Below, the unedited version of an article I had in the scottish edition of The Sunday Express on 17/2/13.

Would parents send their children to a school that continued to celebrate a past association with Jimmy Savile or Cyril Smith? So what’s the difference here? AC-T apparently considered sodomy ‘messy and futile’, so his abusive behaviour could have been much worse. But there’s no doubt in the minds of his victims that after leathering their bare backsides, often in his private quarters, and even on the marital bed, as well as in his locked office, he was masturbating as he admired his handywork _ while the boys were told to stay still and not turn around. Just the sort of man you want to lionise in a school chapel.

By Marcello Mega

ONE of the UK’s most famous independent schools has refused to remove a plaque in its chapel that pays tribute to a former headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, a sexual deviant renowned for beating the bare buttocks of young boys in his charge.

While plaques and other memorials to Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith have been removed in recent months amid the sex abuse scandals that have destroyed their reputations, Tony Blair’s old school, Fettes College in Edinburgh, has refused to follow suit.

Chenevix-Trench had been head of Eton from 1964 but was sacked in 1970 because of his increasingly sadistic treatment of boys, including the sons of titled and powerful parents who complained about his excesses.

The reason for his removal was never made public, and a year later he was appointed head of Fettes. His enthusiasm for beatings and excessive alcohol intake meant he was in the process of being removed by way of early retirement in 1979 when he died, aged 60.

A plaque on the wall of the school’s chapel reads: ‘His door was always open, for he loved his fellow man.’

In a letter sent to Lord Tyre, chair of the board of governors at Fettes, David Blackie, 66, an educationalist, talks of the ‘grotesque irony of the legend’, adding: ‘When engaged in his particular deviant form of love for his fellow man he in fact took great care to ensure that the door was locked.’

Mr Blackie, who first wrote to Fettes in 1994 to request the plaque be removed, endured many episodes of Chenevix-Trench’s brutal sadism when he had him as housemaster at Bradfield, in Berkshire, including beatings administered in the head’s private quarters, and even on his marital bed.

He tells Lord Tyre that recent revelations of child abuse have prompted him to appeal to Fettes again. He adds: ‘Anthony Chenevix-Trench was not a disciplinarian. He was over-familiar and tactile. He was late for meetings, late for lessons, late for chapel, dressed untidily and always smelled of alcohol.’

Mr Blackie concludes his letter: ‘I am writing to suggest you remove that plaque from your chapel. I personally don’t mind what you do with the chapel, but I think it does you no credit that it sits there with its absurd message, when really Trench should be held up in much the same way as James Savile, as one who abused his position over many years and got away with it.

‘I am asking the trustees of Fettes to be courageous enough to put the interests of children past, present and future first, and to distance the college from its links with this odious little man, and from any tacit acceptance of his perverse proclivities.’

Chenevix-Trench’s bizarre and unacceptable behaviour at Shrewsbury, where he was a housemaster, then at Bradfield and Eton, meant that word did circulate in privileged circles of his undesirable proclivities. There were many raised eyebrows when he re-emerged at Fettes, often referred to as the Eton of the North.

The late and well respected journalist, Paul Foot, who was taught and beaten by Chenevix-Trench at Shrewsbury, first wrote about his former master’s brutality in 1969, before his arrival at Fettes.

But the full extent of the deviant nature of his beatings only became widely known in the mid 1990s, with Foot, Blackie and other victims provoked into print by tributes paid to Chenevix-Trench, especially in a hagiography penned by Mark Peel, then a teacher at Fettes.

In a remarkably candid essay for the London Review of Books, published in September 1996, Foot wrote: ‘In his Foreword to a new biography of Anthony Chenevix-Trench, Sir William Gladstone writes that Trench’s ‘interest was in drawing out the best from boys as individuals’.

‘Another interest, not mentioned by Sir William, lay in drawing down the underpants of boys – as individuals – before ordering them to lie on his sofa while he spanked their bare buttocks.

‘In his Introduction, the author Mark Peel pays tribute to Trench’s ‘common touch’ without referring to his most common touch of all: the sensuous fingering of his pupils’ buttocks before and during the interminable beatings.’

The article provoked a flood of tales from fellow victims, but also a steady stream of those who had known Chenevix-Trench and who wished to defend him.

In dismissing Mr Blackie’s request to remove the plaque in 1994, Fettes cited respect for those who had known and admired its former head.

