‘Bring it out from the shadows’ examines the messages about ‘baby battering’ and child sexual abuse that were directed at GPs and health visitors about their role in early intervention in the 1970s and 1980s. It complicates the idea of a neat linear progression through ‘stages of awareness,’ culminating in widespread recognition of sexual abuse in the 1980s that apparently developed into professional hypervigilance to possible cases of ‘incest’ and to fears that practitioners would ‘see it everywhere.’ Although the influence of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and US paediatricians led by C. Henry Kempe is undeniable, an analysis of coverage in the medical and trade press demonstrates that child abuse was just one problem that these professionals were urged to tackle under the banner of ‘social medicine.’ Messages about the prevalence of sexual abuse and its negative effects on children were broadcast only gradually and unevenly to these professional groups. Meanwhile, GPs and health visitors were enmeshed in wider debates about disciplinary boundaries, status and authority. Swiftly changing gender relations affected not only their perceptions of child sexual abuse but their perceptions of each other’s professional expertise and judgement.