In a particularly stomach-churning story, the uplifting note can be damn hard to find, writes Kathy Sheridan.
There was one in the story of the Premiership British footballers who allegedly "roasted" the sixth-form schoolgirl. The self-described "party organiser", who claims to have been the one who brought the girl back to the hotel, has a cross mother.
"When I get hold of him I will strangle him," she announced.
Hooray for Mum. How she must have rejoiced in the news that her 29-year-old son makes a living organising the kind of "parties" where a 17-year-old girl gets a "roasting". This, as every mother now knows, is footballers' merry slang for "stuffing a girl like a chicken", sharing her around between several of them, treating her like a lump of meat with orifices.
The "party organiser" claims - in a story for which he was paid £10,000 - that he, two footballers and another fun guy all shared her, with her consent. "No one was heavy with her, this was normal . . . "
She claims she had consensual sex with one man - a footballer - but that seven others burst into the room (having been able to obtain a key card, interestingly).
She says she was raped by five of them, indecently assaulted by two and made to take part in an unnatural act.
The story is riddled with contradictions and complexity. What possesses a 17-year-old girl - barely more than a child - to get in a taxi with a stranger to go to his hotel for sex? Is it because no one has ever taught her to value her body for anything other than its use and abuse as a "part-time model"?
Did the significant adults in her life shrink from telling her that casual sex carries a price tag, especially for girls? Or did she decide, in her childish neediness, that this way lay the recognition, celebrity, even lifelong love of many a young girl's dreams?
Forget the arguments about the "coolness" of the sex information leaflets for teenagers or the precise level of judgmentalism to be applied.
Instead, etch the words of the "party organiser" in stone and nail them inside the front door of every school and home: "It's not unnatural for everyone in our crowd to have sex with a girl for 15 to 20 minutes and then get up and wonder what the other boys are doing."
This, by the by, was the party organiser's ninth "roasting".
Footballers, of course, are not unique in this. Rock bands, boy bands, movie stars et al have been at it for decades.
A 41-year-old Californian woman alleges that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the body-builder turned governor, threatened her as a 16-year-old with the words : "We are going to rape you girls tonight."
But it's the way that these grossly overpaid and frighteningly immature footballers hunt in unrestrained, drugged-up packs that chills the blood. The commentator David Aaronovitch has a theory that this fetish about group sex is just another way for a footballer to have sex with comrades without actually touching them or having to call himself gay.
Given the amount of kissing on lips indulged in after a goal on the pitch and the fact that there seems to be only one "out" gay footballer in British soccer, there may well be something in it. In which case, hasten the day when they do the brave thing and settle for "roasting" each other.
In the meantime, is anyone really surprised by the "roasting" revelations? We've seen enough in recent years to know that emotionally immature young men, encouraged to declare war on the pitch but otherwise not to think for themselves, pampered beyond reason, celebrated way beyond their talent, instructed by mentors that club always comes before family, and led to believe that all women are groupies just gagging for it, soon develop a sense that everything is theirs for the taking.
Katherine Redmond, an American who was raped by a football player and founded a US lobby group against violent athletes, has pointed to a common feature of many of the cases handled by her.
"At some point the athlete has said, 'Do you know who I am?'. He feels he's entitled to her, and if she says No to him or embarrasses him, he puts her back in line." A modern take on the old droit de seigneur.
In this case, the spin machines are in full throttle: Max Clifford for the girl; armies of well-drilled, battle-hardened lawyers for the boys.
There are said to be "bits and pieces" of evidence that appear to corroborate elements of the girl's story. But it's her word against a well-oiled machine.
Be sure that one way or another she will be "put back in line".
Keep the cuttings for your daughters.