On this occasion, Lord Tyre took some weeks to reply to Mr Blackie, telling him simply that his comments were noted, as they had been in 1994.

A spokeswoman for the school said: ‘A letter was addressed to the Fettes College Governors and arrived at the end of November regarding this matter and a reply was sent back to the author of that letter in due course. No further comment will be made.’

Last night, Vanessa Goldie-Scot, daughter of Fettes’ former deputy head, Thomas Goldie-Scot, condemned the school for its arrogance.

Ms Goldie-Scot, 61, now living in Australia, could not attend the school with her brothers as it was no co-ed during her childhood, but she grew up there.

She said: ‘I went to the chapel regularly as a child, I was married there, and my children went there. The chapel is a special, sacred place.

‘My dear father went there every day, sometimes twice a day, for more than 40 years.

‘He would be turning in his grave. How the head and the board of governors cannot see that it is an insult to the children abused by Chenevix-Trench to honour him in that special place is beyond me.

‘He has long since been exposed as a sadistic sexual deviant. To continue to attempt to cover him in the cloak of respectability is foolish and futile.’

Fettes College opened in 1870 following a vast bequest by the former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir William Fettes, for the education of poor children and orphans.

Last month, the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator announced that Fettes was one of only three independent schools in Scotland to have failed to meet the level of public benefit required to retain its charitable status.

With fees ranging from £12,555 to £27,150, the school has been ordered to take steps to widen access to the benefits it provides.

ENDS

Not surprising that after Lord Leveson’s report yesterday, there was considerable support for legislation to regulate the press. I can understand why some people think it’s necessary, but much of the public’s disquiet is based on misconceptions and on celebrity tales of woe that were accepted largely without any great degree of testing by Lord Leveson, but maybe could have done with a bit more detail.

It was already established beyond doubt, but Lord Leveson underlined it, that the single most shocking act under examination, the deletion of Milly Dowler’s phone messages, was not carried out by the News of the World. Charlotte Church was fairly eloquent on Question Time last night, and infinitely preferable as a celebrity victim of media excess to self-serving, self-important pricks like Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan. But we could have done with an explanation of how her mum was ‘blackmailed’ into telling all about her depression and self-harm.

Other stories that were told to the inquiry could have done with a bit more detail and the production of some evidence to back them up. I’d love to know the identity of the journalist who thought the way to secure an interview with JK Rowling was to put a note in her daughter’s schoolbag. Presumably, that person was too stupid to ever work again, but I’d like to know for sure that the perpetrator was a journalist and not just a prankster. Was the matter reported? Did the author of the note get a police warning, or were they served with an interdict to stay away?

But to the point: in the last two years here are just a handful of the very good stories I’ve picked up through my contacts that I was unable to get into print due to the protection afforded to the rich and famous by injunctions, or super-injunctions, and due to the caution of an industry that has been bitten on the bum quite hard and quite often in recent years and seems to me to be regulating itself pretty well.

A contact of mine filmed video footage of a member of the Royal family on a train, drinking with friends, laughing and talking loudly. No problem with any of that. Their loud voices and the equipment they were carrying made it clear to fellow passengers, including my contact, that they were going on a shooting trip. During the journey, at a stop, two of the party got off the train, leaving their equipment, including rifles, secured in cases on the overhead rail. They didn’t make it back on before the train left. Royal security officers leapt into action, local police were contacted, and the two drunken members of the party were rounded up by police and taken to meet the train at its destination. Two Sunday tabloids wanted the story and were bidding big numbers for it, when the Palace lawyers contacted the news-desks to say that any article on the matter would breach privacy and would be a stick-on PCC complaint that they expected would be upheld. The story was dropped immediately.

About two years ago, I was working on two stories simultaneously involving the private lives of prominent sportsmen. One, who was then a star with a Premier League club, had fathered a child with his lover, a young woman who lived on a council estate in a very unfashionable town. He would arrive at her flat in his £100,000+ car, so he was hardly the soul of discretion. Another, famous for his prowess in an individual sport played with a small ball, had had an extra-marital affair with a beautiful air hostess, who was also married, and had paid her and her husband hush money when the affair emerged. If they ever talked about it, they had to repay twice the six-figure sum they had received. Two threats of super-injunctions resulted in another two dropped stories.

