Papal letter of apology

To be honest, it seemed sincere to me, the Pope's long and detailed apology to the surviving victims of sex abuse as children by the Irish Roman Catholic priests and others, and by the institutional cover-ups of these crimes. The contrition, repentance and remorse in the letter seemed genuine, the suggestions and advice seemed helpful. But what do I know? I am not one of the victims; I am not a Roman Catholic; I do not believe in a God - though I used to. I hope the letter will do some good and that some of the victims will find some comfort in it.

I do not believe that those abusers and their protectors and apologists believe in the God they profess/ed to serve. They could not have behaved as they did if they had really believed that "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea."

Those cruel, wicked people should be subjected to the full vigour of the criminal law and the severest punishments, in the hope of discouraging future abuse of power by people unsuited to wield it.

Is the Pope going to write another letter of apology to other victims of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland? To the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries? The former unmarried mothers and their babies so cruelly treated by the nuns in those institutions of horror? I recently read about one of those mothers, Philomena Lee, who had been forced to give up her son to the Irish nuns, who had sold him on to rich Americans. For decades she had tried to find him, and he, when he grew up, tried for decades to find her. But with unrelenting and appalling inhumanity the nuns withheld the information mother and son needed. You can read that story here.

Is there going to be an apology for these long, cruel sadnesses? Any punishment for the heartless nuns and others who played roulette with so many people's lives? In the name of a God of Love?

Alice Vachss knows how to make rape trials fairer for the victim.

The rapists' enemy - Guardian

Extracts:

"Alice Vachss was a brilliantly successful sex crime prosecutor in New York, winning 80% of cases. In Britain, the conviction rate for rape is only 5%. She tells Julie Bindel what we need to learn - and fast."

"Once one of America's most successful sex crime prosecutors, Vachss is in the UK this week, hoping to pass on her expertise to our criminal justice system. We certainly need it. With an estimated 47,000 rapes here each year, convictions running at a pathetic 5.6%, and much media coverage skewed towards anomalous stories of women who "cry rape", her visit could not be more timely.

In her mid-20s Vachss spent a year volunteering as a counsellor in a male prison. It was there she realised that, to help criminals, she needed to understand the justice system, so she took a law degree and worked as a public defender. After this, she undertook a project that considered the needs of rape victims in criminal trials. "They all said the same thing," says Vachss, "they needed a good prosecutor. So that is what I decided to become."

In the 1980s she ran the special victims bureau of the Queens district attorney's office in New York, and brought the sex crimes conviction rate up to an astonishing 80%. She prosecuted more than 100 serious crimes from referral to verdict, including rape, child sexual assault, elder abuse, domestic violence, cult abuse and homicide.

Vachss's war on sex crime has made her powerful enemies in the US. After successfully prosecuting an influential man - a former director of a boys' club - for sexually abusing boys in his care, she found out that he had done a deal with a supreme court judge. In return for pleading guilty to 89 charges against him, including the rape of young boys, he was told he would be given a non-custodial sentence so long as he agreed to tour the US warning about the evils of paedophilia; both he and the sentencing judge were to be paid speakers. Due to Vachss's persistence, the convicted paedophile was eventually given a prison sentence, but she was sacked shortly afterwards in a departmental "re-organisation". "Our district attorneys are elected officials," she says, "which leaves the prosecutorial system wide open to corruption.""