Well Al, yes people are more diverse that is comfortable. Some are mass murderers. There are the Putins, the Stalins and the Hitlers. Some are wife-beaters. Some drag strangers into parks and up alleyways to rape them. Some groom children in order to exploit them for their own sexual gratification. Some collect or produce thousands of images of children, babies even, undergoing vile abuse. In some areas such as homosexuality, more latterly transgender issues, aspects of human life that are not intended to cause harm or produce victims, we try to move on, the wheels grinding only slowly. As a society we draw red lines with regard to behaviours that harm. Sexual abuse of children is one such area. We don't just stand by and shrug and say that, well, that's people for you. That is simply not good enough.

Joe, the judge in the trial of the 82-year-old I mentioned expressed outrage when the defence lawyer put forward the mitigation that the abuses were "historical," tearing a strip off the fellow for trying to use that to get the sentence reduced. For the victims still living with the damage decades later, he said, the word "historical" was entirely inappropriate. I agreed with that judge.