More recently, and much more important in terms of public interest, I had a tip from a contact about one of the country’s richest men, a tax exile (and how I hate them) who had made his fortune in this country, continues to make his money in this country, but lives abroad to avoid paying his rightful dues in tax. He’s allowed to spend 30 days a year in the UK under the agreement he has with HMRC. Home alone for a short spell on business, he had an accident at home that left him with a life-threatening injury. He required surgery and spent a long time in intensive care. The NHS, funded by those of us who do pay our taxes, had saved his life. Within five minutes of contacting his business seeking a comment, the reporter who I’d passed the story to, via his news-desk, received a threatening call from the rich man’s lackey, I mean lawyer, citing privacy, insisting that the story involved his client’s health so couldn’t be reported, and threatening to sue. I thought there was a clear public interest element because he was a tax exile. I also wanted to make damned sure the Revenue knew about his extended stay. But there was no appetite for a fight.

Sometimes, the press can be an ass. When I started 23 years ago, it was expected that we would occasionally challenge authority. Now, there is a climate of fear far greater than anything I’ve known before, and too often this leads to important stories being ignored, while our tabloids are filled with celebrity pap. A few months ago, I secured an interview with the taxi-operators who were supposedly extorted by Russell Stirton and Alex Anderson, men who the police and others had been telling us for years were gangsters, despite a complete lack of evidence _ and convictions _ to support this. During their evidence at a lengthy court hearing brought by the Crown to seize the assets of the two businessmen, and in sworn affidavits and numerous witness statements, the taxi-operators insisted they had not been extorted, but the court found that they had been victims and ordered Russell and Alex to forfeit £922,000 of assets. This is under appeal. So far, no one has wanted to know about the interview with the two alleged victims of extortion who took great pains to explain to me, as they had to the court, that the payments they had made to Russell and Alex had been the terms of a business loan made to enable them to buy a number of new cars. They were also able to demonstrate how those same vehicles had enabled them to make hundreds of thousands of pounds of profit over and above the repayments. Of course, the fact that the Crown has wasted in excess of £6m to pursue Russell and Alex for a fraction of that sum has nothing to do with the court’s judgement. To run with this story would be to raise questions about the lack of evidence against them and perhaps question the motives of the crown and the wisdom of a court that heard two emphatic and consistent accounts by the star witnesses that they were not victims in any way, and still concluded the reverse. We just don’t make those challenges any more.

I know that many others would present a different case altogether, but my experience of the press in the last two years has not been of an arrogant organ that is out of control, but of a quite subdued, uncertain establishment, often favouring a quiet life over conflict.

The Edinburgh Evening News on Saturday splashed the story of Chen Wright, the Jamaican rapist who should have been deported after serving a pitifully inadequate time for his first rape, or at least the first he was caught for.

The Mail on Sunday followed suit the next day, but with the highly appropriate heading: A Pitiful Day for Justice. The trouble is, almost every day is a pitiful day for justice in Scotland, at least for the victims of serious crime, their families, and the police officers who, in the main, bust a gut to get the right person in the dock.

To recap, the point of the new stories about Wright were that three appeal judges effectively enabled him to rape and sexually assault three other women rather than support moves to deport him, saying it was ‘irrational’ to conclude that he posed a high risk of re-offending. A jury also found Chen not proven on a fourth rape charge, another charge of indecent assault and two charges of assaulting children, but I’d bet my life he was guilty of the lot.

Wright was jailed for a pitiful four years in 1997 for raping a 19-year-old after trapping her in his home in Livingston in 1995 and refusing to let her go. Imagine the terror that young woman must have endured, wondering if he would kill her after she’d been raped, wondering how badly he’d hurt her, wondering about the possibility of pregnancy, STDs, HIV. We can’t know how she felt unless we’ve endured something similar, but we can imagine terror, pain, unbearable distress, and I know from interviewing many rape victims in recent years that those feelings don’t stop when the rape ends.

Wright was freed in 2000, convicted in 2002 of failing to notify police of a move to Edinburgh and then jailed again for drugs offences in 2003, with a wise sheriff recommending his deportation and the Home Office supporting the decision. But Wright had children in Scotland and argued he would lose touch with them. Aside from the fact that no child can benefit from having a monster as a father and that they would have been better served not to have him nearby, no consideration was given to the fact that the situation was entirely of his own making. Don’t rape women and don’t commit further crimes and you don’t have a problem.

