IF IT is brave to challenge an audience to consider whether a paedophile, a primary-school-teacher, might feel real love for the children he abuses, it is downright heroic to do when telling the story of your own abuser, and your own childhood abuse.

If it is revealing to illuminate the fears of the adult survivor, hesitant to share his secret and his shame - “the fear of being disbelieved because it’s all too much, the fear of being ridiculed because it’s all too little” - then it is a profoundly valuable thing to bring these thoughts to light when they are your own.

All this, told through well-written monologues which shift in and out of dense poetic soliloquy, is what Patrick Sandford brings to the intimate space at the Sweet Waterfront Fringe throughout this week.

As childhood victim, adult survivor, even as his abuser, he gives an unvarnished glimpse into the hurt, the rage, the shame, and the faltering steps towards self-acceptance catalysed by stolen moments and stolen innocence in a 1960s classroom.

It is not a flawless performance - Mr Sandford could afford to let his audience breathe once or twice more during the 50 minute run-time - but it is a compellingly, movingly honest piece of art.