Hopefully by now you have heard of the movie,
Spotlight, after its three Golden Globe nominations and hopefully you have seen it. If not, the film is about The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in the United States and their investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in Massachusetts and the cover up behind it. In 2003 the team received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
I've been a fan of the writer/director,
Thomas McCarthy, for years and was excited to see his latest film, (especially since his last one, The Cobbler, was quite the disaster) and was not disappointed. Because the actual Spotlight team seemed very much involved with the film I wanted to look into them a bit more. Below is a break down of the real life team and who portrayed them in the film.
Who: Walter
"Robby" Robinson
Portrayed by: Michael
Keaton
Bio: Robinson is
a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The Boston Globe, where he
worked as reporter and editor for 34 years. Since 2007, he has been a
Distinguished Professor of Journalism at the Northeastern University in Boston.
Robinson led the Globe's coverage of the Roman Catholic
clergy sexual abuse scandal, for which the newspaper won, and he personally
accepted, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The last investigation
Robinson led for the Spotlight Team, called "Debtors Hell", exposed
the practices of debt collectors. That work was a finalist for the Local
Reporting Pulitzer in 2007. The Pulitzer Board cited the staff's "well
documented exposure, in print and online, of unscrupulous debt collectors,
causing two firms to close and prompting action by state officials."[
1]
Who: Michael
Rezendes
Portrayed by: Mark
Ruffalo
Bio: Michael
Rezendes is a member of the Globe's Spotlight Team and is one of the reporters
and editors who won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for
investigating sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The reporters also won the
George Polk Award for National Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative
Reporting, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, and numerous other
honors.
As a staff writer and editor at the Globe since 1989,
Rezendes has covered presidential, state and local politics, and was a weekly
essayist, roving national correspondent, City Hall Bureau Chief, and the
assistant editor for national news. He was also part of a team that won a
first-place award from the Education Writers Association for a special section
on the legacy of school desegregation.
In 2008 and 2009, he was the recipient of a John S. Knight
journalism fellowship at Stanford University.[
1]
Who: Sacha
Pfeiffer
Portrayed by: Rachel
McAdams
Bio: Pfeiffer is
a columnist and reporter covering nonprofits, philanthropy and wealth, and was
on the Spotlight investigative team that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public
Service for its stories on clergy sex abuse. She has also been a senior
reporter and host of All Things Considered and Radio Boston at WBUR, Boston’s
NPR station, and a host of NPR’s nationally syndicated Here & Now. At WBUR
she won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for broadcast reporting. Pfeiffer was
a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University and co-authored
Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church. [
1]
Who: Matt Carroll
Portrayed by: Brian
d'Arcy James
Bio: Matt Carroll
has worked at the Globe since 1987 and has been a member of the Spotlight team
since 1997. Before becoming a reporter, he worked as a copy editor on the
Business desk for two years.
As a reporter, Carroll has covered real estate and the
MetroWest area. In 1994 he started the Globe's first internal website, which is
used by reporters and editors, under the tutelage of the Information Technology
Department.
Carroll specializes in computer-assisted reporting and
handles the paper's growing library of databases.[
1]
Who: Marty Baron
Portrayed by: Live
Schreiber
Bio: Baron began
working for The Miami Herald in 1976, then moved to The Los Angeles Times in
1979 and to The New York Times in 1996. He returned to the Herald as executive
editor in 2000 and was at the helm of coverage of numerous key stories,
including Elián González' return to Cuba and the 2000 election.
Baron's editorial helm at the Globe, where he succeeded
Matthew V. Storin, shifted the paper's coverage of international events to
locally centered investigative journalism. The Globe 's coverage of the
Boston Catholic sexual abuse scandal earned them a Pulitzer Prize.[
1]
Who: Ben Bradlee
Jr.
Portrayed by: John
Slattery
Bio: Ben Bradlee
Jr. has spent 23 years with Globe, first as a reporter and for the past 13
years as an editor.
As a reporter, Bradlee worked on the Spotlight Team, at the
State House bureau, and was the paper's national correspondent from 1982 to
1986. He has reported from Afghanistan, South Africa and elsewhere.[
1]
In 1993, he was promoted to be Assistant Managing Editor
responsible for investigations and projects. In that role, he edited the
Globe's reporting that uncovered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston's
repeated cover-ups of sexual abuse of children by priests, a painstaking
investigation that began in 2001 and continued for two years.[
2]
Who: Mitchell Garabedian
Portrayed by: Stanley
Tucci
Bio: He is the
founder of Garabedian Law and since 1979 has focused on helping individuals and
representing victims of sexual abuse. He has successfully argued that the First
Amendment of the United States Constitution does not bar clergy sexual abuse
cases. He has successfully argued that state statute of limitations have not
expired in cases brought by adults who were sexually abused when they were
young children. In his advocacy work, he has successfully represented
individuals in Massachusetts trial and appellate courts, as well as in the
United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He drafted
legislation that added clergy to the list of mandatory reporters of child
abuse. He continues to represent sexual abuse victims and support changes in
legislation.[
1]
Who: Eric
Macleish
Portrayed by:
Billy Crudup
Bio: Eric
MacLeish is a 1978 cum laude graduate of Boston University Law School. He
clerked for the U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro following graduation.
