UNITED STATES
Chronicle of Social Change

by Colleen Friend November 15, 2015

“Spotlight,” an independent film based on a column of the same name in The Boston Globe, is about the cover-up of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. The film gets a lot right, from the ensemble cast to the embedded messages about secrets, insiders/outsiders and child sexual abuse (CSA). It is clearly an Oscar contender.

On the evening of November 2nd at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, Calif., director and co-writer Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer explained their two-and-a-half-year crafting process that explored The Boston Globe’s reporting for the column. The Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work demonstrated, in the parlance of the writers, that it took a village to cover up clergy sexual abuse.

Confidential settlements, parish transfers, priests on sick leave or awaiting assignment, and assurances of limited liability all collide here to pique…