And who oh why would any right thinking person reward Law with such prestige after all the harm he brought on the Roman Catholic church and innocent children?
That's actually not very prestigious. He's basically a glorified parish priest.
A corporate analogy would be: the Executive V.P. flubs up badly, so you make him effectively a Senior Software Engineer again (basically where he started), but give him a nice office.
NB: I don't agree with putting Law there, either, I just differ with your description of his situation as "prestige". "Prestige" for someone like Law would have been to be put in charge of an important Vatican dicastery (like, e.g., Cdl. Ratzinger was). He's not even in charge of a minor one.
Too bad you can't ask John Pual II why he made that decision, but Cardinal Law didn't molest anyone. He made mistakes, which he admitted, in his treatment of the molesters, after they'd committed their crimes.
People seem to forget that he didn't allow these men to return to positions in their parishes on a whim. He, as happened with many Bishops and heads of Personnel offices in Dioceses throughout the country, relied on the professional assessment of psychiatrists and therapists who were dealing with these men using the attitude of the day, that they could be 'cured' of their molesting ways. No one seems to be holding any of these professionals accountable for THEIR actions, yet everyone seems to be saying that the Cardinal and the other Bishops should have known better than to accept their decisions. Why do people hire professionals in the first place? Because they trust that they'll be given the information they need to make proper decisions.
I, for one, think that any priest who is accused of molesting anyone should be investigated by the police, because a crime may have been committed. If the evidence is credible, he should be arrested and given his day in court. If he's found guilty, he needs to be put in jail so he can't hurt anyone else. That's what SHOULD have been done, but the Church, like many other institutions in the world who care for their reputations, tended toward the cover-up, which is NEVER good for anyone.