Yes, that's true, but it's a bit deeper than that. The normalization of same-sex orientation, brought to fruition by the 1973 removal of that orientation from the diagnostic manual of disorders, meant that "treatment" and "therapy" was not even really treatment or therapy.
If one denies that same-sex attraction is disordered, then sending abusers off to "therapy" cannot possibly solve the problem.
Even if the APA had continued to consider SSA a disorder and therapists had continued to treat it, sending a priest off for therapy and thinking him "cured" would have been a problem because therapy for this particular disorder is very, very difficult. You are right that trusting in therapy, even if the 1973 "normalization" had not taken place, rather than dealing with it as sin and packing the offender off to hair shirt monastery incarceration, would have been misguided.
But the denial that SSA is a disorder is the root of the problem because it makes therapy not only impossible but actually, in the eyes of the gay activists, makes therapy itself an evil. If SSA is "normal" and not disordered, then to insist on therapy for a non-disorder is itself an injustice to the "normal" person. So the "therapy" to which these abusers were being sent was actually not even trying to solve the problem. That's why the "therapy" and reassignment approach of the 1970s and 1980s was so destructive.
So the deepest problem was then and remains now the belief on the part of too many priests and bishops, that SSA is not even a disorder but can be "healthy" and "holy" if the person suffering from SSA will only stay "chaste."
Today the Church still insists it is a disorder but far too many Catholic leaders have bought the lie that it is not a disorder. That's the real battleground. And we are approaching the point where to insist that it is a disorder will be criminalized as hateful and hate crime.
At the same time, however, I have to insist that casual heterosexual fornication, treating heterosexual intercourse as recreation, the widespread pornographic mindset (which has affected almost all of us to some degree) is disordered. It differs in degree from person to person, but it has made deep inroads into the culture. We are dealing with sexual disorder, both homo and hetero, on a massive scale. It is terribly destructive. Remaining chaste not merely externally but internally in this situation is the fundamental challenge, of which SSA disorderedness is a huge subset.
You are so right. If SSA is normal, then conceivably the Diocese could have argued that in court. But that would have blown their argument out of the water, because no court would have bought that.
Better to settle than to expose the Truth of all this. I celebrate that this good Pope is on first.