KEY POINTS:
If you want insight and analysis, read somebody else's column this week. You'll only get anger from me.
It was a lovely little phrase that set me off. A psychologist who spoke to convicted rapist Brad Shipton felt the former policeman had a strong sense of sexual entitlement.
What an amazing, reductive phrase sexual entitlement is, like a kid at his birthday party who got more cake on the table just by wielding his baton.
Mr Shipton, let's be clear. So you are not confessing to your crime? Because a spokesman from your family said your remarks were taken out of context, that the suggestion was scurrilous and misleading.
Your mother said contrition is hardly a confession. I guess it all depends on which C word you're offering.
Don't let the press ever distort something that should be so singularly driven - a man's recognition, or not, of his own remorse.
Has your contrition given you an inkling of recognition that because your life has been full of disgusting, disgraceful behaviour, as you told the parole board recently, you now have the opportunity to say out loud something that could take away the years of nightmares you may have given to the women you potentially victimised?
Let's be exact on the numbers of people, not cake, on this table. Perhaps you are referring to just the one woman? Or perhaps you could enlighten us about what Operation Austin said were at least another dozen women who complained about you, Schollum and Rickards?
Women who had the guts to come forward to tell their pain to someone in the exact same uniform as the men who hurt them.
There are women - and their partners and children who have lived through this with them - who are waiting to hear you, Mr Shipton. They have been so very patient.
They have seen the years click by and watched, mostly in silence, as justice stood mute.
They saw Louise Nicholas put herself back on to that table for everyone to publicly eyeball, judge, or just pretend that they really knew what had happened in each incident.
In an echo of what awaited them, they watched as her reputation was raped in a new way.
Do you understand what that means now that you, like her, will never be able to walk the streets again without an invisible label on your back?
Maybe you now have some idea of what your actions have done to the good men who were your colleagues. Or of the years it will take to rebuild the reputation of every decent, hard-working cop in this country who puts in stressful, thankless hours because of your unfortunate predilection to sexual entitlement.
If it's true that three years of prison have brought you a new perspective, tell us now loud and clear. Nobody believes shades of grey in this case any more.
You could speak to the women whose lives you have damaged. You could speak to their families who've had to live with this year after year in a hundred different ways. You could speak to Louise Nicholas' three daughters and help her explain why the very people who children are taught they should go to for help in an emergency - the police - are the same ones who allegedly brutalised, then betrayed their mother, and others.
A few words of your contrition could help every rape victim in this country who now thinks twice before she picks up that phone to call the police.
I once sat at the dinner table with extended family arguing why I thought John Dewar should be penalised more than anyone else in this case.
I argued that Dewar's obstruction of justice represented not just a crime but something far more dangerous; a perversion of the very justice system that we need to protect at all costs.
I still believe his punishment should be the harshest.
But when I read your comments to the parole board, I saw two distinct possibilities: these were either the words of a criminal who needed to say whatever would make those prison doors swing open faster, or something that I am afraid to hope for - the possibility that one man's honesty could finally, finally bring healing.
Look at how much power you still hold over so many.
A few paragraphs from you could do so much to help us trust that the bedrock of our society, our police and our courts, can accomplish something ultimately hopeful - change in just one man.
There are a whole lot of people waiting quietly in line to hear your true voice.
But if you choose to stay silent and live with the anguish you created for too many, this tragedy will have come full circle. You will join quite a few women who know a thing or two about living in silence with their pain.
