Jayne and I heard the Michael Jackson verdict being read out live on the car radio. At the time we were cruising around town trying to find our 13 year-old girl. When Jayne went to pick her up from army cadets she was not there, the building was dark and the car park was empty.

Jayne drove home along all the roads the girl might conceivably use to walk home or walk to a bus stop, and scrutinised any buses she came across to see if the girl was in them. When Jayne got home, I took her out again in the car to look some more. We knew that we were unlikely to spot her – it was dark and the girl was wearing camoflage!

So perhaps we were in a bit of a Daily Mail-reader state of mind when we heard the news. I like to think that I have some respect for the rule of law and decisions of a jury, especially when they have heard all the evidence and I haven’t but… there is just something a bit strange about the whole thing. I’ll admit I almost left the road when I heard the first “not guilty”.

Even though Jacko has been found innocent, I hope he will still go onto whatever the American equivalent is of the child protection register. Thinking back to Soham and Ian Huntley, he had never been convicted of anything, but had several accusations thrown at him in the past, and part of the problem was that these accusations were not made available. If someone has frequent accusations of child molestation but has been found not guilty, I will accept that you cannot punish them, but surely this is one area where the precautionary approach is valid – keep them away from children just in case.

Oh – while we were driving around, the girl called us. She was not sure if Jayne was supposed to pick her up and had walked a mile or so in the opposite direction from home looking for a phone box! We reminded her that there are phone boxes in the town centre – the closest only a hundred metres from the army place, in front of the Town Hall. Seeing the state Jayne was in with her daughter missing less than an hour, I really wonder how these mothers who have children missing for days or weeks manage to cope.