Not buying it. This and many other similar cases like this go back all the way to the 1950s, when we were probably the most socially conservative as a society that we will ever be. Heck, in a lot of states, you couldn't even marry a person of another race yet! Even then, though, they were still groping kids.
If anything, the perverts hid themselves in a church body that was willing to cover for them to protect themselves.
When I was attending a Catholic grade school in the fifties/sixties we had a nasty priest who I didn't like as assistant pastor. Later he was transferred out to a different school bordering our parish, and I was very happy to see him go.
About ten years later there was a story in the local news about some boys from the other school accusing this priest of sexual abuse. It turned out the priest was a homosexual predator.
Sure enough, he showed up on a tv news clip in court having charges read out to him. He was found guilty and sentenced to a prison term. (Which was not real long, because about ten years later I saw him at a basketball game.)
I reported the news to my mother along the lines of "hey ma, did you hear the news about Father Blankety Blank sexually abusing some boys at blank parish?"
My mother replied to me " yes, everybody knew Father Blankety Blank was a homosexual."
I was stunned. I asked mother if everybody knew he was a homo (and a predator), why didn't they try to get him removed?
My mother just shrugged her shoulders and walked away.
In those days, priests were treated like God's personal representatives on earth by many Catholics. My father certainly thought that. For my father, priests could do no wrong.
So they could have done something about it many years ago, but average Catholics didn't do much of anything. Why not is beyond me. If I found out some priest had sexually abused one of my kids, he had better relocate to some remote region of the earth.