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.

1. Scenes 4–10

   Robby's Spotlight team operates comfortably inside its own routine, prospecting a modest police-corruption story under a departing editor's cover.

2. Scenes 11–14

   Baron's outsider question exposes what the paper has never done: investigate whether Cardinal Law knowingly protected an abusive priest.

3. Scenes 15–24

   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.

4. Scenes 25–65

   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.

5. Scenes 66–76

   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.

6. Scenes 77–120

   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.

7. Just before
8. Scene 122

   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.

9. Scene 123

   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.

10. Scene 124

    Robby's phone rings with news that Judge Sweeney has ruled in the Globe's favor to unseal the Geoghan documents, stunning the team.

11. Scene 125

    This scene