It is time for the topic of child sex abuse to be brought into the world of everyday reality. For people need to take their heads out of the sand and not rely on the inaccurate information they have been fed in the media.

From a reading of headlines in Ireland in the past few years, a visitor from outer space might be excused for assuming that all the child sexual abuse in this country had been perpetrated by Catholic clergymen - and by no one else. In fact, out of the current aggregate of 9,017 priests and brothers in Ireland (North and South), 27 priests and 11 brothers have been convicted of child sexual abuse since the 1980s, this representing a ratio of four per 1,000. Of the 38 total, 33 have received custodial sentences.

The evidence from elsewhere - and there is no reason to suppose that it is any different here - is that 50 per cent of child sex abuse incidents are perpetrated by a family member.

For me, the most shocking statistic to emerge from a conference on child sexual abuse in Athlone earlier this year was that one third of all child sex abusers are male adolescents under the age of 18. This fact alone puts an enormous onus on parents to be very careful whom they leave in charge of young children, whether they be older siblings, nephews, cousins or neighbours. It is an increasingly sad fact of life that nothing can be taken for granted anymore.

So what is the true picture of the scale of child sex abuse in Ireland and elsewhere? A few facts may put the subject into some perspective, based on information imparted at that conference entitled Child Sexual Abuse: the Irish Experience So Far and the Way Forward, the published proceedings of a conference on the treatment of sex offenders organised by the Irish Penal Reform Trust in November 1998, as well as evidence from other sources. These reports indicate that

Sex offending and sexual abuse are grossly under-reported - many victim surveys both here and abroad confirm this. A figure of around 10 per cent reportage seems to be accepted by professionals in the field.

A small percentage of reported sexual offences result in the prosecution, conviction and imprisonment of the perpetrator. For example in 1994, out of 619 sexual offences reported to the Garda, 79 offenders were jailed.

In 1997, more than 1,000 sexual offences were reported to the Garda, an increase of almost 200 on the previous year.

If, as the evidence indicates, only one in 10 of child sex abuse incidents is reported, then it behoves those in charge of children (parents, teachers, youth leaders, sports officials, clergy), to be vigilant at all times, to protect the children in their care and to report all suspected cases The importance of screening those involved in child or youth social or sports activities cannot be underestimated.

The stereotype of the typical child sex abuser (generally and often incorrectly described as a "paedophile") put across by the Irish media following the Father Brendan Smyth case was of a fleshy, lumbering, evil-looking man, easily identified. Nothing could be further from reality, as one of the principal speakers at the Athlone conference, Marie Keenan, pointed out in the course of an interview: "Men who perpetrate abuse have not dropped in from outer space. They are men who are born here, of Irish parents, reared in Ireland, [they] came through an Irish education system, are not all mad and don't have psychiatrist disturbances."

In my own experience, a man I know who was convicted of child sex abuse was a leader in his local community; he was charming, handsome and charismatic, a good athlete, apparently happily married and with children of his own. He was the very last person one would suspect of being an abuser but he was and had been for some years before the discovery, which sent shock-waves of disbelief through both family and community.

There are approximately 400 male sex offenders in Irish prisons. In November 1998 there were 279 men serving sentences in the Republic's prisons for sexual offences (no breakdown available, unfortunately, to distinguish between adult and child abuse), representing one in eight of the sentenced male prison population. At present in Northern Ireland prisons there are approximately 110 such offenders. In the Republic, convicted sex offenders are distributed throughout seven prisons Most are imprisoned in the Curragh and Arbour Hill Prisons and the length of sentence ranges from eight months to life, with an average span of over six years.

Although an Irish Times editorial two years ago asserted that the recidivism rate for sex offenders was over 90 per cent, the evidence in recent years increasingly points to the conclusion that treatment does work. A major study of almost 30,000 sex offenders in 1996 found a recidivism rate of 19 per cent for rapists and 13 per cent for child molesters. Recidivism rates for sex offenders appear to be considerably lower than those for the general criminal population and all the studies show that perpetrators of child sex abuse have lower rates of recidivism than rapists and are more amenable to treatment.

It is important, I believe, for sex offenders and their families to know - because many of them don't - that help is available and can be effective if they wish to avail of it. This knowledge will also be helpful to many victims of sexual offences.

Louis Power writes on family matters and is editor of a series of books on parenting.