Dianne Williamson: Clergy sexual abuse scandal in 'Spotlight'

By Dianne Williamson
Telegram & Gazette
November 1, 2015

http://www.telegram.com/article/20151101/NEWS/151109929

Today, it's hard to remember a time when innocent victims of clergy sexual abuse were derided and scorned, when damaged families were hushed by a hierarchy, when the Catholic Church used its considerable power to protect and cover for the criminals within its ranks.

That culture of denial was upended in 2002, when The Boston Globe published an investigative series showing how the church enabled scores of pedophile priests by transferring them from parish to parish, while settling secretly with families who complained.

I don't catch many movies in the theaters these days, but one I plan to see is the well-received "Spotlight," which opens this month and recounts how the Globe's Spotlight team broke the scandal wide open. Its stories led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law and a seismic shift in the public's acceptance of the realities of clergy sex abuse.

The film, starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, is attracting rave reviews along with praise for its respect for the subject matter.

" 'Spotlight' gracefully handles the lurid details of its fact-based story while resisting the temptation to lionize its heroes, resulting in a drama that honors the audience as well as its real-life subjects," says Rotten Tomatoes. Writes Newsweek: "At its heart, 'Spotlight' is an argument against deference to authority, which informs so much great journalism."

On a professional level, I'm well aware of the deep pain caused by the scandal within the diocese of Worcester. More than five years before the Globe's investigative team tackled the topic, this newspaper was writing strikingly similar stories about priestly abuse. Years before the Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting, brave victims were telling us their stories.

One of them, now a middle-aged man who lives in a nearby town, was sexually abused by a priest when he was an altar boy. Years later, still traumatized, he sought counseling from another priest who also sexually abused him. I've written about this man many times and used his name, but last week he said he's trying to put the past behind him.

"It wasn't easy at all," he said. "I just don't want to be associated with the scandal anymore." A decade before it became acceptable to disclose claims of clergy sexual abuse, he sued the diocese of Worcester and was awarded $300,000.

In 1996, after researching court papers and depositions related to the lawsuit, I wrote that the documents "offer disturbing new evidence to bolster long-held suspicions that leaders of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester, from the late Bishop John J. Wright in the 1950s to retired Bishop Timothy J. Harrington, were aware that a significant number of their priests were being accused of sexual misconduct, and yet they failed to protect children from them."

I wrote about the Rev. Brendan O'Donoghue, who was reassigned 12 times in his first 15 years in the diocese, even as officials received complaints that he had sexually abused a child. I wrote that Bishop Harrington admitted that he had received some 30 complaints of sexual abuse involving almost two dozen priests.

"His deposition is 124 pages," I wrote. "The pages are a sad testament of betrayal - betrayal of victims, of church doctrine and of the large number of good and dedicated priests who are unfairly tainted by a legacy of sexual misconduct."

In response, the newspaper was flooded with angry letters and phone calls from people threatening to cancel their subscriptions. We were called Catholic bashers and sensationalists. The victims were lying or looking for money. Thank God, we didn't have a website back then, or our server would have crashed. Readers demanded that I and other reporters working on the stories be fired. My poor Catholic mom begged me to stop writing the stories because she was ashamed to attend Sunday Mass.

Everything changed in 2002, when the Globe published 600 stories of allegations of sexual abuse by 249 clergy in the Boston archdiocese. No longer could the apologists and deniers look away or blame the media. No longer was the church exempt from scrutiny and outrage.

John Mackey of Tewskbury, whose daughter was raped in the early 1990s by Robert Kelley, a former area priest who was recently defrocked, said he and his wife will probably see the movie, but it will bring them little pleasure. They're among scores of people who were victimized by clergy they had revered, who emerged from their anguish with strength and resolve.

"So many lives were hurt, and it was such a devastating thing," Mackey said. "Some people have never recovered. Today, I consider what the church did one of the great American tragedies."