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Well the whole point was they weren't highly motivated for quite some time right? There were cover ups and priests were allowed just to be moved around rather than arrested etc. I heard jokes about "pedo" priests in the 70's after all, and it didn't start coming to a head until the 2000's. And indeed the reports go back through the 50's and before. With: .."government, police, and church had colluded in an attempt to cover up the allegations"
So back in the 80's to 90's the media and law enforcement weren't really highly motivated to scrutinize the Catholic Church either. Despite some stories throughout the 80's, Sinead O'Connor raising it on SNL in 92, it wasn't really until a decade later anything much came of it, with the Boston Globe story in 2002.
The grooming gang story broke in a big way just 9 years later in 2011. The very earliest the media at least could have been on the grooming gang story was maybe 2001, more likely ,through 2006 with Heal's study. Before that the main issue preventing discovery of the activity was the cops treating the victims as drug addicted, lying prostitutes rather than victims (as very evident in some of the note's taken at the time, even when they had no idea who the pimps and so on were).
If anything the consensus broke much faster with the Pakistani gangs than it did with the Church.
It's been the subject of huge media coverage, jokes, movies, TV shows, everything for decades now. Comparing timelines seems nonsensical to me. The story hasn't really "broken" as much as non-institutional actors are making the story go viral, forcing the issue on a media and legal apparatus that wants to sweep it under the rug. There's no basis to say the Catholic Church has gotten less scrutiny than this story related to the Pakistani gangs.
The story was broken in 2011 in a big way by a standard journalist in a newspaper. That journalist won a national award for his work and is working for The Times. There is no way to frame him as a non-institutional actor. Jayne Senior the social worker who attempted to raise the issue with police was working for the local government, and was awarded an MBE in 2016 for her efforts. Convictions even started in 2010.
The story going viral now is a decade late, so it certainly cannot be said that non-institutional actors were the ones who broke it. It was broken already. They are rehashing it sure, making it go viral internationally absolutely. But it was exposed years ago.
None of that is to say it shouldn't have been broken earlier, but it was traditional media which broke the story into the UK public consciousness, 14 years ago. Just like with the Catholic abuse scandal with the Boston Globe in 2002.
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