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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 122 of 143 · ≈ 1 min on screen
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.
The cost comes due: 9/11 steals six weeks, Saviano accuses them of abandoning survivors, sources go quiet, and even finding Law's damning letters isn't enough to end the fight over when to publish.
Mike races through the lobby and up the escalator, still reading the letter's warning about Geoghan's departure from Saint Brendan's.
Mike finishes reading Bishop D'Arcy's 1984 letter to the stunned team, and Robby refuses to rush the Law story to press before nailing the full scope of ninety priests, triggering a furious blowup from Mike who storms out.
At home, Sacha's frustration boils over at a jammed dishwasher rack just before Mike shows up at her door still shaken from the fight with Robby.
This scene
Sacha walks onto the porch with two beers, hands one to Mike.
MIKE
Thanks. I dunno why I got so pissed
off. I mean I think Robby’s wrong
but...
SACHA
You care about the story, Mike. We
all do.
Mike takes a drink.
SACHA (CONT’D)
I stopped going to church with my
Nana. It was just too hard. I’d be
sitting there and I would start
thinking about Joe Crowley or
someone else and I’d just get so
angry.
MIKE
Did you tell her why?
SACHA
She goes to church three times a
week, Mike.
Mike considers this. Shakes his head.
MIKE
Really pisses me off.
(then)
You know, I actually liked going to
mass when I was a kid.
SACHA
Why’d you stop?
MIKE
Typical shit.
(then)
But the weird thing is, I think
there was a part of me that figured
one day, maybe I’d go back. I was
holding on to that.
Sacha watches him, not expecting this.
MIKE (CONT’D)
And when I read those letters,
something just cracked.
SACHA
That’s a shitty feeling.
MIKE
Yeah. It’s a shitty feeling.
Off the two of them, a little lost...