The sordid case of the Plymouth based nursery care worker and the sexual abuse of kiddies barely toddlers with her demonic accomplices in Rochdale and Nottingham.

That followed the sad Leicestershire story of Fiona Pilkington, 38, who cared for her disabled daughter Francesca Hardwick, 18, who both perished in a car fire after giving in to ten years of “taunting and torment”.

What despair must drive you to park in a lay by on a trunk road and kill both yourself and your child?

The role of the police and other agencies will be subject to enquiry but we, those in that community, and us being members of our own, surely can’t leave it there?

The road they lived on was one of quite normal semis, according to the BBC report.

They go on to report groups of a dozen or so youths, aged 8-17 who change as the evening draws on. They start to congregate around 9pm and are out until 2am in the morning.

Now, I was a youth worker, trainer and manager for 35 years on the side of young people by and large.

But tell me, by whose standards, can it be right for kids with school, college or work next day to be out and about unsupervised or policed until the early hours?

Francesca and her brother were different to most of us, but then again aren’t we all different in some way or other?

Mencap’s 2000 survey found scary set of findings regarding disability hate crime in the UK.

What will happen to the perpetrators of these hate crimes? We know what happened to the mother and daughter duo.

Have you ever witnessed people being picked on for how they looked or acted?

Have you done it yourself in however mild a form?

Perhaps we’d all better learn and change fast.