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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 74 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.
Sipe's phone call reframes the scope: his 6% estimate implies ninety abusive priests in Boston, not thirteen, and Robby proposes working the directories backwards to find them.
Matt finds a directory entry placing a treatment center just steps from his own house, and pales before leaving to check it in person.
Matt walks the two blocks to confirm the treatment center's address, stunned to find it's a real house on his own street.
Matt tapes a warning note to his own refrigerator, telling his kids to stay away from the house at 276 Pelton Street.
This scene
CLOSE ON a COMPUTER SCREEN. We’re scrolling through the EXCEL SPREADSHEET. Dozens of problematic priests.
REVEAL Mike, Sacha and Matt huddled around the computer. Sacha reads from a large printout. Matt checks it against a short list on a computer screen.
SACHA
Talbot. MATT Yep.
SACHA
Tivnan. MATT Yep.
SACHA
Toma. MATT Yep.
SACHA
Turnbull. MATT Yep.
SACHA
Walsh. MATT Yep.
SACHA
Welsh. MATT Yep.
MIKE
Is that it?
SACHA
That’s it. MATT That’s it.
Mike looks at the screen.
MIKE (CONT’D)
Holy Shit.
MATT
Robby?
Robby looks up from his desk. He walks over to join them.
SACHA
Three off Sipe’s estimate. That’s
incredible.
ROBBY
How many?
MATT
Eighty-seven.
MIKE
Eighty-seven priests. In Boston.
ROBBY
Call MacLeish. I wanna talk to him.
Robby takes the PRINTOUT, walks into --