Besides, the wench is dead

[steepholm]

How long ago does a crime need to have taken place in order to be described as "historic"? When the BBC mention cases of "historic child abuse" I think of chimney sweeps and the princes in the tower: then it turns out that the abusers and their victims are still around.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

In context - a report on the news today, and other similar reports in recent months - it tends to be used of cases that happened a while ago, rather than those that are somehow especially significant (record-breaking? innovative? the cause of the fall of a government? it's hard to come up with measures for significance in this context that aren't at least a bit queasy-making in themselves, since they imply other cases and victims of abuse to be relatively "insignificant"). But I take your point about historic/historical: that ambiguity was one part of what threw me.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree re "significant." I was thinking about maybe cases that marked a cultural shift in awareness, or a legal shift in what was considered acceptable. I would never want to imply that child abuse itself could be insignificant.