
And I think when you have such huge mental shifts in the culture,