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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 131 of 143 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act three
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.
Robby knocks unannounced on Jim Sullivan's door on a Sunday night, surprising Jim's wife Karen.
Robby tells Jim he's out of time and needs him to confirm the list of seventy priests; Jim, furious, orders him out of the house but takes the list.
Outside, Jim confronts Robby for laying this on him at home and asks the question that indicts them both, where were you, what took you so long, then silently marks up the entire list before walking away.
This scene
Mike and Matt work the phones.
MATT (INTO PHONE)
Donna Morrisey said she’d call us
with a quote from Law hours ago.
MIKE (INTO PHONE) MATT (INTO PHONE) That’s what I thought. Okay, When did you talk to her? * Larry. Yeah. That’s good to know. * Thanks, Pete.
They hang up. Mike walks to the coffee machine.
MIKE
Anything?
MATT
Conley said Donna Morrisey should
have called, he just left Lake
Street.
MIKE
Yeah. Rasky said the same thing.
MATT
This is ridiculous. You’d think
they want to get out ahead of this.
MIKE
They’d be idiots not to. I’d love
to see their faces when they read
this.
Both of them wait.
MATT
You know, Sunday’s the Feast of the
Epiphany.
MIKE
Seems appropriate.
The phone rings. Mike grabs it.
MIKE (INTO PHONE) (CONT’D)
Mike Rezendes. Hi Donna. Thanks for
calling. I just had a few questions
if you have a minute....
Mike listens. Matt waits.
MIKE (CONT’D)
What? I just hung up with Larry
Rasky...
He listens, then grabs a pad and starts writing furiously.