Dementia and Child Abuse are hot drama themes right now - I wish they weren’t

I used a sexually abused young girl as the central character in a horror novel many moons ago. A critic described my treatment of the girl as “conscienceless”.

I was furious and defensive for a few weeks after reading that comment, but eventually realised that it was, in fact, spot on. I’d chosen the subject simply because I knew it would engage and horrify the reader: it was an easy option. (And the book sold well.)

Ten years after that, I was trying to follow up a much better but poorer-selling novel with something grabbier. Once again, I reached for the child abuse option – and only realised what I’d done after posting a synopsis to my agent. (They hated it, so I didn’t have to write it - the only time I’ve felt even vaguely relieved to have a proposal rejected.)

Since those days, some twenty years ago, child abuse has become the most popular theme – apart from serial killers – in contemporary crime fiction. I get the impression that it appears as a key element in at least 20% of crime novels and TV dramas. 

Frankly, it’s starting to irritate me.

Waking the Dead’s final ever episode on BBC One a few weeks back was all about the torture and killing of street kids. That wonderful Danish series,The Killing, was about the sexually-motivated murder of a schoolgirl. The last series of Spiral featured a father sleeping with his daughter. The lastGeorge Gently I caught was about abuse at a children’s home. The last series based on David Peace’s Red Riding novels was all about systematic child abuse…and, of course, there was lots and lots of it in the Swedish trilogy which kicked off with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I’m sorry to admit that now, when I realise that the plot of something I’m reading or watching is going to turn on child abuse, I tend to groan and think “Oh God, not again!” 

Child abuse is an utterly horrendous crime on every single imaginable level. The very mention of it enrages and disgusts any vaguely normal human being. And that’s the problem: using it as a plot device time and time again simply cheapens, debases and exploits the sheer horror of it all. Crime writers and dramatists and publishers and TV commissioners really need to show some self-control by refusing to go for the easy option whenever invention flags and they want to lend their entertainments a spurious patina of seriousness: it’s become such a commonplace theme, even quality writers and dramatists need to start limiting their use of it. Child abuse is simply too important and too painful a subject to be routinely exploited in this way.

I also wonder if the amount of crime drama on TV involving paedophiles and child-killers - as well as the almost gleeful obsession with paedophile priests amongst our anti-religious chattering classes – hasn’t led to an over-zealous but no doubt useless scrutiny of any adult who comes into contact with children. If the authorities really wanted to protect children, they’d stop releasing convicted sex offenders from prison on the say-so of unscrupulously optimist psychiatrists,  liberal probation service workers and wet parole board members.

I also have a problem with the ubiquitousness of dementia as a theme in contemporary radio, TV and film drama. (Radio 4 Woman’s Hour is currently running a series of monologues adapted from conversations with victims.) As our longevity inexorably increases, more and more of us are losing our marbles before we succumb. Both my parents died early enough for them not to go through this awful process – and I must be honest and admit I’m grateful that they, and I, were spared such a dreadful fate. But many people close to me have either been through the agony of watching a loved one’s identity virtually disappearing before their eyes , or are going through it right now.

I’m sure most of the writers and dramatists who tackle child abuse have never had any immediate experience of it (thank God!). But I would imagine that many of those choosing dementia (and, in particular, Alzheimer’s) have seen it erase a parent’s memories and personality. It’s hard to imagine anything worse, and it’s natural that writers should seek to make sense of such a cruel experience by turning it into drama. The condition offers certain dramatic possibilities – especially the chance to examine what it is that makes us us – but the subject is essentially depressing and horrible, and, ultimately, not really that dramatic. 

Producing drama about dementia is no doubt cathartic for the creator, and commissioners no doubt feel they’re doing something “brave” and “important” when they greenlight these projects – but I suspect I’m not the only one who feels compassion fatigue setting in.