BOSTON (MA)
The Conversation
September 5, 2018
By Andrew Dodd
If you’ve seen the movie Spotlight, about the Boston Globe investigative reporters who uncovered the staggering extent of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the US, you’re already familiar with the work of Walter V. Robinson. He’s the one played by Michael Keaton in the film.
In today’s episode of Media Files – a podcast about the media and how it works – Robinson shares some insights into where the Spotlight investigation began: from scratch.
“I mean, we made our living doing mostly stories about government corruption and malfeasance and we didn’t have a single file anywhere in all of our file cabinets that had the word ‘priest’ or ‘church’,” he says in today’s episode of Media Files.
“I said, look, let’s do this: let’s assemble a list of everybody we can think of who’s ever had anything to do with this sexual abuse of children in Massachusetts and let’s call them all and see what we can find out.”
The initial trickle of leads would soon turn into a flood.
“We had 300 victims just in Boston alone who contacted us in the first two or three weeks after we published,” he said, adding that, for many, “we were the first people they had ever told and they all thought that they were the only ones that this had ever happened to.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.