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| This bishop was found dead before his trial. I forgot his name. Ask Paul McCain for his copy of The Catholic Encyclopedia. |
http://www.npr.org/2015/10/29/452805058/film-shines-a-spotlight-on-bostons-clergy-sex-abuse-scandal
In 2001, a team of reporters at the Boston Globe began investigating reports of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The "Spotlight" team, as it was known, eventually revealed that the abuse had been happening for decades — and that church leaders in Boston had been aware of it and had been involved in covering it up.
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Veteran reporter and editor Walter Robinson, who led the Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning Spotlight team, tellsFresh Air's Dave Davies: "These crimes were unimaginable, and that they could've been countenanced and enabled by such an iconic institution, it gave us so much energy to pursue the story and get the story and make it public."
Now, the new film, Spotlight, chronicles the investigation that brought the scandal to light. Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote and directed the film, says he was immediately drawn to the story.
"As I dug into the material, first just on my own, and then with my co-writer Josh Singer, we realized that the story operated on so many levels. ... It went well beyond the investigation itself," McCarthy says. "It was something we were immediately engrossed in."
McCarthy describes the battle between the Globereporters and the leaders of the Catholic Church in Boston as a case of "Goliath versus Goliath."
"This was the best the Boston Globe had, the Spotlight team was the crown jewel of that institution," McCarthy says. "All over the country there were instances [of abuse] ... but this story, this reporting, it connected the dots, and that is what sort of blew the roof off of this crisis."
