SUGGEST to Cara Henderson that she has the status of a celebrity in Scotland and she responds quickly: ''Notoriety, not celebrity.'' Thinking back to the period between 1999 and 2001, when she was fronting Nil By Mouth, the anti-sectarian charity that she founded herself, she smiles, remembering the never-ending stream of talks, meetings, and media appearances. ''I had a profile in Scotland, definitely. Not in the sense of walking down the street and being recognised, but I had responsibilities that you don't normally have as a 20-year-old. And in a sense I began to feel quite stifled by it. I began to see my photos in the paper again and again, and thought, I'm sick of them so everyone else must be. There's more to me than that.''

Last summer she decided it was time to move on, but sensed that trying to step back from the campaign would not be enough. After becoming the main contact for every journalist writing about sectarianism, she realised she would have physically to remove herself to make the break. A solution was available in the form of two friends who were planning a trip around the world. Cara took the opportunity, and spent 10 months travelling to India, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Bali, Beijing, and Australia, miles from Ibrox, Parkhead, and the incessant demands of the media.

Holidays suit her. Sitting in the airy space of the Cafe Gandolfi, overlooking Buchanan Street in Glasgow, she is tanned and relaxed, still wearing a sleeveless top in defiance of Glasgow's anti-summer. It was a ''wonderful, wonderful experience'', she says, adding with an awkward smile that she is embarrassed by how ''spoilt'' it might make her seem. ''I went away to have fun, and that's exactly what I did.''

Who could blame her. Henderson was only 19 when she set up Nil By Mouth in 1999, four years after her friend and former boyfriend, Mark Scott, was murdered while walking home through Glasgow after a match between Celtic and Partick Thistle. Mark, 16, a Celtic fan, was attacked from behind by Jason Campbell, then 23, who drew a knife across the schoolboy's throat, cutting so deeply that he bled to death in 50 seconds.

Henderson, who had been to Glasgow Academy with Mark and went out with him when she was 14, set up the charity while doing her history degree at St Hugh's College, Oxford. By 2000, it had been granted charitable status and soon she had become the public face of a fast-growing campaign which attracted support from the government, police, churches, and football clubs. It has been widely praised for raising the profile of the sectarian problem and is closely involved with a number of new initiatives, including the Sense Over Sectarianism campaign, which is distributing a series of grants worth a total of (pounds) 500,000 to projects aimed at fighting bigotry.

In the three weeks that she has been back, Henderson has again been drawn into the campaign, and not unwillingly. But the days of Cara on Good Morning Scotland, Scotland Today, and Newsnight are over. This week she moves to London, where she is to study English law at the London College of Law with the aim of becoming a barrister. She wanted to be a criminal lawyer as a teenager before flirting with journalism, but came back to the idea. She is ''really excited'' about the move - she will be living in a house in south London with three friends - and has no plans to return to Scotland, having always intended to come back only temporarily after finishing her degree.

''I will continue behind the scenes and come back for trustees' meetings and certain events,'' she says. ''But I don't want to be the front person. I don't want it to be the way it was before.''

She is under no illusions about the level of ongoing sectarian violence that scars the face of Scottish society. No official statistics are kept about sectarian attacks, but research by Nil By Mouth suggests that, while there were no racially motivated murders in Scotland in 1999/2000, there were eight which were linked to sectarianism.

It is a long game, though, and the small steps are significant. Looking back, she has much to be proud of. Not only has she been instrumental in pushing the problem of sectarianism right up the political agenda, but the campaign has arrived at the point where there is the prospect of a change in the law to classify sectarian attacks as aggravated offences.

Spurred on by the work of the Liberal Democrat MSP, Donald Gorrie, who has spearheaded attempts to introduce anti-sectarian legislation, the Scottish Executive established a cross-party working group last November chaired by the deputy justice minister, Richard Simpson, to look at possible legislation. Under proposals supported by Nil By Mouth and currently being examined by the working group, anyone committing a breach of the peace, assault, or murder that proved to be motivated by sectarianism would have an extra penal tarriff added to their sentence.

The working group, from which Henderson has just returned when we meet, is not expected to report until at least next month, and she is not certain the political will exists to change the law.

But, she says, at least the group appreciates there is a problem. ''To have reached that stage at that level is an important step.''

The legislative change Nil By Mouth supports, she says, is a way of sending out ''a statutory message that's against sectarianism'' without getting bogged down in the complicated points of creating legislation.

She takes the view that creating an offence would not work. Sectarianism, for example, is hard to define in law. In addition, the law must allow for freedom of expression.

''There's a difference between something that could be deemed to be offensive and something that causes harm. You have to protect the place in society for debate, arguments, jokes, and satire that cause offence. It's a way of exposing prejudice.

''But if you deem an environment to lead to harm in some way, then that is a different thing. I know these two things cross over, but the reality is that people continue to die because of this and we've got to work backwards from that.''

She doesn't like the fact that Nil By Mouth might be perceived by some as the PC police, and carefully points out that she is not incapable of understanding the subtleties of difference between different remarks and gestures. The key point, she says, is why someone is singing a certain song or making a certain joke.

''Any crime that is perpetrated because the attacker perceives a person to be representing a community rather than being an individual, that's a greater risk, I think, to society at large. Because anyone could be the victim of that. They've been singled out because of their colour, their ethnic background, their religion, their sexuality - I think these crimes should be treated more seriously.''

She was depressed rather than surprised by the outbreak of violence against asylum-seekers in Glasgow last year, culminating in the death of Firsat Dag from Turkey. ''Historically there has been a myth that Scotland is a welcoming and tolerant society, and the reality hasn't reflected that. We're not as tolerant as we thought,'' she says.

Henderson has already done her soul searching. She comes from a Protestant background, although she is not personally religious; Mark Scott was one of the few Catholic boys she knew, and she found herself examining her own beliefs and assumptions carefully when setting up Nil By Mouth. Her unassuming manner has served her well in the crossfire of sectarianism, as has being female, she suspects. ''I wonder how a guy with the same background would have been treated,'' she muses. ''I think the reception would have been more aggressive.''

Her views have changed with time and experience, as she is the first to admit. It was hearing that Donald Findlay, the man who defended Jason Campbell during his trial for the murder of Mark Scott, had been caught on tape singing a sectarian song, that so appalled Henderson that she was inspired to set up Nil By Mouth. But, she says, she has moved on a very long way since then.

''When I started Nil By Mouth I personally harboured a lot of resentment towards Donald Findlay, which wasn't necessarily fair,'' she says. ''Some of it was caught up with my grief. I don't carry any of that baggage at all now. Donald Findlay was easy to project my feelings about Scottish society on to. I feel sorry for him. Whenever sectarianism gets mentioned, his name gets mentioned. He has to live with that.''

As for Cara herself, she has only once been treated aggressively because of her work - not in Glasgow, but at Arilie Beach in Australia.

''I couldn't believe it,'' she says, animatedly. ''A drunk Glaswegian guy - that was not nice.''

Still, she can expect to live a quieter life from now on. Her mother, a counsellor, and father, a semi-retired businessman, are pleased - they were supportive of her work with Nil By Mouth but ''relieved'' when she went travelling.

She will remain close to the charity she started. The group is currently awaiting funding to pay for a full-time member of staff, but Cara will remain active in the background. From a distance, though, given the fact that religion is cited in violence and terrorism erupting the world over, would we be better off all round without it?

She breathes out and thinks for a moment. ''I would imagine that if you calculated the number of murders in the name of religion, it would be shockingly high. But no, I don't think we would be better off without it.''