What also made the abuse scandal so bad was that it is predominantly a problem of homosexuality. And the Catholic Church has been quite accustomed to ordain gay men to the priesthood and accept them into monasteries. And this is not generally a problem if the men have good self-control and they can uphold their vows.
But if homosexual men begin to dabble in pederasty and begin to abuse their positions of power against vulnerable and defenseless boys, this is a real scandal, and the Church has been quite embarrassed for people to find out just how prevalent homosexuality is among the ranks of clergy and religious. And the general public and the mainstream media know this, and they have leveraged that embarrassment against the Church in order to discredit her.
And the homosexual aspect of all of this tends to get swept under the rug and sort of ignored, because the general public, in a hypocritical sort of way, doesn't really mind if men are having sex with boys, at least they're not supposed to, but the absence of little girls from the records has been difficult to deny.
The Church can try and correct this by denying entry to homosexual men. But then she will have a profound vocations crisis if she is selecting heterosexual men and hanging the gays out to dry with nothing at all to do. More than a vocations crisis, she will be accused of being "unwelcoming" and "unjust" towards gay men entirely. So she is truly upon the horns of a dilemma.