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Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015
Scene 94 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.
Marty gets out of his car and walks into the Globe on a beautiful September morning.
Marty spots the burning Twin Towers on TV and tells staff to get every reporter into the newsroom immediately.
The newsroom watches Cardinal Law address the public after 9/11 as Ben pulls the Spotlight team off the Church story to cover the terrorist attack and its Massport fallout.
This scene
Garabedian works at his desk. The phone rings, he picks up.
GARABEDIAN (INTO PHONE)
Mitchell Garabedian.