The danger signs were there for all to see

Huntley had in the past formed controlling relationships with underage girls

First came justice, then came truth. Not the truth about how Holly and Jessica met their end. Their parents, and the rest of those who mourn them, can still only hope that Ian Huntley himself may choose one day to divulge that.

Instead, an even more awful truth came spilling out, within minutes of the Old Bailey's verdict. This truth was stark and awful. It could all have been quite different. The killing of these girls was not a bolt from the blue, an act of madness perpetrated by a man who had hitherto worried no one. It was the act of a man who could and should have been spotted as dangerous, not just within hours of Holly and Jessica going missing, but before he even got his job as a caretaker at Soham Village College.

The slew of nine sexual allegations that Mr Huntley had been questioned about by the police has shocked Britain to the core, and for good reason. It was widely assumed that such a man would not have been working at all as a school caretaker. It was known that he had been vetted by the school before he was given his job, and it was taken as read that a police check of this type was meaningful.

It was widely assumed, too, that this man could not have had previous tangles with the law - not on this scale anyway - because it had taken the police so very long, in that ghastly fortnight of summer 2002, to cotton on to the fact that the guilty man was under their noses, giving media interviews, chatting with the police about the progress of the case. Instead, it had taken a change of police leadership for detectives even to find Holly and Jessica's discarded clothing, let alone uncover the buried files that told of Huntley's years of sexual obsession with girls.

The police may talk of the wisdom of hindsight. They may also make unconvincing excuses about the constraints that the Data Protection Act places upon them. But the fact remains that for nearly two weeks they did not comprehend that the man who had last seen Holly and Jessica, who was asking them all kinds of odd questions, was the man whose previous conduct towards girls of Holly and Jessica's age was known to be deeply suspicious.

Looking back, it becomes horribly clear that the early days of the police operation were fuelled by sentiment and hysteria, rather than sound detective work. It becomes clear too, though, that in this they were no different to the rest of the nation, which was carried away with the idea that somehow, if everybody hoped hard enough, these two young girls might turn up alive and well.

Should the police be blamed for all of the false hope they helped to foster, for all the days that Holly and Jessica's parents were encouraged to hope against hope? Before the verdict, it seemed that they should not. Now it is more difficult not to condemn them.

It is true that the false information given to the police by Maxine Carr did contribute to their inability to put two and two together. Again, though, with the information about Huntley's past dealings with young girls before us, the exact nature of the relationship between the two of them becomes clear.

It had been widely known from the beginning of the case that Maxine Carr had been a classroom assistant, and had been popular with Holly and Jessica. It was known too that she had not been given a full-time position at the school, because she had been unable to create the proper distance expected of an adult in charge of children.

It does not take too much insight to form the impression that Ms Carr's own childish naivety had been part of her attraction for Huntley. Even her anorexia testifies that here was a young woman who had trouble with growing up.

Mr Huntley had in the past formed extremely controlling relationships with underage girls, some of whom refused to testify against him when his behaviour was drawn to the attention of the police. This behaviour mirrors Ms Carr's own folly exactly. It does not seem unreasonable to assume that, like these children, Ms Carr was in his power, dominated by him and unable to think for herself. It does not seem too much to ask that the police themselves should be able to identify such patterns.

But they didn't. Instead they were open-minded, so open-minded that their brains were falling out. The irony here is that the judicial system assumes the police to behave quite differently to this. The idea is that men like the Mr Huntley who turned up in Soham - before he committed the hideous crime for which he was finally convicted - need to be protected, because the police will pull men like him in for every sex crime going, just because they have been questioned before.

That is always the worry when people become alarmed about civil liberties. They paint pictures of police forces who will fit people up because they have "form", never actually stopping to find any evidence at all.

And yes, these are real concerns. There have been occasions, shamefully many of them, in which the police have behaved in this way. But while this worry should guide us in all other crimes, the truth is that sex crimes, whether perpetrated against adults or children, are different. Crucially, in the vast majority of cases the offender is known to the victim. The police do not supply the name. The victim or the witness does. Often, cases get no further, because it is the victim's word against the attacker's. In Huntley's case, a complaint of indecent assault by a girl of 12 was dropped for just this reason.

But if other incidents could have been presented in evidence at a case involving this girl, might things not have been different. Even if the other young girls Huntley had been involved with did not want to testify, their parents might have, or Huntley's flatmates might have. Had all of the complaints against Huntley been properly logged, ready to be used in evidence if and when future accusations emerged, he may have already have been on the sex offenders register, instead of maintaining a position as someone innocent until proved guilty.

Already, when it comes to checking people's suitability for working with children, mere accusations can be held on file. It is quite right, of course, that there is to be an inquiry into how Mr Huntley got his job in Soham. It is a relief too, that since the time Mr Huntley was vetted, new systems have been put in place.

But the awful fact remains that while Mr Huntley's job did certainly play a part in his ability to lure Holly and Jessica into his home, he may have managed it anyway, thanks to his association with Maxine, and her association with the girls. And anyway, even if the systems had worked, the chances are that Huntley would have gone on abusing girls, perhaps even to have eventually killed others. Vetting people who want to work with children is a commendable way of minimising risk. But that by no means makes children safe from predators, and certainly does nothing to protects adults against sexual attack.

Sexual offenders are serial offenders, acting compulsively in a way that other criminals are not. Often sex offences escalate, yet at the same time, taken singly, they are notoriously hard to prove. Vetting people with long lists of suspicious incidents behind them is a partial solution. But what we need to do is to understand that the ability to present a sex offence to a court as part of a pattern of offending behaviour is crucial. In this way, people like Mr Huntley will not be able to elude the law until their crimes become unspeakable.

d.orr@independent.co.uk