Let’s not get hysterical about the threat strangers pose to children

NOBODY could blame the people of Soham for wanting to batten down the hatches and shut themselves away from a world which suddenly seems a darker, crueller place in which apparently nobody can be trusted.

Nobody could blame those who stormed out of a community meeting with police last week after being refused in their demands for access to information on local sex offenders, or the resident who argued "there should be parents' justice not the court's justice. Prison isn't good enough for the people who did this".

But it is precisely at times of extreme tragedy and heightened emotion that the rest of us need to keep our heads, not become further immersed in the corrosive climate of "stranger danger" or swayed by demands for panic measures and ill-conceived new laws.