Instead they concern the “intentional infliction of harm” and the details of abuse “beggars belief”. She believes that unprepared lawyers are bad for clients, because they run the risk of “re-traumatising” them, but they could also harm themselves. ACAL runs courses in “secondary traumatic stress” for lawyers.Ernest Ryder QC, counsel for the North Wales Inquiry, has worked for 20 years in child-care law. He has seen lawyers lose their professional objectivity, damage their family lives and harm their mental health “much in the same way” as someone suffering post-traumatic stress.

He describes the nature and the extent of the abuse in North Wales as “saddening beyond belief”. “But I’m afraid that I expected everything that I found,” he says.He advises solicitors new to this area to seek out the advice of experienced practitioners. “You need to know what you’re letting yourself into,” he says.”I learnt the hard way,” says solicitor Peter Garsden, “and it nearly finished me off.” Garsden is co-ordinating the claims against a “core” of five children’s home around Manchester, Liverpool and Cheshire. When he first started on these cases six years ago he admits that he had no idea what he was letting himself in for.The solicitor launched a campaign for a public inquiry as well as leading the group action that currently comprises 300 alleged victims and 90 firms of solicitors. The pressure soon became overwhelming as he became involved in the emotionally fraught world of pressure groups, lobbied the Government furiously and wrote to 100 MPs calling for an inquiry. Ultimately the campaigners got their inquiry – but in Wales, not the North West.

He now admits to “some envy” at the progress made by the Welsh inquiry.”We could do with one here,” he says. Over the last six years he has read nearly 400 accounts of abuse. He says that being exposed to this sad catalogue of misery is not like, for example, watching a sad film that leaves you wanting to cry The effect is far more invidious. Looking back on this period, he acknowledges that the degree to which the work was effecting him, and indeed obsessing him, was not “immediately obvious”. That impact was not to become clear until certain things started to happen.In particular, he recalls delivering a speech in a committee room in the Houses of Parliament as part of the successful campaign for a register of convicted sex offenders. “I got on the soap box for the good of the cause, and lost my way at some point,” he recalls He did not break down but became “all choked up”. His fellow campaigners applauded the show of emotion but he was alarmed at his own lack of self-control.Not long after that episode the solicitor lost his temper in an interview on BBC2′s Newsnight.

In his view, he had been duped into participating in coverage of the North West cases that was clearly unsympathetic to his clients. He was furious and threatened to withdraw his co-operation with a Panorama investigation on the grounds that it was a “BBC programme”. He admits now that his behaviour was an incredible over-reaction.He says that the work began to “possess” him and he started thinking about it all the time “And I do mean all the time,” he adds. “When you are dealing with someone so distraught and emotionally traumatised they lean on you emotionally and they off-load all their negative energies,” he says. “And you go home full of their negative energies and they go home feeling better.” Unsurprisingly, the tension spilt over into his family life, putting an incredible strain on his marriage, until he eventually agreed to go into counselling.