NEW JERSEY
Observer-Tribune
By PHIL GARBER Managing Editor
MENDHAM – It was just too painful to see it alone, so Bill Crane asked his wife, Jane, to go with him to see the film, “Spotlight.”
Monsignor Kenneth Lasch said he knew seeing the film would trigger many difficult memories so he also needed someone to help him get through it.
And Richard Sipe said he cried at the point in the movie when the Boston Globe‘s editor, Marty Baron, tells his staff that he wants to expose the system, and not just individuals, that allowed priests to go unpunished while they sexually abused young boys.
“Spotlight” is the story of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into cases of widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests. The Globe investigation sparked similar probes around the nation and the world. It touched locally when a former priest at St. Joseph Church in Mendham, James Hanley, was defrocked for having abused multiple young boys.
In addition to the priests who have been defrocked and prosecuted, the National Catholic Reporter found that clergy abuse has cost the Catholic Church in America $4 billion since 1950 in settlements, therapy for victims, and other costs.
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