I FOUND Jo Haywood's feature extremely disturbing and a little frightening ("Cheeky girls slap on warpaint", February 23).

This excellent article brought an all- too-often neglected area of modern parenthood into the light. What Jo described was nothing more than the blatant sexualising of children by their parents.

It doesn't require a great leap of imagination to realise that a dolled-up pre-pubescent child could possibly scream "available" to the warped and twisted mind of a paedophile.

Sexualising children before their minds and bodies can cope with the responsibilities of a meaningful relationship is a form of child abuse and any parent that thinks it is okay to do this is seriously sick.

Jo's final paragraph didn't quite finish the journey, I fear. The route isn't so much from the womb to the nightclub: it's from the womb to the nightclub to the sexually transmitted diseases clinic/the abortion table/the maternity unit, arriving into early adulthood with many mental and emotional problems, possibly with a screaming baby in tow.

Graham Horne,

Beech Avenue,

Bishopthorpe, York.

Updated: 10:10 Wednesday, February 25, 2004