UNITED STATES
Belleville News-Democrat
BY LYNN VENHAUS
For the News-Democrat
The best movie of the year to date, “Spotlight” is a game-changer.
It may boost the profile of methodical newspaper journalism and draw further attention to sexual misconduct cases, as it depicts issues that reverberate to this day. But it will indeed start a conversation.
In 2012, two American experts told a Vatican summit that in the United States there had likely been 100,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse and the church had spent $2.2 billion in settling litigation. This contemporary crisis has been the focus of news accounts for at least 25 years, and because of those revelations, concerned efforts to “Protect God’s Children” have been ongoing since the early 2000s.
The clarion call to action points to sweeping reforms across the globe after the Boston Archdiocese scandal was uncovered by the Boston Globe in 2002. And now, “Spotlight,” the first comprehensive film on the subject, provides meticulous details.
This unvarnished, true account of the Globe’s startling investigation chronicles how they gathered evidence on 90 priests who had been accused of molesting youths and the subsequent cover-up by church officials.
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