There can be few things worse than parents outliving their children, but one of them must be seeing your dead offsprings’ memory repeatedly desecrated.

Pat and Lawrence Greaves should be tending the graves of their two daughters and laying flowers on them – not plastering them with notes begging thieves to leave them alone.

But that is what they have been forced to do, after a spate of thefts of flowers and decorations from the graves.

Most people would think that the Greaveses had suffered enough, losing both their daughters at the age of 49 within 18 months of each other.

Not the callous, hard-hearted criminals who keep targeting the graves.

Most people reading the story today will wonder what goes through the minds of those who would steal from cemeteries. What pleasure do they get out of it? Are they so desperate for a few flowers that they would cause heartbreak to bereaved families to get them?

There is a certain malice present in these thefts, malice of the worst kind. The sort that ruins other people’s lives.

The Greaveses have so far borne this terrible insult with quiet stoicism, and even their messages to the thieves are reasonable and polite.

It is to be hoped now that, having had their cruel actions exposed, those responsible will stop this childish and damaging behaviour.

If they persist in it, they will eventually be caught, and the full weight of the law should be brought to bear upon them.