IT IS surely inconceivable for any parent to understand how a mother and her partner could accept gifts from a known paedophile and allow a young boy to be raped by him.

This ‘mother’ — and that term can only be applied in the loosest possible terms — and her partner claim they did not know what was going on but that surely stretches credulity.

At what point would the red flag have gone up for you?

When police and social services warned you about David Cullen and the fact he had been charged with fresh offences? When a friend said she feared he was guilty? Or when a paedophile is buying you gifts and paying for you to get drunk in a hotel bar while he is upstairs with your son?

If this couple really did not know what was happening to this boy it can only be because they did not want to know.

This boy should have expected this pair to love, nurture and protect him and they utterly betrayed him.

They are, surely, the worst parents in Oxfordshire.

Their sentences of four years and three-and-a-half years, do not reflect the gravity of what has happened.

The maximum for child cruelty is 10 years and so Judge Julian Hall’s hands were restricted somewhat.

But, even giving them some time off for pleading guilty, most people would reasonably expect them to get double what they received. After all their abhorrent negligence has ruined this boy’s life.