When is it fair to say that a television show has crossed a line?Is it when a brother and sister are shown having sex in a broken tower (and liking it)? Is it when that very same brother overpowers and rapes his sister next to their dead son's body? Or, when a cackling madman condemns a mother and her newborn baby to be ripped to shreds by hounds? Or like, the entire Red Wedding? (Gee, Game of Thrones really seems to be racking these up, doesn't it?)Is it when Girls' Hannah Horvath exposes her vagina to her boss in order to keep her job? Or, when Philip Jennings seduces a 15-year-old girl on The Americans?The current so-called Golden Age of Television has come hand in hand with the rise of the shock-and-awe moment. More often than not, that calls for a rape scene. Some shows handle those scenes with care , others (*cough* Game of Thrones ) do not. Having said that, how far can shows push the envelop before a scene goes from compelling television to distressing trigger?This week's episode of Outlander featured one such distressing scene (). Shortly after returning home from L'Hopital des Anges — where she suffered a miscarriage — Claire hears Fergus whimpering in his sleep. When she asks him what's wrong, he hesitates — clearly, this will not be pleasant. After much coaxing and cajoling, she finally gets the truth out of him: "The Englishman, my lady."If you're anything like me, those words caused a little shudder. In this show, "The Englishman" only means one thing: Jack Randall. And Jack Randall means one thing: unendurable cruelty. Not for the first time, that cruelty translates into rape. Child rape.Sobbing, Fergus relates to Claire that, while running an errand with Jamie in a whorehouse, he wandered off to find some pockets to pick. Attracted to a bottle of lavender scent that he wants to bring home for Claire, he found himself cornered in a bedroom by Jack Randall."You're not what I ordered...but you'll do."At this point, the showrunners had a choice. They could either pan back to Fergus and Claire and have the former relate the events to her after the fact. Or, they could let the scene unfold in real time, subjecting viewers to a traumatic rape scene. They did both.We see (and hear) it all: Randall grabbing Fergus, pushing him face down on the bed, the child screaming, crying for it to stop, yelling for Jamie to come and help him.But we also get the aftermath: Fergus, ashamed, is convinced that the unfortunate consequences of this assault are all his fault. (But more on that later.) He is clearly scarred by the experience, and by allowing him to tell his story, the show gives the traumatic aftermath the attention it deserves.It works. While the rape scene is almost unendurable to watch, its narrative is owned by the victim. We see the live actions through his eyes, and hear about it in his own words.