JUST as the arrest this week of Sidney Cooke by Thames Valley Police investigating sex attacks on children going back 20 years discloses that this member of the most notorious paedophile gang in British criminal history has been living in a police station since his release from prison in April, so, too, does the case of another child sex offender in East Lancashire highlight the outrageous inability of the law to deal properly with such people when they are freed.

For in court in Blackburn yesterday was 64-year-old Bernard Snape, who is serving a jail sentence for four offences of indecent assault on young children in the town and who confesses that when he is freed into the community next month, he will continue to pose a threat to youngsters.

And this disturbing admission is compounded by the evidence that when he was released on licence from prison last August he failed to live where probation officers directed and was rearrested.

But if Snape's admitted tendencies and past rejection of supervision are a real concern, much more alarming is the disclosure that when he is released he will not be under any supervision or have any support in helping him to control his urges to molest children.

All he needs to do his give the police his address for the Sex Offenders' Register - and that is it.

This is madness. For while one has to acknowledge the difficulty the authorities have in balancing the right to liberty of offenders who have served their sentences with the need to protect the community - children above all - it is ludicrous that the protection that does exist amounts to a worthless piece of paper.

For without back-up of supervision and help for those released, this is all the Sex Offenders' Register amounts to.

We hear that, while in prison, Snape found that the waiting list for the rehabilitation programme he both needed and wanted was so long that his sentence was up before he could attend. And in the community, it seems, there is no help at all.

This case - on Home Secretary Jack Straw's own patch - glaringly reveals the failure and inadequacies of the system.

Parents are bound to be angry and afraid and Mr Straw must rapidly reinforce the existing puny protection of our children with the mandatory and continual close monitoring of every freed sex offender - if need be for the rest of their lives - and with properly resourced rehabilitation facilities for them.

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