PAEDOPHILE rings are highly organised and active in major "Irish cities, Ms Mary Crilly of the Cork Rape Crisis Centre told the conference.
Ms Crilly said such rings were operating in Cork, Dublin, and other major centres of population in Ireland. Paedophilia was a multi million pound business - so big that people in authority had to know about it, she added.
Society appeared to be excusing paedophilia, she said. In Ireland, there was no body of research on the subject that she or her colleagues knew about. "If there is, why haven't the rape crisis centres been asked for their views?" she asked.
The problem of paedophilia would have to be recognised for what it was, and something would have to be done about it. Children were not being listened to when it most mattered.
"Children have no voice, and often no choice when it comes to pornography. We have to start listening to them when they come to us with tales of sexual abuse. The experience is that when adults come to us in later years, invariably they were not listened to when they first tried to communicate with their elders about the problem," she said.
Paedophiles often pleaded they had no control over their compulsion, she said. Yet few of them went for help, and in most cases they admitted to wrongdoing only after they were caught.
One of the most immediate causes for concern, she added, was the availability of pornographic material on the Internet.
"This week, I accessed the Internet trying to find material or research on child pornography. I couldn't find any, but I found plenty of pornography. I felt powerless, and if I felt like that, can you imagine how child victims must feel?" she asked.
Mandatory reporting of sex abuse cases would be meaningful only if adequate resources were put in place, Ms Crilly said.
Increasingly, women were reluctant to report rape because they no longer had confidence in the legal system. This stemmed from the fact that the Director of Public Prosecutions was willing to prosecute rape cases only when there was a 99 per cent chance of securing a conviction, she said.