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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 92 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.
Flipping through a BC High yearbook, Robby finds Father Talbot's faculty photo just as Mike calls with news he won't believe.
On the phone, Mike tells Robby the fourteen exhibits are huge and that Albano says a new motion can force Garabedian to refile them.
Marty gets out of his car and walks into the Globe on a beautiful September morning.
This scene
It’s pretty empty. Marty walks in, heads toward his office, but slows when SOMETHING on a TV catches his attention. He walks to the TV, joins A YOUNG REPORTER already watching.
MARTY
What happened?
YOUNG REPORTER
They’re saying it’s a prop plane but
that’s not a prop plane.
We glimpse the TV. The World Trade Center. On fire.
MARTY
Tell Linda to get every reporter we
have in here now.