How could anyone let a child wear these?

Byline: ESTHER RANTZEN

RECENTLY, I had the repulsive experience of taking part in a TV debate with a paedophile. I don't regret it. It forced me to confront reality: that some men have such an obnoxious mindset that they are prepared to argue publicly that from earliest babyhood, all children are ready and willing for sexual relationships with adults.

A psychiatrist sitting next to him remonstrated: 'No, that's not true.' And I told him what I know from the thousands of children who ring ChildLine, that this most damaging form of abuse steals their childhood from them.

But paedophiles live in a fantasy world in which they want to believe they are being seduced constantly by flirtatious toddlers, and nothing any of us said shattered his hideous delusions.

I believe the respectable, wellloved High Street store, Bhs, has fed his fantasies.

Yesterday, it emerged that they were selling provocative push-up bras and bikini pants embroidered with hearts and the slogan 'Little Miss Naughty'.

The knickers were being sold to seven-year-olds and the bras to ten-year-olds.

After an outcry, the store has withdrawn the underwear, but don't they realise the harm they have done? The underwear is crude and ugly, and distorts the simple beauty of a child's body.

How could anyone strap a child into a bra which was created to emphasise a woman's breasts?

Yes, it is true that many children are maturing physically earlier than ever, but not this early, thank heavens, and not emotionally.

So why would a designer decide to create the impression of breasts on a child whose mind and body is and should be - to use a word which has gone out of style - innocent.

As a mother, I know that children like to feel grown up.

Small girls envy and imitate their big sisters.

My own daughters used to wobble around in my high heels and wedge their heads into my straw hats. They put brightly coloured wooden necklaces round their necks and clipped paper earrings to their ears.

THEY looked adorable, but never sexualised. Even if they smeared my old lipstick on their faces, they looked like Coco the Clown rather than Mata Hari. Why does it matter if a store stocks a range of ugly underwear? Because I believe children need protecting more than ever today.

Commercial pressures are fierce. Magazines for 17-year-olds are read by 12-year-olds. Britney Spears dressed up in a schoolgirl's uniform for her pop video and became a role model. Sevenyearolds go on diets and pierce their ears.

We no longer send our children up chimneys to sweep them, as they did in Victorian times. But we don't protect them from psychological threats which can be just as dangerous.

Internet chatrooms reach into our homes, children are far more adept than their parents at accessing this technology and few parents police their conversations. And anyone can pretend to be a child on the internet.

Pornography is available on video, and in busy, overstretched households children are often left alone with the TV as their babysitter. Who knows what they are watching and what effect it has on them?

The manufacturers of alcopops have removed the one barrier that always deterred children from drinking alcohol - to a child, strong drink used to taste bitter and disgusting. But not any more.

Now it's sweet-flavoured and as tempting as lemon, orange or lime. No wonder children are drinking earlier, getting drunk and binge drinking.

Year by year, the pressure grows. As commercial companies push the boundaries, they try to persuade children that to be young is to be uncool.

But even they can't change nature. A child is still a child at heart.

Without life experience to protect them, they can't control the new temptations which are being sold to them.

Perhaps it is inevitable that Britain now leads Europe for teenage pregnancy, not a record to be proud of. It is easy to blame the children, but as a society we adults need to take the responsibility.

I worry that we are allowing our protective instincts to become blunted. For this is not the first time a leading retailer has marketed inappropriate underwear to children.

Ten months ago, another established High Street store, Argos, created G-strings for nineyearolds. There were so many protests and complaints that they were withdrawn from sale.

Psychologist Richard Beckett, who works with sex offenders, warned Argos that children wearing the kind of provocative underwear which is normally worn by adults could put them at risk.

The only surprise is that it took a psychologist to point this out, and that it took protests from their customers to persuade them to withdraw the clothes.

WHAT designer, what fashion buyer, what company director could have allowed such inappropriate underwear to go on sale in the first place? Now, less than a year on, Bhs has committed almost the same blunder.

And no doubt it will happen again. When it does, it is important that we all protest. It's not simply a puritan response to a tasteless piece of marketing.

Unless we make it clear that we believe childhood has its own value, its own innocence and must be protected, we condemn our children to the fantasies of those who prey on and exploit them. And that must not be allowed to happen.