One of the big problems in Boston was that the two biggest offenders were also well known in Democrat circles and had powerful friends. In some of the cases, the cops didn't pursue the cases, in others the parents didn't pursue because they didn't want to drag their children through it. The Church couldn't bring a case if the victim didn't want to participate, so the Diocese sent them away to be 'healed'. In order to de-frock someone, they have to have been investigated by the Church and found to have committed egregious offenses. The Boston Archdiocese had defrocked at least one priest, Bill Porter, but I don't know if Geoghan or Shanley had been defrocked. That's something else the new Pope helped to do; make it easier for a Diocese to de-frock a priest.
Some of this problem had to do with the areas of the country, too. In heavily Catholic areas, like here in the Northeast, people looked upon priests as one who could do no wrong, and of whom no questions should be asked. In other parts of the country, especially where there were fewer Catholics folks didn't think that way, at least where I grew up in MS, we didn't. We knew the priests were men who could make mistakes just like anyone else, and we didn't put them up on some sort of pedestal.In the South, I know that priests had been sent to jail. My b-i-l is a priest in MS, and he talks of a former priest sitting in Angola prison right now because several of his brother priests turned him in to the cops. Whenever he comes up for parole, the lib nuns go to the prison to cry and beg for his release, while the priests, one of whom is now in a wheelchair, tell the prison officials not to let him out cause they'd have to shoot him if he were set free because he's never ever admitted that what he did was wrong.
The psychologists were involved because back in the late 60's and up into the 80's that's the way institutions handled these problems. It wasn't just the Catholic Church, though you'd have to be forgiven if you thought so, because that's the way the media presented it. It was part and parcel of the modernization that came out of Vatican II. The Church was trying to solve moral problems with psychology. They failed spectacularly, and frankly, I'm still waiting for some newspaper to question the field of psychology that was responsible for allowing these men back out into the world. Somehow they are never mentioned, though it was their professional advice that was being followed all over the country.
There have been plenty of changes made, and the Dioceses are much more willing to bring a priest up on charges, even with one allegation. Of course, that brings its own problems, and ones with which Benedict XVI is familiar because he also guided the American Bishops in re-tooling their policies to protect a priests identity until there was some creedance to any allegation. There were too many charges, conveniently against long dead priests, or from 'recovered memories', coming out of the woodwork after the Boston Globe had done their stories. Cardinal Ratzinger didn't want these mens' reputations besmirched falsely because once accused, he knew it was hard to get one's good name back.
No the problem is every time the Church got word that some priest was a problem they shipped him off elsewhere and destroyed the evidence. They treated it as a PR problem.
I'll believe there have been changes when I see it. Right now they've added a lot of rules that IF they actually enforce them will take giant leaps towards fixing the problem... IF the actually enforce them. Only time will tell.