You notice that no-one mentions capital punishment any more.

Even when the case involves someone as obviously evil and deranged as mass-murderer Dr Harold Shipman, nobody bothers to suggest that the best way of dealing with him would be to do away with him.

The pro-capital-punishment lobby have become so demoralised, partly through being constantly lampooned as a bunch of raving loonies, that they seem to have lost all heart for the fight.

OK, so it was always going to be a losing fight, given that the politicians in both Britain and Europe think they know so much better than millions of the people they represent and steadfastly refuse to respond to their desire to see killers and perverts permanently disposed of.

But surely it's a fight worth continuing, nevertheless. Particularly this week, when many tears of pity and rage have been shed over the terrible tales of abuse at children's homes in Wales.

The Waterhouse Report painted a picture of pure wickedness: of manipulation, bullying and sexual exploitation of children by men who were supposed to be looking after them; of abuse so horrible that some of the young people could bear the memory of it no longer and took their own lives.

Those countless youngsters who suffered might, if our lives had taken a different turn, have been the children or grandchildren of you and me, finding themselves at the mercy of their tormentors with no-one to respond to their cries.

Police and social services come out of this devastating report with nothing but shame on them. It's a mercy that "whistle-blowing" social worker Alison Taylor had the guts and tenacity to keep on repeating her accusations despite being branded "subversive" by the then head of North Wales CID and being sacked by her managers for "causing a breakdown in colleague relationships".

If she hadn't, then children might be being abused still. In fact they perhaps are, as far as we know, by other men in other homes.

Most of us, thank God, will never understand just what goes on in the mind of a paedophile - what dreadful compulsions lurk there in the shadows. Are they sick? Are they evil? Both, probably.

And what do we do with them when they're caught and convicted? We send them to prison for a few years and then release them with their demons still in full possession - because if one thing about paedophiles is perfectly clear, it's that they never change. You can't "cure" them.

Far better to be rid of them. There is no place for them in decent human society, and no reason to keep them in expensive incarceration for the rest of their lives. They are a good enough reason for the pro-capital-punishment lobby to shake off its despondency and revive its fight.

And if saying that makes me a raving loony in the eyes of some people - well, so be it.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.