It is the crime that dare not speak its name. Young boys are running away from home and being coerced into selling their bodies to perverts on the streets.

Great strides have already been made in tackling what has almost become the "traditional" face of prostitution; the young woman pounding the pavements, awaiting the attentions of kerb-crawlers.

The children's charity Barnardo's has done much good work already, and a study in Bradford three years ago led to the Government drawing up new guidelines which recognised young girls forced into prostitution as victims of child abuse.

For perhaps understandable reasons, the idea of young boys in the same situation is not a topic for conversation in polite society, and is often brushed under the carpet, maybe not even consciously.

But no longer. Barnardo's has once again chosen Bradford to launch its latest report. Called No Son of Mine!, it challenges the stereotype of the seedy "rent boy" selling himself for a drug fix, and paints a bleaker picture of abuse in the home, of grooming by paedophiles and of desperate children running away from home, seeking shelter and food, and finding only despair.

The report's findings don't make for pleasant reading. But that is no reason to continue to pretend that such things don't go on. We can only hope that the latest report has a similar result to the last one.

Every Bradford citizen should applaud Barnardo's for their efforts to solve this problem.