Powerless minority deserves better treatment second time around

MOST journalists spent the weekend chasing political party leaders. I met a more interesting group. A group of improbably cheerful victims of child abuse.

What makes this group special is that, while child abusers don’t usually come back 40 years later for another go, the one who abused them is now re-visiting each and every individual to do still more damage.

This one attacked several decades ago. It took children (and some adults, too) from their homes, subjected them to agonising tortures, disfigured and crippled them, robbed them of their full education, returned them to their families after critical bonds had been sundered, leaving them to make what they could of being physically disabled and discriminated against.