I am not denying other doctrines have their problems with sexual abuse, the JWs have tried to cover it up as well.
It wasn't 'covering it up' like we see in the Catholic church. All organizations had this problem because pedophiles infiltrate any organization to gain access to children. For the Catholic church, in the case of many priests, a reason to enter the priesthood was to gain access to children who, if they were in Catholic institutions had no one to turn to for help. It was the perfect cover for these rock spiders....their victims had no voice.
Biblically speaking, it requires 2-3 witnesses to prove that a crime had been committed. For pedophilia that was nigh on to impossible as there were usually no witnesses and children in those days were not regarded as credible anyway. Our congregation elders are not the police and parents who felt that a crime had been committed could report it to the authorities.
Having said that, in decades past the legal system had an adversarial approach to this crime that often meant the victim having to face the offender in court. Defense lawyers were brutal in their cross examination and the victims were often more traumatized by the court case than the original offense. If it was a minor offense, (not involving rape) some just didn't feel as if it was worth subjecting their children to that.
Only in later decades was child abuse recognized as a real crime.....for a couple of reasons. Firstly it was only acknowledged in recent decades that it caused severe psychological trauma to the victims. And, it was not seen as a real crime because the judges in in those times were male and did not really acknowledge that it could be that serious. These days all that has changed, thank goodness.
Multiple Personality Disorder is now recognized as not just a mental aberration, but was usually caused by extreme abuse of a very young child.
To be fair, there are cover ups, and there are reasons why some chose not to act on the reports.