[A]buse is deeply distressing and highly damaging to the victim. It is not made significantly more so because the perpetrator holds a powerful politi… - Peter Wilby

To wide indignation on Fleet Street, Sir Ian suggested newspapers' blanket and emotive coverage of such cases, compared with the cursory treatment of black children who go missing in the inner cities, betrayed institutional racism. Was he right? Perhaps it's not racism exactly but, if we are honest, the story is enhanced if the child is blonde, blue-eyed and nicely dressed, though no paper would dare to spell out the awful subtext: that a child who looks attractive to readers will also attract a potential abuser.

As New Statesman editor, he published articles denigrating the north Wales victims as "damaged" and manipulated by journalists such as me, all part of a modern witch-hunt in which the real victims were those accused of abuse.

Is Johann Hari, the Independents twentysomething columnist, a twerp? Does he write twaddle? Since I brought Hari into journalism - I gave him his first job, on the NS - I rather hope not.