CONNECTICUT
Yale News
It was fear of a new boss that prompted longtime Boston Globe journalist Walter “Robbie” Robinson and his investigative team to get the ball rolling on its Pulitzer Prize-winning series about the Catholic church’s cover-up of sexual abuse by priests in the Boston archdiocese.
Robinson, now editor-at-large of the Boston Globe, led the newspaper’s investigative Spotlight team for seven years until 2006. In 2002, the team began the series of stories revealing that for years the church knew about and covered up sexual abuse in its ranks — sometimes with secret settlements with victims. The team’s investigative efforts were portrayed in the Academy Award-winning 2015 movie “Spotlight” (in which Michael Keaton played Robinson).
Robinson and other Boston Globe reporters reacted like “deer caught in the headlights” when their new boss, Marty Barron, asked his staff during his first news meeting with them about a lawsuit involving one priest, the journalist told the audience during a well-attended conversation with Dr. Richard Schottenfeld, head of Davenport College, in the college’s common room. The judge had put the records that the church provided the plaintiff under seal, and Barron asked the reporters what was being done to gain access to them.
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