By 2007, he took his case to the Court of Appeal and three judges, Lords Johnston, Eassie and Wheatley, decided that as he had committed ‘only one’ rape and had only one drug conviction, claims of a high risk of re-offending were not justified. Lord Johnston has since died, but we can only hope the two surviving judges feel the shame and guilt they ought to for getting it so badly wrong. By the time they pronounced foolishly, as they did, he had already raped two of the other women and possibly the third as well. How he must have been laughing to himself inside as he walked from the court that day to have found three such gullible fools on the bench.

Of course, it’s easy to be critical of those who have great responsibility that most of us don’t carry daily, but it’s equally hard not to condemn them utterly. Judges tend to believe they see all of life before them and are somehow blessed with greater insight than the rest of us. Did the three take advice from any expert in sexual offending? Did they seek guidance from police forces or the prison service about recidivism among sex offenders? I don’t know for sure, but again I’d bet my life they didn’t. A combination of arrogance and sheer stupidity would have convinced them they knew best.

What training do the judges have for such tasks? What learned tomes do they have to devour and learn from? None. They get a red jersey, they become masters of all before them, and most of them just love it.

There is another very serious point to make here, and none of the newspapers would dare make it. Lord Johnston was for his last years on the bench unwell, and known to be unwell by colleagues on the bench and at the Bar because of his heavy use of alcohol. Had he been in the upper reaches of a powerful business, colleagues would have had words with the necessary powers that be to have him removed from the decision-making process. The late Lord Dawson, in fairly recent times, had similar problems, and again short of a few well-placed whispers, no one actually made the effort to remove him from an office he was not, by his end, fit to hold.

I have no idea what possessed Lords Eassie and Wheatley to go along with him, but I note from media reports that Lord Johnston was the first-named judge and therefore the senior of the three. Benches of three and five judges do disagree at times, but the senior judge will normally have his way. So our justice system allows unqualified men to make decisions about dangerous criminals that can lead to women and children being raped, and it does not step in when one of those unqualified judges has a further, deeper problem that renders him unfit for the job.

The justice system, and the powerful defence lobby in particular, is very resistant to claims that sexual crime is different and should be treated differently, but it is wrong. If we could measure such things on a reliable scale, we would find the trauma and violation experienced by women and children who are raped exceeds the suffering of other crime victims, and, crucially, the effects are always life-long. That is not to suggest to survivors that they should throw in the towel. Most of them cope with the rest of their life admirably, but all of them are scarred for life more surely than anyone is ever scarred by a knife or a bottle.

At the heart of the failure of the three judges in dealing with Wright was a common, even wilful, misunderstanding: Just because he’s done it once doesn’t mean he’ll do it again. Well I beg to differ. Most of us, thankfully, are incapable of rape. Those who are not do not just suddenly wake up one day and become rapists. Sex offenders generally start offending as adolescents and their offending tends to become progressively worse. Any man who has committed the heinous act of rape will almost certainly have carried out earlier and possibly less severe sexual assaults, and will definitely be capable of doing it again.

Why we don’t lock them up for life is beyond me. Instead, the sentences are getting shorter and shorter. It can only be a matter of time before we tire of this unacceptable situation, and society might feel it necessary to dole out its own justice rather than relying on the fools in wigs and robes in our courts, and the empty suits in our £440m parliament.

My good friend Caroline Waterston, of the People newspaper, got me involved last week in following up a great story they picked up in Scotland the week before when I was on holiday. Jamie Cumming has apparently usurped the Sunderland Shagger, who had ten kids with ten different mums. Jamie, from Dundee, is on 14 kids from 12 mums, with another on the way by an unlucky 13th mum.

It was pretty clear from the interviews the People had secured for the previous week’s expose _ one with Jamie’s disgusted mum and one with Paula Ryan, mum of his tenth child _ that Jamie doesn’t exactly fill in his new partners on his full parental history. Even the ‘lucky’ woman he has fathered three children with didn’t know quite how prolific he had been.

Now there are one or two massive families I’ve come across in the job where the parents just love having kids and both (somehow) work, or at least the dad does, and they are pretty much self-supporting apart from the child benefit. But as multi-millionaires are eligible for that, I wouldn’t question their right to pick up that cash from the State.

The majority, however, think it’s OK to keep having kids and leave it up to the rest of us to foot the bill. I think that’s irresponsible, but once the kids are here who would want to condemn them to poverty just because their parents are scroungers?

