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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 114 of 143 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two
The Boston Globe's Spotlight team pries open the Catholic Church's decades-long cover-up of child abuse — one sealed record, one silenced victim at a time.
Robby's Spotlight team operates comfortably inside its own routine, prospecting a modest police-corruption story under a departing editor's cover.
Baron's outsider question exposes what the paper has never done: investigate whether Cardinal Law knowingly protected an abusive priest.
The team sets aside its own project and enters unfamiliar territory: survivor networks, a hostile plaintiff's lawyer, and a legal fight to unseal church records.
The team pays the cost of the work — hearing survivor testimony, chasing MacLeish's stonewalling, and combing church directories for a hidden pattern of reassigned priests.
The directory search and Sipe's estimate deliver what they set out for: confirmation that the abuse spans dozens, then eighty-seven, priests across Boston.
Mike finally gets face time with Judge Volterra to ask about accessing the sealed exhibits.
Judge Volterra questions the editorial responsibility of publishing sensitive abuse records; Mike counters that withholding them raises the same question.
Clerk O'Brian finally hands Mike the file, and Mike bribes him eighty-three dollars to use the courthouse copier after hours.
This scene
Mike, already on his cell phone, hurries across the street toward and catches a cab.
MIKE
Hey, Cabbie! Hey, hey, hey!
Mike gets in cab.
MIKE (CONT’D)
I’m going to the Boston Globe on
Morrisey Boulevard. Don't take 93.
Take Dorchester Avenue.
MIKE (CONT’D)
(into phone)
Robby, it’s incredible!
138A EXT. STATE STREET, BOSTON - MOMENTS LATER
Mike’s cab moves up State Street.
MIKE (V.O.)
Law knew about Geoghan for years, no
question! There’s a letter to Law
from a woman, Margaret Gallant, who
lived in Jamaica Plain in the early
80’s when Geoghan was there. Listen
to this...