Last month, Sir Ronald Waterhouse delivered his damning report on two decades of sexual abuse in children's homes in north Wales, nearly four years after his tribunal of inquiry was set up.It has been a long time coming, but there is a growing fear among the small group of lawyers who specialise in representing the vast number of people alleging abuse that the report will soon be forgotten.The inquiry was a massive undertaking.

The tribunal sat for 203 days, heard 159 complainants alleging abuse in 40 homes, and produced a report that ran to around 1,000 pages.

'Harrowing' was the verdict of Health Secretary Alan Milburn, who said it revealed a 'systematic failure to care for some of the most vulnerable children in society'.

The minister went on: 'It is unacceptable and must not happen again.'Barrister Lee Moore, president and founder of the Association of Child Abuse Lawyers (ACAL), is bitterly disappointed by the government's failure to translate its publicly-declared shock into political commitment.

It is a 'betrayal' of those that were abused.Ms Moore, who is a victim of sexual abuse herself, admits to a feeling of 'utter despair' following the report's publication.

She says that she 'felt ashamed to be British .

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You have 650 children who have been buggered and raped and [all there was] was a couple of pages in the newspapers.

But after a few days it had gone quiet'.Sir Ronald's report was the culmination of a decade of other inquires, says Billhar Singh Uppal, a personal injury partner at Nottingham firm Nelsons and the court-appointed lead claimant solicitor in the north Wales inquiry.

That decade started with the report into the 'pindown' regime in Staffordshire children's homes published in 1990.

Sir Ronald's report -- Lost in Care -- delivers its own ideas but also acts as a compendium of recommendations.

The inquiry's remit might have specifically related to Wales, but its principles can be applied elsewhere, Mr Singh Uppal says.

He represents 65 clients alleging abuse in the north Wales scandal and has acted for 350 such clients since 1994.Since the Waterhouse report hit the headlines, the volume of enquiries coming into the ACAL office has doubled.

According to the group, the potential scale of institutional sexual abuse is huge.

There are 80 police inquiries into abuse, involving all but one police force in the land, and the Merseyside investigation alone deals with 80 homes.

In north Wales, as many as 2,500 children passed through the care of the Clwyd and Gwynedd authorities during the period that concerned the inquiry.Peter Garsden, ACAL press officer and a partner in Cheshire practice Abney Garsden McDonald, wrote to 100 MPs requesting a public inquiry into abuse in children's homes in the north-west a year before the tribunal in Wales began.

He is co-ordinating claims against a 'core' of five children's homes around Manchester, Liverpool and Chester, which involve 300 alleged victims and 90 firms of solicitors.

He looks upon the Welsh public inquiry with 'some envy'.

He says: 'We could do with one here.'Local independent inquiries do not have the state-sponsored authority of Waterhouse.

For example, they do not have the power to compel witnesses to attend, they are obliged to give assurances of confidentiality, and are conducted in isolation with separate terms of reference from each commissioning body.

Sir Ronald claimed that it was 'strongly arguable' that the time had come for a 'comprehensive inter-agency review of the conduct of such investigations' and called for guidelines in dealing with these cases.The inquiry chairman also called for a Children's Commissioner for Wales -- his remit did not extend to the rest of the country -- and ACAL argues for a similar body in England.

Mr Garsden explains that issues of children's welfare fall across various government departments, such as health, education and social services, and consequently children's rights are often ignored.

The report also highlighted the need for ready access for young people to 'independent advocacy'.

It is vital for children and young people to have an independent voice, he says -- at present, local authorities are both the source of advice for young people and also the bodies which investigate their cases.The trauma of the young men and women subjected to such systematic abuse takes its toll on all who come into contact with it.

Almost half the witnesses in the north Wales tribunal needed counselling after giving evidence.

Mr Garsden runs a department of 12 staff and recruits carefully making sure they are 'empathetic but not too sympathetic'.

However, he acknowledges that retaining them is a problem.Nor is he immune to the pressure of such demanding clients.

'It nearly finished me off,' he admits.

'I didn't appreciate what I was taking on when I started doing this work.' A few years ago Mr Garsden split up from his wife for six months, received counselling, and took time to reflect on his work.

He was at his lowest when he began working with the pressure groups campaigning on behalf of the victims of sexual abuse.Richard Scorer, an ACAL officer and a partner at Manchester firm Pannone & Partners, says he learnt to leave the campaigning to the clients.

It is easy to 'get drawn into' crusades when the sense of injustice becomes overwhelming, he says.

He represents a group of victims in the north Wales scandal, and restricts his involvement with the press to legal comment.As a partner in a personal injury practice, he has worked on many traumatic cases, but nothing has been as 'harrowing' as his work with the victims of sexual abuse.

'I don't think there is anything more appalling than the idea of a small defenceless child being abused in a care home that is supposed to be a place of safety.'Mr Singh Uppal also cautions against solicitors jumping on the client's crusade.

He refuses to play 'nursemaid' to his clients.

That might sound cruel, he says, but it is 'a matter of survival'.

He explains: 'You start taking these clients' cases home and then you are going to screw your head up pretty quickly.' But he adds that these cases are not so traumatic that solicitors need to 'run out screaming'.

Most personal injury lawyers are 'perfectly capable' of handling this work, provided they respect professional boundaries, he reckons.Lee Moore's advice to solicitors faced with a client alleging abuse is blunt.

Do not take on these cases un less you understand the 'client's internal journey', how the abuse affects them, and how it could effect you.These clients have a lot to lose through bad legal advice.

The 'dynamics of sexual abuse' may be replayed through the legal process, worsening the original damage, says Ms Moore.

Uninformed lawyers run the risk of 're-traumatising' clients and exposing themselves to 'secondary trauma', she says.

ACAL runs training courses on secondary traumatic stress for lawyers.

These are not 'slip and trip' personal injury cases.

Instead, they concern the 'intentional infliction of harm' and the details of abuse 'beggars belief'.She reels off a litany of bad practice from lawyers, including a recent example of a boy who had provided 'a suitcase full of records' as evidence of abuse but was turned away by a solicitor.

In a fit of conscience, she referred the case to ACAL.

Ms Moore told the solicitor that it had taken a lot of courage for the boy to walk into her office and tell her his life story.

'But she turned on me,' recounts Ms Moore.

'"Nothing in my legal education ever prepared me for this," she said.'However, Ms Moore, who has a commercial law background, says that for the first time in her life, she is seeing lawyers as an inspiration.

'They have an important role to play,' she says.

'Nobody has ever fought for these people before'.

Although the work is never easy, she maintains the lawyers find it rewarding.Back to Sir Ronald's report, Ms Moore describes the government as 'paralysed' and capable only of knee-jerk responses.

'So frankly, carry on suing because if we sue everybody -- left, right and centre -- maybe somebody will do something.

The law is a way of making the truth visible.'