The news that paedophile killers like Sidney Cooke are being released touches our deepest fears.
Fear turns parents' love of their own children into a hatred for the predatory outsider.
Such deep, atavistic fears can easily spin out of control, leading to attacks and hate campaigns against both suspected and convicted paedophiles. Not surprisingly the families motivated to such actions are unmoved by qualms over mob-rule and taking the law into their own hands. The very idea of a balance between the rights of children to live in safety and the supposed rights of the paedophile strikes people as grotesque. But fear itself is a destructive factor, and one that is destroying communities and families. Already one teenage girl has been burnt to death in an arson attack on a supposed paedophile.