There has been a considerable response to the child sex abuse/trawling article referred to here on February 8 and published in Inside Time.
I understand the piece has been reproduced by campaigners in Scotland (where there is a great deal of controversy surrounding a former approved school) and presented to members of Glasgow City Council, Scottish MPs and MSPs.
I have been contacted by two prisoners claiming to have information about cases. This is being passed to lawyers working on the Historic Abuse Appeals Panel.
A friend of a man serving his time in Usk Prison also contacted me. I haven’t seen the details of his case but it appears he was supported by some schools at which he had worked. “I have known few, if any, more professional and decent people during my career in education,” said the friend. “There are so many things that just do not add up in his case.”
I also received the following from Gail Stack, of North West FACT, who described the article as “a well illustrated and documented review”.
She said it was “unquestionably right” that every effort was made to “eliminate any opportunity for evil and sinister people to gain access to children”.
But she claimed there were questions about the quality of evidence in historic cases, saying that by their nature they required “the jury to perform mental gymnastics”.
It is a case of “guilty until proven innocent”, she concluded.
I’ve said before that these cases are exceptionally difficult to investigate. They are also difficult to review, discuss and write about.
Our initial feeling is one of revulsion at the alleged crime and we understandably feel sympathy for the victim and admiration for the investigating detectives.
But so many who have looked closer at these cases feel something quite different now: a deep sense of concern that justice might not have been done.
That is why it is so important to ask questions.

Shirley Ann Morris’ life was shattered two years ago when her son travelled to Ghana and became the centre of a £79m cocaine bust.
Alan Hodgson went from being a council carpenter and leading light in a small west Wales community to a drugs baron in one frightening move.
Within months he had been sentenced to 20 years hard labour in a prison where one in three inmates is on death row.
Shirley has not seen him since. Instead of enjoying her retirement, she now spends every day campaigning on Hodgson’s behalf.
As a mother, it is understandable that Shirley defends her son. She says the 47-year-old had never been in trouble in his life and that, frankly, he has “neither the wit nor the wherewithal” to be a drug smuggler.
But she says she has more than blind faith in her boy, claiming to have very real concerns about the prosecution’s case.
Hodgson spent most of his life in the Gwendraeth Valley community of Carway, where he sat on the sports club’s committee and was a fancy dress star at the annual carnival.
He has been married to Theresa for 23 years and spent a lot of time encouraging their son, Dean, 19, to follow his dream of becoming a footballer.
He worked for many years as a carpenter for Carmarthenshire County Council – where he was known by colleagues as Ianto – and finished work a few years ago after becoming ill.
But he had a chance of some light work in Ghana with his uncle and Shirley’s brother, Kevin Gorman, who has lived in Africa for more than 30 years and, after illness, was having trouble running his fishing company. Gorman has a number of ex-wives and a large number of children – he is a “philanderer”, in Shirley’s words, but not a criminal.
In January 2004 Hodgson went to visit Gorman. The morning after he arrived, police raided Gorman’s home and found 650 kilos of cocaine.
Hodgson and Gorman were arrested, along with a small group of others. In June 2004 they were found guilty of illegally importing cocaine and possession of illegal drugs.
At the trial, a policeman picked Hodgson out as having been on the beach in Accra when the cocaine was brought ashore (having been dropped in the sea in sealed bales).
But Shirley says his passport shows Hodgson was not even in Ghana at the time.
She says the only other piece of evidence presented against him was that he had made the cupboard where the drugs were stored. This too, she says, is untrue.
She also claims that a key witness, who was staying at police headquarters during the trial, may have been coerced.
Gorman – who had heavy debts – has admitted agreeing to look after the bales for a fee of £50,000 but said he didn’t know what was in them.
He blames himself for Hodgson’s predicament. Shirley, 66, says she has forgiven him and wants to help them both. Hodgson and Gorman, who has prostate cancer, are being held in Nsawam Prison, near Accra.Hodgson recently lost an appeal against conviction.“I want to get my son out of there as he has done nothing wrong,” Shirley said. “But I feel I have been pedalling up hill in the dark for the last two years.“I had a text from Alan this morning asking me if I have anything to give him hope.
“The prison conditions are appalling. Alan’s been in hospital twice already with malaria and a blood infection.”
Shirley’s campaign to highlight her son’s case has met with varying degrees of success. She has written to politicians in the UK and Ghana from her home in Turkey, where she retired in 1997 after spending 25 years as a health visitor in Pontyates.
Appeals to Tony Blair and Jack Straw have gone unanswered, but Fair Trials Abroad has expressed its concerns to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and there is a chance of a fresh legal appeal this summer.
Now Shirley is putting her faith in people power. She wants anyone who cares about Hodgson’s case to email her at ninas1@superonline.com
Failing that, as a mother fighting for her son, she would be happy to receive a simple message of support.

First published: Big Issue Cymru, Feb 13-19, 2006

For those interested in the issues surrounding investigations into historic child abuse (but who are not in prison to read Inside Time), the newspaper has posted my most recent article here.