Harney must find out why children can be taken without explanation

ON a Friday night a couple of weeks ago, three young boys slept in the same bed in a hostel.

Not because there weren't enough beds, but because they were terrified out of their wits. They had been ripped from a routine that was vitally important to them, a routine without which they can't survive very long because two of them are autistic.

Somebody, no doubt, thought they were doing the right thing. But that night, and other nights that followed, represented an act of unbearable cruelty to those boys and their family.