If they're about 70 now, they were probably ordained in about 1960. Vatican II was announced in 1958 or 1959. But I think all the things that burst out in Vatican have to have had their seeds in the 50s, as the hippies of the 60s were in some ways the offspring (in some cases perhaps literally) of the beatniks of the 50s. I did read somewhere that many of those in the hierarchy who attended Vatican II pushed through a lot of their agenda while the rest of the bishops were still getting used to the Latin.
Geoghan, in particular, probably owes his ordination to his monsignor uncle who pulled strings to keep him from being thrown out, but I doubt that using influence is particular to any one period.
The problem with the two of them is that their "careers" mostly ran after Vatican II. These things must have occurred before, but I think Shanley, in particular, would have had a much harder time pre-Vatican II -- I don't think priests worked with "street kids" (that wasn't an observed social problem then.
Of course, I was only a kid in the 50s and there were no altar girls. The only bad experience I had with a priest in the 50s was getting thrown out of Sunday school because I wasn't in the parish (I was nine years old, and my parents had separated that summer; my mother wasn't coping, and I got myself to Sunday school with a friend. I still don't like the Redemptorists.)
Of course they did.
But, as Cardinal Spellman told one of his boytoys who asked him how he tolerated the hypocrisy, he said "Who would believe it"?
(And before the hate mail starts, I'm merely quoting a Howie Carr column running on FR today. Spellman was a notorious gay, but was powerful enough to keep all evidence of it out of the New York Press)
Nobody would believe priests would abuse young boys, and many bishops used that gullibility to berate the victims into silence.