MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette

Dianne Williamson

Posted Nov. 1, 2015

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…