LISTENING to former footballers reveal the sexual abuse they suffered when they were young, it felt as if the last illusion had been shattered. One by one national institutions and organisations have made headlines this past decade as their record of child abuse has emerged: the Catholic Church, BBC, myriad private and religious schools, Scouts, politicians, youth groups and now, inevitably, major sports clubs.

If there had ever been any scintilla of doubt that child abuse is like Dutch elm disease, toppling one institution after another as it spreads malignantly across the face of the land, here was proof that the malaise is universal.

Not everyone, of course, will be surprised that football clubs have harboured sex offenders.

I heard of a club where the trainer was told by other coaches to leave the junior rugby club because he showed excessive eagerness to join the boys in the showers. When he protested, he was told that refusing to depart was not an option.

I would like to say that stern words alone were enough to see him off, but as I understand it, fists flew before he admitted defeat and retreated.

Better informed as we now are about sexual predators, it seems unlikely his proclivities had been dealt a knock-out blow.

When you look back down the years, the extent of public naivety and ignorance on this issue has been staggering. Yet it is not as if paedophilia was unheard of.

When I was a child it seemed that every village or town had a so-called “pervert”, whom children were warned to steer clear of on their way home from school, though we never exactly knew why. Whether they were a serious threat, or merely scapegoats I do not know, although our nearest unsavoury individual, who invited me and my friend Judy into his garden shed to show us dirty pictures, and unzipped his fly, clearly fell into the first category. Not long after he was jailed, presumably for going considerably further than that.

Yet who could have predicted the epidemic of cases that has filled the papers in recent years? I suspect that even professionals who work in child protection will have been shocked to learn the extent of Jimmy Savile’s crimes, or those of his ilk, who flaunted their activities under viewers’ noses, thereby adding to the thrill.

It is tempting to assume that such behaviour is on the increase, with the dark web’s torrent of child pornography and the ease of meeting fellow paedophiles online. Perhaps there is some truth in this, but the cases that have recently rocked the public took place long before the internet. In those days, childhood was considered a time of innocence and freedom, and the thought of sexual abuse was for most parents almost literally unthinkable. Knowing as we now do that children are most at risk from relatives, that cosy, misinformed picture has been shattered too. But it nevertheless remains the case that until the past two or three decades, people were reluctant to believe an adult could have a sexual interest in the children in their care. Instead, youngsters were taught to trust them and do whatever they were told. Now, of course, the reverse is true. Consequently, where single or married men would once happily coach football or take groups on summer camps, they think twice before appearing keen to be in close proximity with youngsters. Primary school teaching has been irreparably damaged by the climate of mistrust that surrounds men and children, as have many charitable organisations.

So is child sexual abuse a modern curse, an abomination unknown to our forebears? I do not for one second think that likely. Human nature does not change much in the space of a few hundred years, even if the law constantly evolves to take better care of the vulnerable. Misery memoirs, and the autobiographies of those who rose from lowly or painful beginnings – the David Copperfields and Oliver Twists if you like – tend to focus more on what you could call “traditional” abuse of children: being beaten, locked up, or sent hungry to bed, or falling victim to sibling incest. These were bad enough, and could traumatise someone for life. Today, though, I wonder if some acts were simply too shocking to put into print. Was sexual abuse implicit in some of the worst scenes in Dickens’s novels? Did some who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps deliberately erase what had happened to them, or find it impossible to commit such events to paper? Or was their experience hinted at, discernible by those who knew the depravity of which those with power over children are capable?

When I came upon an eight-year-old one winter evening, sobbing on his way to the park for a football lesson, I did not dare hold his hand, nor suggest that after the class, instead of catching a bus home in the dark – what was his mother or father thinking, sending him out on his own? – he could get a lift from me. It was a sharp reminder that the once natural relationship between a well-meaning adult and child, where you would be quick to offer comfort and help in loco parentis, has been utterly destroyed.

It is one of the unspoken sorrows of our times that childhood is no longer seen as a time of trust, but of threat. Where in the past a neighbourhood would act as an extended playground, with kids running in and out of houses and gardens, this easy-going, safe and rewarding network has gone. In its place is a mood of hyper-vigilance, anxiety and suspicion.

Not that this is all bad. Thanks to reading the news, I would no more allow a young relative to go alone into the house or car of someone I don’t know well than I would put my hand in boiling tar. Surely, as a result of heightened awareness and caution, the tally of victims of abuse must decline. After all, since the revelation of savage, ongoing rape and sexual assault, from Savile to Rotherham, to Fort Augustus Abbey, few of us are starry-eyed about figures of authority. Nor would we automatically dismiss accusations from children who would once have been considered fantasists and liars.

While we have good reason to mourn the passing of a more casual and relaxed time, it was this unquestioning culture of deference and security that allowed celebrities and priests, sports coaches and teachers and others in positions of power, to get away with unspeakable deeds.

Today, those intent on causing harm will manage it some way or other, but it will be harder.

If in the process of protecting our young we have hobbled the way in which we interact with them, we should remember that this is our loss, not theirs. As we begin to appreciate the prevalence and cunning of abusers, countless better-guarded children will be given a safe and happy childhood. Ahead of them lies an unblighted future, the sort of which unlucky ones from less-informed and more credulous ages can only dream.