UNITED STATES
Good Men Project

By Peter Pollard

I sat in a theater in New York’s Times Square recently, soaking in every nuance of the film Spotlight. I already intimately knew the story of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team’s investigation of the Archdiocese of Boston’s cover-up of sexual abuse by scores of its priests. I knew most of the characters: the reporters, the survivors, the attorneys, the Archdiocese’s higher ups – I even caught a glimpse of the name of the priest who sexually abused me back in the mid-1960s on a list of priests under review.

But what moved me most was the two adolescent boys sitting near me in the theater. They were laughing at inappropriate places and nudging one another during some of the most poignant moments in the film. Just before I leaned over to reprimand them for their disrespect, I stopped, and considered the…