Jane Calder describes how, aged ten, she was scared by a man joking about a murder victim (The Argus, February 7). She says she was haunted at night, "listening" to the man's footsteps.

She means, of course, she imagined hearing them. But she writes as if still perceiving the world though this same distorting magnifying glass of childhood fear.

She says "nervous" school children have had to cope with "saturation coverage" of the Longhurst and Soham murder trials.

But I can't see any reason why it is necessary for her to repeat the minutiae of the murders in the same "purient" and "pornographic detail" she condemns.

If it is this that is eroding childhood innocence, as she says it is, then she is guilty.

She wonders how to relate sex education to the depravity of these murders. Well, either children have their innocence "stripped away" by responsible teaching or by reading about it in articles like hers. The third worst option would be to keep children ignorant because this would be the best way to create more Huntleys and Coutts.

Having written it is every adult's duty to "instruct" children to be responsible adults, she gives none while simultaneously complaining about the lack of it.

"Above all," she writes, "we need to allow them all simply to be children." Well what does that mean? Isn't the problem that children aren't learning adequately about sex and being bought up in an environment where simplistic labelling like "predator" and "paedophile" suffices for explanation?

The best way to protect children is to teach them why Huntley and Coutts did what they did. I don't know and nor, I assume, does she. But instead of making constructive and original suggestions, she blames easy targets like the media and internet.

Paedophile, violent sex and "snuff" sites should be closed down because of what they are, not "to send a message to children".

If they already perceive the world as unsafe, it is because of facile articles like Jean Calder's that portray it as full of fear.

-Tom Allen, Shoreham