THE UNREMITTING ordeal suffered by a disabled single mother at the hands of a gang of teenage thugs is one that no-one should have to endure.

But, lamentably, it is all too typical of the lives that are made a misery on East Lancashire housing estates by teenagers running wild.

Here is a young woman living with her eight-year-old son in a council flat.

She was forced to have a leg amputated soon after he was born.

And, for months, her disability has made her a target for these vicious youths, preying like hyenas on the vulnerable.

She is suffering the all-too-familiar ingredients of the neighbour from hell visited upon so many.

This poor woman is at the end of her tether because of it.

She wants the council to end the nightmare by rehousing her and her son.

They refuse - apparently on the grounds that other tenants might refuse a flat targeted by yobs and they do not want to leave it empty.

What help or comfort is that to her?

Indeed, what good either is all the talk of bad neighbour legislation, youth curfews or community policing when her nightmare, like those of many decent people on housing estates, goes on and on?

And what happens if - rather than when - these heartless hooligans end up in court?

More than likely, they end up with a slap-on-the-wrist community service order as their cowardice is pandered to by the anonymity the courts give to juveniles.

Is it not time that the authorities really got to grips with this problem with punishments imposed that would make offenders really regret their deeds, their parents being made to compensate their victims and the automatic "naming and shaming" of all such yobs?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.