Thank you for this clarification. In am not aware of the Tierney case. Did you mean to say "as the lawyers [instead of plaintiffs]...decided to abandon their client" (otherwise I don't understand). 

In very general terms, I think there are three levels of failed responsibility: first the perpetrators (and by extension, as you put it, those at the scene of the crime who failed the victims); second the bishops collectively driven, say I, above all by the desire to avoid scandal rather than empathy for the victims (and in the early days, by their lack of understanding of the nature of pedophilia, a deficiency then shared by society at large); and thirdly, the Vatican and pope for supporting rather than correcting the college of bishops. On this, I take it and accept that we are completely at odds.