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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 79 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.
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.
Robby and Sacha corner MacLeish in his lobby and threaten to write about lawyers profiting from abuse settlements unless he confirms the numbers; he admits he sent the Globe a list of twenty priests years ago that was buried.
Over hot dogs, Mike tells Sipe on the phone he still considers himself Catholic despite his estrangement from the institution; after the call drops, Ben arrives with pizza and Mike admits they have eighty-seven names, then presses Ben on whether Saviano's old warnings were ever followed up.
MacLeish's emailed list confirms forty-five priests, and Marty, realizing Law's outsized reaction to the Porter story means he already knew about others, pushes the team to focus on the institution rather than individual predators.
This scene
Sacha sits with the middle-aged-man.
MIDDLE-AGED-MAN
The Bishop came over the house. He
said nothing like this had ever
happened before, they asked us not
to press charges.
SACHA
And what did your mother do?
MIDDLE-AGED-MAN
My mother? She put out freakin’
cookies.
Sacha blinks.
103A INT. DUSSOURD APARTMENT, JAMAICA PLAIN - DAY (FORMERLY 102)103A
A small apartment. MARYETTA DUSSOURD, 57, wears a gold cross.
DUSSOURD
There was a lot of pressure to keep
quiet.
She struggles. Matt across from her, prods...
MATT
From the Church?
DUSSOURD
Yeah, from the Church... but not
just the Church. From my friends,
from the other parishioners...