that the consequences of abuse are discussed in society has a significant bearing on the way they are actually experienced by the individual. Since the 1980s, virtually all research on child abuse has been dominated by a determination to discover the intensity of the harm it causes. Consequently, very little has been done to explore its differential impact or why some young people appear to be more able to cope with the pain than others. Researchers and psychologists who have questioned the prevailing wisdom on child abuse have sometimes been treated as pariahs. So in 1999, the US House of Representatives took the unprecedented step of passing a resolution that condemned a piece of published research in a scientific journal, which questioned the idea that child abuse has long-term effects. The target of the resolution was an article written by Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and Robert Bauserman. These three psychologists questioned some of the claims made about sexual abuse on children, and particularly the idea that it psychologically scars people for life. For their pains they came under attack from the Christian Coalition and Republican moral crusaders. The American Psychological Association (APA), whose journal published the Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman piece, also came under fire. Under such intense pressure, the APA became defensive and announced that in future all contributions on sensitive topics would be more carefully vetted for 'public policy implications'. What the vicious campaign against this piece of research took particular exception to was the academics' questioning of