As soon as the fact that he had been sexually abused became public knowledge, Eric Cullen started getting letters from other victims of abuse. Some were offering support and advice, but many were asking for support and advice from him.

For 2½ years after the story first broke, Eric was profoundly ill with clinical depression, and found it difficult to communicate even with people he knew well. It was only in the last few months of his life that he was well enough to write letters to anyone other than his closest friend.

As at three months before his death, Eric was just thinking about how and what to reply to these cries for help from other abuse victims. It is unlikely that between then and his death he answered more than a fraction of them - if any.

I know he would want to apologize to all the people who never got an answer. It wasn't because he didn't care - it was because he cared so much that it paralysed him. He spent so much time agonizing over these other victims' pain, and wondering what was absolutely the best thing he could say to help them, that he didn't get round to actually saying it.

He didn't know, after all, that he didn't have time to get it exactly right.