One of the less well-publicised factors of his case is that his victim was deliberately provoking him while a classmate filmed the incident on a camera phone.

He cracked, as any normal human being would under that kind of pressure, and unfortunately attacked the boy with a weight. Now he has lost his job, his pension and any hope of benefits. I feel deeply for the boy, who was immature, misguided and is now disabled. But that does not excuse the treatment Harvey has received.

In any other aspect of English law provocation is taken into account. For a teacher, however, even when that provocation has been endured for 25 hours per week for 20 years, no amount of provocation is accepted even in mitigation after a plea.

Want my advice? Don’t teach. Tell your friends and their relatives not to teach. If you’re already a teacher, get out of the job. Because whatever happens, you will be blamed – unless the results are good, in which case someone else will steal the credit.

He’s still blustering on, denying this and claiming that, and insisting that he did it all for the children, his patients.

That claim, however, is not the ultimate appeal to moral authority. It is a dare, a challenge to present a case whereby you believe a child should be sacrificed for a greater good. And it is used by people who use their opinion of a child’s best interest to justify their own moral failings and abuses.

In Wakefield’s case, he uses it to justify his invasive procedures that were conducted against the advice of his own ethics committee, justify his own lies that damaged the reputation of the MMR in order to promote the single vaccines he was paid to promote, and justify his support for an anti-vaccine industry that has made him very, very rich.

The fact of the matter is that the causes of autism are not known, and there is no cure. There are treatments that can help, but I promise you that anyone who charges you for one of these treatments is profiteering. You will get a treatment every bit as good, proven scientifically to be every bit as effective, for free here in the UK.

To me, the crime of Wakefield is nothing to do with him personally, or what he has done as an individual.

The crime is everything he stands for – the whole parasitical industry of quacks, snake-oil salesmen, bogus cure and treatment centres, that preys on the despair and desperation of families torn apart by this heartbreaking, debilitating and incredibly disabling condition.

It’s not just Wakefield in the dock. It’s everyone who ever made a promise to a family in exchange for their cash.