Mae - where is the chart of the hierarchies of pain? What is more painful, a missing child or a dead one? Who hurts more, an orphan or a widow? What is more painful, rape or sodomy? What is more painful, cancer or a broken leg? What is more painful, belief or disbelief? What is more painful, a gunshot wound, or childbirth? What is more painful, lying or silence? Who decides?

Wildfire chose a 94-year-old case to illustrate how far gaslighting can go if it is not recognized and stopped. To say, Wildfire is co-opting Collins’s story, is like saying we should not mention Lizzie Borden who died in 1927 – one year before Collins’s son disappeared.

At what point, does your personal story, or mine, pass into the public realm? Who decides?

Unfortunately, “Gaslighting” was completely unknown in 1928, when Christine Collins’s son went missing. Had the public been aware of gaslighting techniques sooner, Collins would have had a better chance of finding her son. Unfortunately, she lived in a time when the public placed “blind-trust” in the police and courts. In other words, Collins and her son were the victims of ignorance – or what I call the arrogance of ignorance.

Ten years later, in 1938, Patrick Hamilton invented the word “Gaslight” for his play by the same name. In 1940 the film Gaslight was released in the UK, and in 1944 another version was released in the states. However, the first recorded use of “gaslighting” as a verb was 1956. Six years later, in 1964, Christine Collins died.

Until we find that hierarchy of pain chart, surely we can agree that pain is a matter of opinion.