What I do not get is WHY the parents of these kids did not take this to the police?
Could be they never knew, maybe the "priests" threatened the kids not to talk...that happens.
However to your question, some people did know, maybe it was one of those "everybody knew" deals. Remember the parents of the kids that "slept" with Michael Jackson?
My grandmother left the Catholic Church in the 1940s...in Germany, because: "The Priests went after the young boys".
I was a kid when she told me that, I had no idea what she was talking about. I thought she meant they yelled at them or something.