On its original release, the film made little impact at the box-office and its press was mainly negative. This was partly because at the time the issue of paedophilia and child sexual abuse was a great taboo, rarely referred to or spoken about, and merely to produce a film dealing openly with the issue was deemed sordid and distasteful.
In a 1995 interview with The British Entertainment History Project, Cyril Frankel spoke about how he came to make the film: "By now, I had the reputation of being a 'children's director' and a director of 'light' subjects. I was approached through my agent, who said, 'There's a producer called Anthony Hinds', whose father had owned the building, 'Hammer House'. Tony was, again, one of the fine producers I've worked with. Tony said, 'I'll understand if you read the script and you don't want to make it'. And I read the script and I could see in it a parallel to Henrik Ibsen's 'Enemy of the People'. And so that gave me a line upon which I would wish to do my amendments to the script. I worked with the writer very happily and we turned out a film which, that was the one that Alexander Walker put big headlines on, you know, saying how brilliant it was and one thing or another. It came in for quite a lot of criticism. Columbia, who were then handling Hammer Films in the States said they thought it was the best thing Hammer had done, but it was immediately banned by the 'Women's Catholic Guild', or something. So, whether it was ever shown over there I don't know."
Janina Faye was still only 11 years old when the film was released on March 4, 1960 in London.