But the point is this. Is there not a case for criminalising Jamie Cumming and his ilk? First of all, if he gets women to sleep with him and risk pregnancy without telling them that he has already fathered multiple children by many mothers and doesn’t support them, has he not achieved his objective of getting his end away via false pretences?

Also, has he explained to them that if they have a baby he will not be a meaningful part of their lives and it will be up to her alone to provide for that child?

If you took your newborn baby for a drive to a distant town and left it in a pram as you went home, you’d be charged with abandoning, neglecting and endangering that child. Is there not a case for extending parental duties of care to unborn children? How can it be right that a man can father a child and walk away without a backward glance, and keep on and on doing it to different victims/women?

Much of the debate on these issues tends to revolve around so-called feckless mothers, but I think it’s the men who should be the target of our contempt. At least mothers tend to look after their children to the best of their ability. Many women probably should ask more questions before falling into bed with the likes of Jamie Cumming, and until they know everything about him, they should insist on condoms, but an awful lot of them will believe it when a man says he loves them and wants them to be a family and, deep down, most women who love a man will believe that becoming pregnant will cement the relationship. Experience tells us that many of them might be foolish, but they are not wicked.

Deception such as that practised by men like Jamie Cumming is evil and legislators should consider making his behaviour criminal _ there can be no doubt his conduct is reckless _ and enforcing sterilisation. They could even raise money to help support his many children by selling tickets to view the operation. He’s about to have his 15th kid _ and that’s only the ones his mum knows about. Just how many is it his human right to have at our expense?

Been a while since I found the motivation to come on and blog, maybe because a lot of my work is published widely in newspapers and magazines, and I don’t really expect anyone to go looking for my thoughts beyond that, but was encouraged today to find positive comments. More than that though, I remain frustrated at the abuse perpetrated on mothers and their children by secret courts and by sheriffs and lawyers who abuse their position knowing that no one is watching and no one can report on their appalling behaviour.

I’ll offer just two examples: millionaire b/wanker who has put his ex-wife and young daughter through the mill following a bitter divorce. The daughter wants to be with mum, and is for the moment, but he continues to fight and argue that it is in her best interests to live with him. Recent court case saw the sheriff side with him, dismiss the opinions of experts in child psychology on no reasonable grounds whatsoever, and lambast the mother of the child even though he acknowledged that the father had beaten the mother up during the marriage, citing the husband’s own admissions and independent supporting evidence, including medical evidence. Our society is supposed to display zero tolerance of domestic violence. How did it manifest itself in court? The sheriff said he would make no further comment on the violence and berated the mother for having a tendency to exaggerate. Presumably medical evidence is not good enough for this guy.

Apologies but I’ve been asked to delete the paragraph that used to be here by the person concerned for fear of being ‘punished’ by our justice system. You’ll just have to take my word for it that this case represents the worst injustice perpetrated by the courts that I’ve encoutered in 22 years as a journalist, and I include the debacle that is Lockerbie because the people affected by this decision are children and they’re still alive.

You wouldn’t believe this was possible in Scotland, or anywhere in the UK, but within a culture of secret courts, supposedly *to protect children, anything can happen because the lawyers know no one is watching.

While desperate mothers betrayed by the courts fight for access to their children, who are usually desperate to return to living with their mums, often without the benefit of public money, the Scottish Legal Aid Board writes out blank cheques to murderers and rapists like that vile piece of scum William Beggs to enable them to complain about their prison food.

Is this a country we’re happy to live in?

*The notion of holding these courts in secret to protect children is a myth. In criminal cases of child sexual abuse, journalists can listen to the evidence and report on it. We must not reveal any information that would give away the identity of the child, so obviously we have to take special care when the accused is a relative of the child and care has to be taken that all the media report it in the same way so that composite identification does not occur by people reading two different versions of the same story. In civil cases, the same would apply. We would not want to identify children and we would not be able to, so why the difference in terms of our access? Secret courts do nothing to protect children, because the law protects them anyway (from identification, if little else). The secrecy exists to protect the lawyers and the legal system, which routinely abuses children by forcing them to give evidence in criminal cases in a system geared up for adults. This means they can be cross-examined by multiple defence counsel _ something that judges in England are careful not to allow. In civil courts, the abuse often involves a refusal to listen to what children want, and clear bias towards one party _ most often the father, often a professional with greater access to money and influence. It’s shameful.

