The truth is: we don’t know, what we don’t know. And so, because we rarely, if ever, talk about male victims of sexual abuse, we assume such people don’t exist. So, we don’t know that the worst campaign of child abuse in British history, exclusively targeted boys. We don’t know that the most prolific rapists in British (perhaps even world) legal history, exclusively targeted men and boys. We don’t know, because such stories rarely make the news, and even rarer still do they cause the mass outrage that drives historic change. The most haunting example of this, is happening right now. Even in the UK, we react with horror at the Epstein files, and the countless women and girls whose lives it has destroyed. And such anger is understandable. Yet another historic campaign of child abuse has been exposed right under our nose, of a similar scale, with similar failures of safeguarding, and we do nothing. We don’t even hear about it, but it happened at Medomsley Detention Centre. And I don’t blame you, if you’ve never read that name before. I hadn’t until last week either. Medomsley was home to horrors that are beyond comprehension, on an unimaginable scale, and after being ignored for 60 years, the truth has finally been made public. But whilst the stories are now laid bare, the deafening silence continues, and history will only repeat itself. So is it time we talked about what happened at Medomsley Detention Centre? Is it time we talked about the northern, working-class boys who we’ve ignored for generations? What do you think? Full report 

2026-07-13