After John Houghton and his wife learned that they could not have children of their own they adopted three siblings, two boys and a girl, who were looking for 'a forever family', as the adoption agencies put it. What happened next is all too common in adoptive families, but it is rarely talked about in public.

From the start, the children were difficult. Strange fears and tantrums were accompanied by much more disturbing kinds of behaviour.Eventually the full truth of the children's dreadful past was brought home in the most shocking way, as terrible forms of abuse resurrected themselves and all but destroyed the new family.