Well at face value, this is much better than what most corporations would do.
Some fairness and objectivity is needed here.
1. No entity would keep on file something that “totally lacks a foundation” such as unsubstantiated rumor, gossip, or innuendo.
2. And yet para 42 insists that even if the accusations are vague and indeterminate (which means they lack specificity of the person(s), place, nature, and extent of the allegation) that a file be kept and placed in the archives for resuscitation even decades later. Not bad at all in the then non-digital age.
The term “abuse” in the 1960s and 1970s and to this day can encompass a whole spectrum of real and perceived that would include but is not limited to such matters as disciplinary caning, or what might be considered a harsh penitence.
So the accused decides, all on its own, that there's not enough evidence and destroys the evidence, all without anyone besides the church and the victim seeing that evidence -- no police, no social worker, no school teacher, no civil authority, and often no family members, in fact.
As I said, corporations would be dissolved in an instant if this is how they ran their business and how they hid evidence in criminal accusations.
And you obviously have more faith in archives than I do if you think evidence doesn't get misplaced, lost, stolen, destroyed and/or forgotten.
Also, it's remarkably pitiful that victims have to wait until a priest abuses again before any further action is even contemplated. And still the police are not to be notified.
I can understand RC apologists grasping at any straw to prop up the sagging reputation of the RCC. But some must realize the papacy is losing ground here fast and even its own members are revulsed by what has gone down in the name of "papal secrecy."