Chasing the bogeymen

Sarah Payne who the campaign is named after

By Dominic Arkwright BBC correspondent, in Bournemouth

Mothers living on a Bournemouth estate are convinced their neighbourhood is 'plagued' by paedophiles.

They have started a campaign to bring in 'Sarah's Law' - named after Sarah Payne, the eight-year-old girl who was murdered in Sussex - which would allow residents to know if sex offenders were living near them.

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"How many signatures do you think we'd need to be listened to in London?" Liz Riley asks her friend Jacqueline Biesty.

The women are discussing their petition for the introduction of 'Sarah's Law' and the naming of paedophiles in the community.

Explaining their motivation behind it Jacqueline, a mother of two, says: "Nobody's safe. If it was Prince William or Tony Blair's children, the law would have been passed straight away, so why can't it be done for our children?"

She said there are "strong feelings" across the Townsend estate that capital punishment should be reinstated for sexual attacks on children.

Girls 'enticed'

They are convinced there are 17 paedophiles living on the estate. But how do they know?

They say they have been told there are 17 and there maybe "more", but not by whom.

"One mother has told us that she's got a couple - they're churchgoers - who regularly entice little girls into their flat with sweeties," said Jacqueline.

"See that pay phone outside, one lady's son has been phoned numerous times on that. There's perverted talk and he is told he can see him while he's speaking to him."

We can't let our children out any more - it's not safe

Jacqueline Biesty

They talk about facts but they are collecting no more than dust that the rumour mill has sprinkled on the Townsend estate.

This is more about rumour than fact but the first mutates effortlessly into the second.

Jacqueline continues her tour around the estate.

"There is supposed to be one [paedophile] ......... just up the road. An old guy with glasses who's enticing all different ages of children up to his flat."

'Paranoid'

I ask if they think there could be a danger of them believing everything they hear because they want to believe it.

"No, because I've always known there was a few of them on this estate," said Jacqueline.

"We can't let our children out any more. It's not safe.

"These flats over-look the back of my house.

"How do I know there isn't one in there spying?"

But isn't she being slightly paranoid?

"It's because you know they're here but you don't know where."

On the walk around the estate, we pass Townsend's scraps of green areas.

It's the children they're after

Jacqueline Biesty

Liz says she remembers when the streets were full of three, five and six-year-olds. Now they are empty.

"This park used to be full of kids," she said.

No-one can remember a really serious crime yet everyone on the estate seems terrified.

There's no sign that the ugly vigilantism seen at Paulsgrove or Yeovil has been conceived in Bournemouth, and the organisers of this campaign don't want that.

But most haunting is the sight of little children with makeshift banners and their scruffy t-shirts graffitied with slogans handwritten in black marker pen.

Jacqueline's eight-year-old daughter Antoinette is wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the Sarah's Law slogan.

Jacqueline justifies using her child in the campaign by saying it is "all about the children".

"It's happening to the children - it's the children they're after."