Well, since most members of the Catholic church will be people just as good and bad as other people, some defensiveness or denial is to be expected. Just like it happens when in a family where incest comes to the fore.
The problem is indeed that the structure and the hugeness of the church made denial possible for such a long time. And, just like in families people depend on the "safety" of the family, even in cases of abuse and incest, so can members of a church be depending on the "safety" of their church. That dependency on that "safety" can lead to really sick situations, where the victim will be blamed. Both in families, and in churches.
A friend of mine did lots of research about how churches react on sexual abuse in the church by members and people in a church position. The differences between churches on how they react are massive. Roughly said, you can say that the bigger the church, the longer they will try to deny, and the harder it will be for the victim to be taken serious.