The appalling torture and sexual abuse inflicted by two boys on two other children in Edlington is a terrible reminder of the evil that can result from parental neglect, domestic violence, inadequate social services and sloppy police work. The details of the cruelty inflicted by two brothers, now aged 10 and 12, on two boys aged 9 and 11 are horrific, and include stabbing with a sharpened stick, burning wounds with cigarettes, sexual humiliation and attempted murder. Millions will scarely believe such things possible in a rich, educated society by children so young.

Inevitably the case will recall the murder of Jamie Bulger, the two-year-old abducted by two boys from a shopping centre and killed in 1993. That case provoked anguished comment on a broken society, a feral underclass and a collapse of traditional values. This case will again produce revulsion and will be exploited by demagogues seeking to denounce “broken Britain” and draw sweeping conclusions about society today.

It is right that the case should evince shame, horror and guilt. Any civilised society should be concerned about circumstances in which children as young as 10 reflect not the aspirations and achievements of decency but the barbarism of the depraved. Generalisations from two exceptional cases are rarely justified. There are, however, specific failures that must be urgently addressed. The first is one cited too often before: the failure of social services to prevent what seemed an almost inevitable horror. Both boys were known to child protection officers. They came from a dysfunctional family — the mother was a cannabis addict, the father a violent drunk — which had frequently been visited by police. So appalling was the neglect that the boys were often not fed and forced to scavenge for food. Only three weeks before the attack, they were placed in foster care. It was expecting the impossible to imagine that this would deal with such profound disturbance. Far too much is expected of foster parents and far too little support is given to those who volunteer, often at great emotional cost, to foster severely disturbed children.

Doncaster’s social services were already struggling to cope with problems exacerbated by unemployment, poverty and the collapse of the mining industry. Seven children known to the social services have died since 2004. After the publicity given to similar cases elsewhere, the town should surely have been more vigilant. Even more blameworthy was the failure of the police to react swiftly to the reported abuse of another child by the two boys only a week earlier.

Aspects of this case are particularly shocking. The first is the level of sexual aggression committed. There must be questions on the degree to which boys as young as 10 are influenced by the prevalence of pornography and the sexualisation of society. The second clear issue is the use of drugs by the boys’ mother. Parenting and drugs do not mix. So clear is that message in America that several state authorities have passed laws to remove children from parents repeatedly con- victed of drug offences and place them in care. The measure may be controversial; but it should not be ruled out in the increasing instances in Britain of violent children of drug-addicted parents.

There is, finally, the question of how to balance justice, the needs of the victims and their families and the long-term future of the brutal and violent children who have perpetrated such heinous crimes. There is no need to name the two boys, as happened, gratuitously, in the Bulger case. This is not a case of exceptionally bad children but, sadly, of children living in exceptionally bad circumstances. The right response to this is not to berate the idea of “broken Britain” but to tackle the real issue of broken families in broken homes.