OUR thoughts today are not with Ian Huntley as he begins a life sentence which must mean exactly that.

They are not with Maxine Carr, who is reportedly facing a brief spell in Durham Prison before being released to an uncertain fate early next year.

Our thoughts are with the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who have endured their unimaginable grief with such courage and dignity.

No one will fail to understand the collective anger and bitterness summed up by Jessica's father Leslie when he said: "I hope that the next time I will have to see him will be like we saw our daughters, and it will be in a coffin."

The girls' parents, above everyone else, deserve to ask the question posed on our front page today: "Why wasn't he stopped before he killed them?"

We live in an age of unprecedented national anxiety over paedophiles. The fear factor has become so pronounced - some would say so out of perspective - that education authorities issue public warnings to parents about the dangers of posting photographs of nativity plays on websites, and newspapers are banned from publishing pictures of school activities.

And yet a man with a long history of relationships with schoolgirls, a man who has been accused of rape as well as the indecent assault of an 11-year-old, a man described by Leslie Chapman as a "time bomb just ready to go off", can somehow get a job as a school caretaker.

No one but Ian Huntley is responsible for the murder of Holly and Jessica. But it is right that Home Secretary David Blunkett launches an independent inquiry into why alarm bells didn't ring much, much sooner.

An inquiry will not make the grief of the families any easier to bear. But if procedures are tightened as a result of this heart-rending tragedy, perhaps other time bombs can be defused before it is too late.