Citation

Guy L. J. Relig. Hist. 2009; 33(4): 435-451.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9809.2009.00824.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article re-examines the interpretation of widespread concern over significant underage sex in the Hutt Valley, Wellington, which resulted in a government inquiry in 1954. It challenges the typical “moral panic” interpretive lens concerning the inquiry, arguing that the term obscures more than it reveals. The term focuses on reaction to the Hutt Valley affair but fails to address sufficiently the causative question of why such concern existed in the first place. The “moral panic” framing of the Hutt Valley incidents has failed to give adequate recognize that the developments were early indicators of increasing societal shifts that threatened long-held public views on sexuality; that manifest, societal, sexuality values changes in the next two decades showed that concerned people of 1954 were right within the framework of their worldview to have such concern; and that the so-called “moral panic” concern of 1954 already existed prior to the Hutt Valley disclosures.