WE are repeatedly told that the criminal justice system is struggling to cope - that cases are taking too long to be processed because the courts are over burdened.

The Crown Prosecution Service must, therefore, weigh up more carefully than ever which cases should be brought before the courts, where public money is spent on ensuring that justice is done.

Can it, therefore, be right that a severely disabled child should be put on trial for indecent assault?

That was the question posed by a High Court judge yesterday after hearing how a boy of 13 was brought before Bishop Auckland magistrates for allegedly indecently assaulting a girl of the same age.

The defendant was described by a clinicial psychologist as functioning at "severe learning disabled level" and was "within the bottom 0.1 per cent of the population".

And yet the Director of Public Prosecutions chose to appeal against the magistrates' decision to find him not guilty on the grounds that his disability made his evidence unreliable.

While appreciating that any sexual assault is a serious matter, and not underestimating the impact on the victim, this was surely not a case in which a criminal conviction should have been pursued so vigorously.

This is a boy who clearly needed help, not punishment, and we agree with Lord Justice Hughes that there must be a better way to deal with such sad cases, in which disability is at the heart of the offence.