He was the co-founder of the Boston offices of two national law firms;
Greenberg Traurig and Eckert Seamans, where he was national co-chair of the
litigation department. He has been recognized as one of the top ten winning
trial lawyers in the country by the National Law Journal and has received numerous
awards for his work including the Champion for Justice Award from the National
Crime Victims Bar Association.[
1] In
the early 1990s MacLeish represented hundreds of victims of sexual abuse by priests. He
and other lawyers won sizable sums of money for their clients (and themselves)
by settling cases with the Roman Catholic Church confidentially. The film notes
he was someone who tried early to alert the Globe to a large number of priests
accused of abuse in Boston.[
2]
Who: Phil Saviano
Portrayed by: Neal Huff
Bio: Phil Saviano
is a significant figure in the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. He
founded the organization's New England chapter, which held its first meeting
under his leadership on May 10, 1997, and he has also served as SNAP's web
master. Saviano's public involvement in the abuse crisis dates to an interview
he gave to the Boston Globe for a January 8, 1993 article about the Rev. David
A. Holley. In subsequent years, Saviano researched Holley's career in
Massachusetts, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado, becoming in the process an
expert on the Holley file and the Catholic church's transfer practices
generally.[
1]
Who: Joe Crowley
(L)
Portrayed by: Michael
Cyril Creighton (R)
Bio: [
From
this article]He was a 15-year-old student at Boston College High School, on
a college path, when a predator wearing a Roman collar named Paul Shanley
changed all that. Shanley abused Crowley, then sent him to other men.
Who: Patrick McSorley
Portrayed by:
Jimmy LeBlanc
Bio: In 1986,
McSorley said Geoghan visited his home to offer condolences after his father
committed suicide. Geoghan took McSorley out for ice cream and sexually abused
him in the car. At the time, Patrick was 12 years old. A troubled life followed
the incident. McSorley spent many years in and out of drug rehabilitation
centers to overcome his substance abuse problem. Last June, he nearly drowned
in the Neponset River. A month later, he was arrested on drug charges.
McSorley was one of hundreds of Geoghan victims who sued the
archdiocese.[
1]
Sadly, Patrick passed away in 2004, you can read more about
him
here.
Who: Richard Sipe
Portrayed by: Richard Jenkins
Bio: A.W. Richard Sipe is a former Benedictine monk-priest
of 18 years, a sociologist and author of 6 books about Catholicism American
Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor trained specifically to deal with
the mental health problems of Roman Catholic Priests. He practiced
psychotherapy, "taught on the faculties of Major Catholic Seminaries and
colleges, lectured in medical schools, and served as a consultant and expert
witness in both civil and criminal cases involving the sexual abuse of minors
by Catholic priests". During his training and therapies, he conducted a
25-year ethnographic study published in 1990 about the celibate/sexual behavior
of that population. In 1970 [
1]
He is not seen in the film but rather speaks over the phone with Rezendes
multiple times.
The Boston Globe team also wrote a book,
Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, that goes more into what the team found and learned rather than the investigation itself. I received a free trial to Audible and saw the book was available so I decided to download it. I've never really done the book on tape before and am planning on buying the actual book because there is so much information, so many names, that having the opportunity to highlight and flip back and forth would have made following along a lot easier.
Yes, it is a tough book to get through, but any time I thought, "man, I can't listen to more of this" I would remember that the survivors need their voices and stories heard.
The Spotlight team aren't psychologists, so I understand why the book didn't delve more into that aspect of priests and why this was such a common occurrence in the church. I mention this because in the movie, Sacha goes to a home of one of the priests and he admits without hesitation that he molested boys. The scene is brief and jaw dropping but nothing more is mentioned about him in the rest of the movie. That man's name is Ronald H. Paquin and he too, was raped by a priest when he was growing up. There is that cycle of abuse that sadly happens, but why did he not feel guilt when he molested someone else? He claims he never felt gratified and doesn't consider himself a pedophile because he's not a predator. Then there is Paul Shanley, a "street priest" who catered to drug addicts, runaways and others, some of whom struggled with their sexuality. He took advantage of his position as well as those who were vulnerable. There are just so many "whys" in my head that I can't fully articulate. One is, why is this such a common occurrence in the church? Until the scandal broke, it wasn't common knowledge that this was happening, I can't imagine someone thinking "I'm going to become a priest to give in to my sick thoughts." If anyone out there knows of any books or journals or articles that look into the psychology of all this, recommendations would be great.
To read more about the Boston Globe's coverage of the scandal and their archives, visit
here.