Should have been at court in Ayr yesterday to see a convicted child rapist get his come-uppance for harassing one of his victims within days of getting out of jail after serving a lengthy sentence. Monday evening, the victim contacted me at 6pm to let me know, having just been told by the fiscal, that the case was off. Given that the incident happened way back in September, and that there have been previous delays, you have to wonder what the problem is. Crown wanted to move it back six days to 15 February, but of course one of the key witnesses can’t be there, so there will be further delays, causing his victims more unnecessary stress.

In Stirling Sheriff Court today with Debbie Watson, who had been engaged to complete twat Alex Roy, not knowing he already had two wives and at least one other fiancee. Roy appeared way back in November to be sentenced for bigamy having admitted it in October. The sentencing was adjourned in November to allow for time for reports. Today, a key medical report (which clearly is expected to be helpful to him) wasn’t in place. He got a further adjournment until 14 April. If a report is commissioned by his defence, should there not be a burden on them to have it in place, and a penalty for the villain in the sense that the judge or sheriff should proceed without the helpful report?

The common factor in all these cases is that the victims are at the bottom of the pile. No thought is given to how they feel about the unfinished business, the added stress of prolonged procedures, the lack of closure. Both Debbie and her mother were upset by the delays today. They had a wasted journey, as did I. But none of that matters. The courts operate for the benefit of the lawyers who work in them. The rights of the accused are paramount. The victims, both direct and indirect, of the criminal conduct are chewed up and spat out.

Debbie and Roy’s other fiancee have reported to the police the fact that while Roy is on bail awaiting sentence he has threatened, abused and harassed them. Should the sheriff who is going to sentence him not be made aware of the conduct?

Final point on expert reports: with about two or three very praiseworthy exceptions, the value of expert reports these days is virtually zero. Most experts will come up with whatever the person paying them wants them to. It’s time the courts stopped the gravy train that allows each side to commission its own expert. The courts should appoint one expert and their evidence should fit all. Any expert judged by his or her peers to have lacked independence by favouring one side or argument unreasonably should never be allowed to do the highly lucrative work again. The current system is a waste of public money, and like most other elements of our system, has nothing to do with justice.

Last week’s media coverage of numerous serious sex offenders being released from the standard inadequate sentences only to reoffend and destroy further lives was no surprise. We’re so used to it that such episodes are no longer guaranteed to make the front pages, although the Scottish Sun’s juxtaposition of the treatment of one such offender with the extremely harsh treatment of the van driver fined for not being in control of his vehicle because he was spotted by a twat of a copper blowing his nose (while standing still and with his handbrake on) was brilliantly used on its cover.

It’s of no comfort that similar things are happening in England as well. The mum of a girl of nine rightly wanted to know why Simon Heaton was bailed and free to rape her daughter despite having already been accused of a brutal attack on a girl of ten.

The law is reluctant to treat sex offending  as different from other types of crime. But it is different. The effects are life-long, unlike the joke sentences now being dished out by our courts. The rape of a child is now worth about six years _ which actually means serving between three and four, with four the absolute maximum even if you tell your psychologist as they prepare to release you that you plan to do it again. The police took such a case to court not long ago, demanding that an offender not be released as he freely admitted his ultimate fantasy was to abduct, rape and murder a pre-pubescent girl. They lost, and he’s in a community near you.

It’s time we demanded that the people who make decisions that ruin lives are made accountable. If a lawyer representing a sex offender demands bail under human rights laws or under the now outdated notion that an accused is innocent until found guilty (the standards of evidence have improved so much that you can be pretty sure if they’re in the dock they’re guilty), let him (or her) put their money where their mouth is. If the client offends while on bail, let’s make it an offence for the lawyer to have misrepresented said client to the court.

If professionals who assess a life prisoner decide he’s fit to release, or indeed if they release him earlier than necessary from a determinate sentence, let’s hold them to account as well if he reoffends. A few sackings might see them make their judgments with more care for the community and less for the offender.

It’s time voters left politicians in no doubt of how we want the justice system to deal with serious sex offenders. Ideally, we want them locked up for life, and if that’s unattainable they need to be tagged for life in the community. Most criminals of any description don’t want to be caught. The risk of rapists and child sex offenders reoffending and ruining more lives won’t disappear if they’re tagged, but if they know that tag will place them precisely at the scene of the crime, most will think again.

I’d suggest that such a policy, if embraced by any of the major political parties, might win them a few votes.