Reading his letter it seems he is the archetypal paedophile who truly believes that an adult can form a full, meaningful relationship with children, rather than one of the many other categories of offender who may simply be addicted to deviant sex or is engaged in a violent, controlling power trip re-interpreting some childhood experience of their own at the hands of an abusive parent etc.

He could never be permitted to walk free in open society and really requires medical investigation - I have always considered their proper place of detention was a secure psychiatric unit and not a prison warehouse.

One of the challenges facing medical science in this field is whether or not the condition is behavioural or organic, or a combination of both. And once we discover the cause we can then establish whether or not it is possible to alter the behaviour through chemical intervention.