FORGIVE me, but I need to get this disagreeable piece of writing out of my system before the jolly Yule; and I promise to write about something more cheerful for the New Year.

But the thing is this: we are told that the case of the evil Ian Huntley is rare and we should not make too much of terrible incidents like the murder of those two schoolgirls. After all, most children find their way to school and back without getting molested and killed. My point is that I'm surprised there isn't more of this horrific wickedness given the society which we have created in England since - let us choose an appropriate date - 1963: "...the ending of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP".

There are huge moral contradictions and rampant hypocrisies. On the one hand, society rightly deplores paedophilia - but then licences under-age sex by doling out the contraceptive pill to twelve year olds. Since Huntley's conviction, several of his alleged surviving victims have come forward and told their stories. One said how he seduced her and got her to go and live with him when she was fourteen. This poor girl's parents reported Huntley to the social services, and the social services said that the fourteen-year-old had "a right to make her own lifestyle decisions". A little girl of eleven was so sordidly assaulted, allegedly, by Huntley that she went home and washed her private parts with bleach. When she told of her ordeal to the police, they replied they had no powers to arrest in this case - "...but don't worry, we'll get him when he does the same to another little girl."

We are dying of political correctness. A score of charges against Huntley of serious sexual assault were dropped because of the Data Protection Agency's decree that documents on Huntley's alleged misbehaviour were shredded by the police - because "his good reputation must not be impugned by failed allegations".

The fact is that there is now no implementation of the rules concerning sexual consent. Children have been sexualised before their proper time, first by a rapacious advertising and sales industry which peddles sex to the pre-teens through fashion and television, and secondly through the relentless promotion of so called "sex education" in schools in which the former Ten Commandments of Moses have been replaced by the single moral law: "Wear a condom".

Literally, the country has been demoralised. There is no morality left in popular culture. Children are encouraged from the earliest age to believe that anything you fancy can and should be yours by right. This leads to the filthy culture of celebs and Big Brother and Pop Idol. It denies faithfulness, reticence, respect and restraint.

What's wrong with England? There is a yob in every street: he wears trainers and a baseball cap, carries a mobile phone, a hamburger and a packet of condoms. He thinks of nothing except his own self-gratification.

Even as I write I can hear him chomping and cursing his way past my window. The trouble is that this yob is not half as bad as the liberal intellectuals who created him.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.