Loving dad who just couldn't protect his girl from a monster

UNTIL the day he dies, heartbroken Garry McCagh will hear the agonising screams of his teenage daughter: "I don't want to die, Dad. I love you."

He will take to his grave the charred image of his beautiful girl Jessica, who was doused in petrol by a monster he wishes he had never let into her life.

Poor Garry will die asking himself: "What if?"

It is a truly desperate torment that no loving parent should ever have to endure.

And the harrowing case of 17-year-old Jessica (below) is one that must strike fear into the heart of EVERY father.

Because what do you do if your daughter takes up with someone who you know in your gut is bad news?

What do you do if she brings home a boy who the whole town knows is a dangerous waster, but she's the only one who can't see it?

It's only as this sickening case has unfolded that we now know that 18-year-old Stewart Blackburn was a ticking timebomb waiting to explode.

Abandoned into care at the age of seven by his mum who described him as evil, he was damned from the start.

Thrown into a social work system that consistently fails children and who, because of that failure, churns out monsters like Blackburn (below).

They have a sin to answer for. Because we know there were avenues they could have taken that may have dealt with a child so deeply disturbed as Blackburn. But they failed.

Even when he set fire to a foster parent's house, they dropped the charges after he appeared in front of a Children's Panel at the age of 12.

He could have been sent to a secure unit that deals with twisted, disturbed children. But they failed.

And it was their failure that led to Blackburn being unleashed on the streets to be the biggest ned in Arbroath, where every time something was vandalised or burned, it had his fingerprints all over it.

He disappeared from the social work radar screen that was supposed to monitor and support him.

He was simply a tragedy waiting to happen.

You can ask yourself what in God's name a pretty young girl like Jessica was doing getting involved with this thug.

I'm sure every parent must often ask themselves the same question when their daughter brings an undesirable boy home.

But what do you do?

You can't lay down the law to a 17-year-old girl with a mind of her own. Because if you do, you can guarantee she'll rebel straight into the arms of the guy you know in your heart is scum.

Garry McCagh did what a lot of good dads wouldn't do.

He took Blackburn into his family, and for the first time in his life, this broken individual probably saw what it was like to be part of a loving family.

Garry helped find him a job and even let him move in with them because it was easier for him to get to work.

But gradually, Blackburn's warped nature crept in. He was too damaged, too far gone as a human being.

When he got his own flat, Jessica began staying overnight and Garry, again, was helpless. Teenagers know best. And even when Blackburn threatened to petrol bomb Jessica's family home, she still stuck by him. You would want Garry to have kicked his door down and dragged him straight to the cops.

But in reality, that's not how it happens.

You tread carefully. You try to do what's best for your kids, to protect them - but you can't.

As long as there are teenage girls, there will always be some who are blindly attracted by the boy with an edge of danger to his swagger. How do you protect them from themselves?

We don't know if people like Blackburn are born evil.

We have seen very young kids do despicable, wicked things. And when you scratch the surface of their lives you find a squalid, broken background where they don't know what it is to have values.

Frighteningly, in broken Britain, more and more monsters like Blackburn are emerging, far faster than social work can cope with.

It's too late for Jessica.

But the truth is, she could have, and SHOULD have, been protected from subhuman scum like him.

Not by her father - but by a system that has to deal with these people, so that no teenage girl should die such a terrible death at the hands of an evil monster who should NEVER have been living among us.

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