The mythology of child abuse must surely begin with the story of Medea. Her grisly legend, as conveyed by Euripides and by Seneca, is instructive of the shock and outrage expressed, both publicly and privately, in response to the spectrum of damage that has been inflicted upon children, by adults, from antiquity up until the present day. It is instructive further in relation to the intelligibility of such abhorrent acts as emanating not so much from devils and stereotypical perverts as from members of that same outraged public – real people.

Medea, a sorceress, having aided Jason in his quest to obtain the Golden Fleece, became his consort and, subsequently, mother of their two sons. Jason later abandoned her and she, in a ferocious state of negative passion, burned down their palace, murdered the King of Corinth and the princess, her rival, and then fled to Athens with her own children whom she ritualistically slaughtered en route. This catalogue of carnage and destruction was not, tragically enough, directed specifically at its subjects but rather at Jason for his betrayal. A nemesis with its victim at one remove; the immediate sufferers being secondary to the noumenon of the act, but suffering supremely, nevertheless. This resonates with the diffuse, and often unintended, consequences wrought through the exercise of modern forms of social control. (Chris Jenks, 2005: 92)