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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 75 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 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.
Matt confirms priest after priest against the growing directory list until the tally lands on eighty-seven, three off Sipe's own estimate, and Robby says he wants to talk to MacLeish.
This scene
Robby shuts his door, picks up his phone and dials. It rings. A secretary picks up.
SECRETARY (OVER THE PHONE)
Jim Sullivan’s office.
ROBBY (INTO PHONE)
Walter Robinson for Jim Sullivan.
Tell him it’s important.
A beat, then we hear --
JIM (OVER THE PHONE)
Hey Robby. Everything okay?
ROBBY (INTO PHONE)
I need you to tell me something,
Jim. Could it be ninety priests?
JIM (OVER THE PHONE)
What?
ROBBY (INTO PHONE)
Could it be as high as ninety?
JIM (OVER THE PHONE)
Jesus, Robby.
ROBBY (INTO PHONE)
I need to know, Jim. I wouldn’t be
asking if it wasn’t important.
Silence.
JIM (OVER THE PHONE)
You gotta stop this, Robby.
Click. Robby darkens. Then sees Sacha in the doorway.
SACHA
MacLeish’s assistant said he’s all
booked up, he can’t see us.
ROBBY
The hell he can’t.
Robby exits. Sacha quickly follows. Off Mike and Matt --