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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 124 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.
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.
On her porch, Sacha admits to Mike she's stopped going to church with her grandmother because the anger became too much to sit through, and Mike confesses the letters cracked something in him.
At the Fairmont bar, Pete Conley leans on Robby, invoking loyalty to the city and the Cardinal's good works, and warns him that Marty Baron won't be in Boston for long; Robby tells him he'll need a comment from the Cardinal when the story runs.
This scene
Robby, Mike, Sacha and Matt sit working. It’s dark, quiet, serious. A beat, then Robby’s phone RINGS. He answers.
ROBBY (INTO PHONE)
Robby. What? No shit, when? Okay.
(hangs up, calls out)
Hey.
The team looks towards Robby’s office as he walks in.
MIKE
What’s up?
ROBBY
Sweeney ruled in our favor. She
ruled to unseal the documents.
MIKE
Jeez...
The group sits stunned.