This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hi, I'm Poppy C. Bagmonte, Fefuri, and I wrote how two BBC journalists risk their jobs to reveal the truth about Jimmy Saville.

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

Myrian Jones trying to get this story out on news night 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'd 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

...