THE Pope’s visit to Ireland has seen another round of headlines about the Catholic Church and child abuse. Pope Francis has asked for forgiveness and, importantly, acknowledged the church still has a job to do in addressing the “open wounds” of many survivors.

Ireland, according to USA Today, is “ground zero” of the church’s sex abuse crisis. While there is some truth in this, I’m wary of generalisations. Press officers for the Catholic Church have told me before that the proportion of priests who are abusers is no higher than it is in the general population. This may be true, although many victims would dispute it.

There may be factors – the bar on priests marrying, the expectation of celibacy – which would lead to vows being broken but they still do not explain paedophilia.

But for me, and many others, that isn’t the issue. The real offence of the Catholic Church has been in repeated cover-ups, the countless incidents where police were not called, where priests were moved to new dioceses, heedless of whether they might abuse again.

But generalising about this or other faith groups is a distraction, and a potentially dangerous one.

The far right is mobilising around the claim that “Muslim gangs” are grooming and abusing white girls across the UK. Earlier this week I was sent a press release from the self-styled English Defence League (EDL) using half-baked analysis of the Koran to justify claims that it accounts for the behaviour of groomers, abusers and rapists of white English women and girls.

Nazir Afzal, a former chief prosecutor who oversaw cases against members of child grooming and sexual exploitation rings in Rochdale and Telford, says victims were mostly white, and the men subsequently prosecuted were British Asian men.

But he claims news coverage of this is problematic. “It’s the biggest recruiter for the far right in this country. If you go on any far right website, they use the grooming gangs more than Isis or terror attacks as the means by which they recruit far right activists.”

Rape and sexual exploitation of children is about as horrific a crime as you can imagine, but it is wildly wrong to view this as an issue confined to a given religious organisation or ethnic group.

Even in Telford, the narrative was more complex, Mr Afzal says: “When I prosecuted the Rochdale gang, immediately afterwards, I prosecuted the ringleader again for his abuse of a girl of the same ethnicity as him. That didn’t get any publicity and he got 21 years.”

It is undeniable that there have been abuse rings involving largely British Asian men. Javaid Akhond, an Afghani convicted in 2014 of grooming and assaulting young girls, was reported to be part of a suspected grooming “ring” in Glasgow. But eight people convicted of being members of Scotland’s biggest paedophile network in 2009 were white men from across Central Scotland.

And what about the drip-drip of everyday familial abuse? What about the abuse of trusted positions by ordinary, white Scottish and English men?

Gavin Scoular, a 23-year-old Edinburgh man is awaiting sentencing for the rape of five young women, three under 16. The former swimming instructor originally faced 132 charges against 100 separate girls and women.

In recent months at least 10 people have been convicted of abuse, grooming or accumulating child abuse images in the Scottish courts: in addition to Scoular, there was Alexander Moore, 82, who raped or abused three girls aged eight-15. Charles Hewitson abused two girls, one four years old, and raped a 21-year-old woman with learning disabilities.

Yones Beyranvand abused a 12-year-old schoolboy, James Paul, a Renfrewshire police officer, collected pictures of toddlers being bound and sexually abused, 21-year-old Lanarkshire man Dean Cooper groomed a 14-year-old and persuaded her to send him “sexts”. She later overdosed.

It goes on: Kevin Cowley, of Midlothian, indecently assaulted the 15-year-old daughter of a friend. Nineteen- year-old Dylan Walker raped a 12-year-old and sexually abused a 13-year-old in Stirling. Robert Russell sexually assaulted one teenager and indecently assaulted three others, in Dingwall, three decades ago. Andrew O’Neil, of Dundee, groomed a 15-year-old autistic girl and persuaded her to send him sexual images by pretending to be a modelling agent.

I don’t apologise for the grim nature of this list or its length. These are guilty pleas and convictions in the space of barely two months. None of these was a priest. Only Beyranvand, from Iran in the Middle East, could be classed as Asian.

Every effort should be made to prevent, and prosecute child abuse, wherever it occurs. But viewing the issue selectively to target a racial or religious group is akin to the White House seizing on the murder of 20-year-old student Mollie Tibbetts by an unauthorised immigrant, and using it to justify Donald Trump’s family-wrecking immigration crackdown. The morally bankrupt spin of the President’s office was quickly disowned by Tibbett’s family. Meanwhile, the race of Florida video game killer David Katz or of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock go unremarked.

Nazir Afzal, who has seen the worst of it, says the ethnicity of offenders cannot be ignored but he adds: “The vast majority of children and young people are abused within the family. We must not lose sight of that. The second largest group of victims are online.”

The third largest group is institutional abuse, he says: through places of worship, but also through football, and other sporting clubs, and the BBC.

Street grooming is significant, he says, but just a small piece of the bigger picture. “It’s smallest comparatively to the other three areas.”

Child abuse is a society-wide problem and where we focus our attention matters. We cannot allow ourselves or others to fall back on the idea that this is a church problem, or a racial problem or even a football problem. That is misleading, and it is dangerous.