MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Magazine
Kristen Lombardi of the Phoenix connected the dots in 2001. The Globe’s Spotlight Team debuted their series in 2002. Where’s the confusion?
By Kyle Clauss | Boston Daily | October 30, 2015
People forgo plenty of things in order to become journalists, chief among them sleep and independence from caffeine. What journos do fuss over, and with great fervor, is credit for their work. With the release of Spotlight, the star-studded early Oscar favorite chronicling the Boston Globe‘s award-winning investigation into sex abuse and subsequent coverups inside the Catholic Church, a 13-year-old debate over who deserves credit for breaking the story first has arisen again.
Kristen Lombardi, a BU alum, arrived at the Boston Phoenix in 2000 as a news and features reporter, following stints at the Brookline and Newton Tabs and the Phoenix’s sister publication in Worcester. In January 2001, Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston, was named a defendant in a number of ongoing, under-the-radar cases involving pedophile priests, including one involving Father John Geoghan. Figuring the judge’s decision likely meant the victims had enough evidence to prove that knowledge of Geoghan’s abuse had stretched far enough up the Church hierarchy to implicate Cardinal Law, Phoenix editor Susan Ryan-Vollmar told Lombardi to start digging.
“[My editors] were convinced that the Globe or the Herald would do something with that,” Lombardi says. “But they didn’t. I did.”
She pored through court documents and spoke with victims, receiving ample pushback from the Church along the way. She looked at other sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priests across the country, and developed relationships with attorneys who specialized in such cases. Her first-ever investigative piece for the Phoenix, “Cardinal Sin,” ran in March 2001. The findings were damning, and the lede, a punch to the gut:
ASK MARK KEANE who orally raped him when he was a teenage boy, and he’ll answer: Father John Geoghan. Ask him who should bear the cross for this heinous act, and he’ll answer: Cardinal Bernard Law.
Law, Keane believes, had direct knowledge that Geoghan, who worked in the Archdiocese of Boston from 1962 to 1993, was molesting children. And Law, Keane alleges, didn’t just let the priest keep working; he allowed Geoghan to stay at parishes where he enjoyed daily contact with children — one of whom was Keane.
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