Spotlight Is Engrossing–and Complex. Here’s the Primer You Need before You See It.
By Eric Levenson and Bryanna Cappadona
The new film Spotlight, out Friday, works at a rapid pace, speeding along with The Boston Globe reporters through their investigation into Boston’s Catholic Church. The movie throws out a number of names quickly — “Geoghan.” “Porter.” “Law.” — so it can be a bit hard to follow in all its details. Here’s a guide to the basics of the story that will help you understand what the heck’s going on. Why is the movie called Spotlight? The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team is an award-winning ensemble of investigative reporters who take many months to largely research, prospect, and uncover large-scale stories. By that very nature, their stories usually pertain to fraud or corruption or abuse. Spotlight is also “the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in the United States,” according to the Globe . Spotlight is noted for exposing child molestations at the hands of many priests in Massachusetts, as well as the intentional coverup within the Catholic Church in 2002—coverage that earned them the Pulitzer’s public service medal in 2003. What you might not know is that Spotlight, under the leadership of Gerard O’Neill, exposed Whitey Bulger as an FBI informant in 1988. O’Neill and fellow Spotlighter Dick Lehr went on to co-author the ever-popular book about Bulger, Black Mass. (Sound familiar?) As for their most recent work, Spotlight delved into concurrent surgeries at area hospitals in October. OK, I remember the basics of the sexual abuse scandal. Was the Spotlight team the first to investigate that?
The core of the team’s reporting and interviewing took place in late 2001, and the Globe published their first story on the case in January 2002. They weren’t the only outlet on the story. An article in March of 2001 in the alt-weekly Boston Phoenix detailed similar accusations against Father John Geoghan, who eventually faced accusations of abusing over 130 children. Written by Kristen Lombardi, that story quoted assault survivors who accused Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston, of ignoring previous warnings. The piece laid out a compelling case that Law knew about the allegations against Geoghan. The Globe’s Spotlight team, with a larger staff and broader readership, used evidence from the Church’s own internal documents to advance the story. Still, some former Phoenix staffers say the Globe never properly gave them credit for that initial work in breaking the story. So the Archbishop of Boston knew? How high up in the Church’s hierarchy is that?
The Catholic Church in Boston is an “Archdiocese,” which is essentially an administration that oversees the wider area. The leader of an Archdiocese is called an Archbishop, and just below him are several bishops. Cardinal Bernard Law was the Archbishop of Boston starting in 1984 and continuing through the events of the film. So when characters in Spotlight mention “Cardinal Law,” they’re referring to a person, and not to specific policies or laws. But back to those other outlets. If other publications did cover clergy sex abuse, what did Spotlight find out that they didn’t? The Spotlight team wrote more than 600 articles on the sexual abuse scandal following their original report. The key evidence in those subsequent articles were interviews with abuse survivors and Church documents proving that Church higher-ups did know about accusations against priests and still kept them in churches. As the movie shows, the Globe filed a request in court to obtain the Church’s internal documents and conversations, which bolstered their case. Though the movie ends after the first story is published in January 2002, reporting over the next year would eventually lead to Cardinal Law’s resignation in December. The Spotlight team grew from its original four-person staff as the story expanded, adding Stephen Kurkjian, Thomas Farragher, Kevin Cullen, and Michael Paulson. How did the Spotlight team get all this information, while others didn’t? Legal documents. In late 2001, the Catholic Church faced 86 civil lawsuits by dozens of abuse victims, but the court ruled in favor of a confidentiality order that kept the public from knowing details. The Globe filed a request with Suffolk Superior Court to overturn that confidentiality agreement and make public the private documents of Church officials. Judge Constance M. Sweeney agreed with the Globe, arguing that releasing documents in the high-profile case was in the public interest. The Massachusetts Appeals Court denied a follow-up appeal from the Church. Who were the priests whose crimes spurred the Globe’s investigation?
The cases of Rev. James Porter and Father John Geoghan are brought up frequently in the film. Father John Geoghan – pronounced like “gei-gen” – was a priest who was accused of molesting or fondling 130 children from 1962 to 1991 in the Boston area. Geoghan was repeatedly reassigned or put on temporary sick leave by the Catholic Church when he was accused of abusing children. His victims were often young; one was just 4 years old. These victims were represented by a lawyer named Mitchell Garabedian in court proceedings in 2001, which were largely kept confidential. Porter was accused of molesting 100-plus children in North Attleboro, New Bedford, and Fall River in the 1960s. A lawyer named Roderick MacLeish Jr. represented these victims. The Globe published dozens of articles on Porter in 1992 and 1993. Porter was sentenced to 18-20 years in prison in 1993. In one case, their patterns of abuse overlapped. This Spotlight story centered on a father-son pair who were both victims of priest abuse; the father by Porter and the son by Geoghan.
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