The Cosby case is perhaps the most obvious marker. Rumours, stories and legal claims about the sitcom actor Bill Cosby had been swirling and squashed for years. But the number of women going public about their experiences with him have both met with and caused a change in their reception. Cosby is due to stand trial for sexual assault next year.

Thandie Newton has spoken out about her abusive experiences as a young actor in Hollywood. Rose McGowan went public about her own rape by “a studio head” in response to the #WhyWomenDon’tReport campaign. Actor Evan Rachel Wood recently posted an open letter on Twitter advising that she had been raped twice, by a partner and a bar owner. “I don’t believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer,” she wrote.

And she’s right. The silence that surrounds and protects people who do terrible things is breaking down. Amid the horror of the stories, currently dominating the news, of the British footballers abused as children by their coaches, for example – a series of testimonies that I would actually not have thought possible – I think you can find real hope that the old order is changing. That some perpetrators of abuse are finally experiencing the exposure and condemnation they deserve. Sometimes it helps to look beyond the daily headlines. To place them within wider history in order to prove to ourselves that things can and do get better and that even fights that seem unwinnable while you’re in the middle of them are worth fighting. So let’s fight on.

“The silence that protects people who do terrible things is breaking down” Lucy Mangan on the hope in the abuse headlines