Sometimes you have to read a story twice or even three times... just to be sure.

Certainly anyone who’s read the story about Trevor Perry, the 52-year-old who admitted flashing to pupils outside an Oxfordshire school but was cleared of exposure – because he did it “to get a giggle” – must be questioning the decision magistrates reached.

Especially so when you also learn that they agreed to pay his travel costs, including an overnight stay in a hotel ahead of the courthearing.

But then someone who has six previous convictions for indecent exposure presumably requires a little mollycoddling?

On this occasion, to describe the law as ONLY an ‘ass’ seems a fairly mild term of condemnation.

Interestingly, the chairman of the bench Roger Clarke said: “There may be people in this courtroom who struggle to know how we came to this decision.”

Too right.

It is an outrage against the community, that leaves the innocent angry and confused, and those who challenge our concepts of what is clearly right and wrong, doubtless sniggering at their seeming invincibility.

At times like this, one cannot help but wonder just who the law is there is protect?