THE VICTIM impact statement read to the court at the end of the trial of Mark Bridger was almost as upsetting as the evidence itself.

In it Paul and Coral Jones struggled to explain how the abduction and murder of their daughter, April, had changed their lives.

“We will never see her smile again or hear her stomping around upstairs and on to the landing,” they said.

“We will never see her bring home her first boyfriend and Paul will never walk her down the aisle.”

What they were voicing was the grotesque and unavoidable truth that when you lose a child you lose the future.

Not only will they never see April become a bride, they won’t see her become a mum.

They’ll never experience the joy of watching the little girl who fussed round her dollies doing the same for a child of her own.

They won’t see her dolled up for her school prom, collect her GCSEs, or go to university.

Thanks to Mark Bridger they can’t even lay her peacefully to rest; can’t care for her grave, or hope she is in the place where no one can hurt her now, and all the other beliefs we cling onto when everything else has gone.

Because Bridger won’t tell them what he did with her body.

No wonder, as Coral observed: “I have to see people whom I have known for years cross the road to avoid me because they do not know what to say to me.”

What can any of us say?

To the poor, poor Jones family, nothing; all we can give them are our prayers that one day the sun may shine for them again.

But what we should be saying, forcefully, is that we want draconian measures taken against child pornography and every organisation, individual and company that is involved with procuring, making, and allowing it to be accessed via their search engines.

We are pleased to think of ourselves as a decent and civilised society because we have the Human Rights Act and because we are legalising gay marriage and all the rest of it.

But we’re not, are we? Because the rights of little children, indeed, all children, are being violated every day by stuff that is so awful, no news organisation can possibly describe it to the general public.

All the time we allow our leaders to get away with wringing their hands and saying ‘what can you do?’ over the issue of child internet porn we are condemning yet more little children to the fate of April Jones and it’s time we faced that appalling fact.

Instead of shoving this issue on the eternal back-burner our politicians should regard it as a national emergency. Because it is. And it’s getting worse.