CANADA
Kelowna Capital News
by Paul Hergott – Kelowna Capital News
posted Jul 7, 2016
Watch the Academy Award winning movie Spotlight for the gripping portrayal of investigative journalists working passionately and tenaciously to shine their spotlight on the widespread and systemic abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in the Boston area.
The investigation started small, with one abusive priest. It soon became apparent that the abuse was widespread and systemic, the journalists eventually uncovering close to 90 abusive priests in the Boston area alone.
How could that scale of abuse have been kept under wraps? The movie exposes how the Roman Catholic Church used their considerable influence to discourage disclosure, moved abusive priests from diocese to diocese as their abuse became uncovered, and insisted that the many claims brought against them by victims be settled with confidentiality terms so that they would never see the light of day.
One particular lawyer, Eric MacLeish, had acted for a large number of abuse victims. Frustrated by Mr. MacLeish’s continual refusal to provide details about those settlements, one journalist threatened that the story might focus on his apparent “cottage industry” of profiting from confidential settlements with the church. The confidentiality terms of those settlements, of course, were a key part of the cover-up.
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