We've got some real problems in our society, none of which are affected by what Andrew Johns, or any other sportsman for that matter, does or doesn’t do in their spare time.

Our lack of focus is extraordinary.

More time and consideration is expended each winter week discussing who will win which game of whatever football code than is ever afforded to things that truly matter.

Perhaps that is why evidence of the impact of drug-affected kids on our community and some of the possible causes can be recorded daily in the pages of this newspaper and on our televisions, yet illicit little comment.

Andrew Johns was an athlete created by an extraordinary confluence of genes. But as has been reported in the past week, even champions have their demons.

In Johns’ case, while he was battling with opponents on the field during the past decade, at home he was battling crippling bouts of depression.

This revelation was treated in many corners with scorn, dismissed as a convenient excuse.

It appeared that for many, Johns , a sporting super star, was a selfish druggie who had failed in his responsibilities to the rest of us.

He was a role model. He had let the kids down and set an example that drugs were okay.

I could fill this space lamenting the hypocrisy of our attitude towards drugs, how we can make a culture out of one and a crusade of another.

But what is truly lamentable is the failure of parents to acknowledge their positions as role models and to accept that their example plays an enormous role in how their children turn out.

Andrew Johns hasn’t filled our courts with the types of values-ignorant car wrecks that our magistrates see before them each day.

And Andrew Johns isn’t the reason why so many cases – all of them appalling – of child sexual abuse are being dealt with here and across Australia each week.

But it would appear no-one wants to know.

One can only wonder at what could be achieved if the same level of scrutiny was directed to examining the life of some teenage junkie who robs a 7-11 as has been directed at the confessions of a retired rugby league halfback.

Why is there not as much thought and comment afforded the tales of anguish and horror that seep out from behind the closed bedrooms of our suburbs and into the courts each day?

Yesterday, at a National Child Protection Week breakfast in Brisbane, National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect president Teresa Scott urged it was time for the community to accept greater responsibility for its children.

The majority of abuse occurs within the family home. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare statistics show a doubling of the number of kids in protective care in this state in the past five years.

Last year, that number was 6446 children, ranking Queensland second only to NSW.

Andrew Johns isn’t part of this problem, but the suggestion that he has some role to play in how our children turn out is perhaps indicative of just how out of touch with reality many of us have become.

Ms Scott suggests that making a real difference could be as simple as offering your services as a babysitter to give a struggling young mum a break.

That, unfortunately, is not an act of kindness that readily springs to mind while sitting in judgment on a footballer who failed to fit an idealised image that our own mirrors can’t sustain.

The truth is that the rise and fall of one of the hundreds of thousands of Australians battling a combination of substance abuse and mental illness affords us a distraction from our own responsibilities and our own weaknesses.

It is a distraction we cannot afford to embrace.

Kids Help Line general manager Wendy Protheroe said on Monday that 2782 counselling sessions were provided by the national telephone and online service in 2006.

She warns that 90% of sexual abusers are known to their victims.

It is a warning that people like her and Ms Scott make each year, in vain.

It is so much easier to punish the damaged victims for the actions that flow from their abuse than it is to address the underlying causes that are triggering that abuse in the first place.

And it is even easier just to concentrate on something else like Andrew Johns, or Paris Hilton or Big Brother or Britney Spears or the Beckhams, or refugees or even – for a little while at least – Aborigines.