Sometimes when serious illegal situations happen, the people who partake in them try to cover the incident up. In the film “Spotlight,” Robby Robinson, Mike Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Matt Carroll are all a part of the Boston Globe newspaper. But they are also a part of a special investigation team called Spotlight. The Boston Globe ends up getting a new editor, Marty Baron, who wants them to dig into a story that the Globe had overlooked years ago. The group is told to investigate a story about a priest who had been accused of molesting children.
At the beginning of the film, the Spotlight team was excited to pick up this new case. A hard part of this investigation was that the team did not have any databases at the time. They had to go to the library and ask around to get their information. The Spotlight team starts to investigate one of the stories behind one singular priest who had an allegation against him. He was a Catholic priest and was accused of molesting children. As the team worked on investigating this singular priest, it was like a dam broke open. The more they investigated one story, they found out that 12 other priests could have been molesting other children. The team started asking questions of the legal teams that had dealt with the cases. They had been dealt with under the table, not through the system. The questioning also led the team to believe that it could have been as many as 90 priests instead of 13.
Throughout the story, Rezendes finds an attorney who was working on behalf of the victims. He is able to sit down and talk with this attorney named Mitchell Garabedian. Rezendes had tried to ask Garabedian some questions, but it was all mostly confidential. Garabedian said, “But they’re no better than us. Look at how they raise their children. Mark my words Mr. Rezendes, if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.”
Although Garabedian is not allowed to give out much information about his clients, he just gave away a crucial piece of information. Garabedian just showed that it was not just one priest who is molesting children. When looking into previous cases, the team is able to talk to Richard Sipe, a former priest who had been studying this behavior for decades. He said, “But the fact remains that this creates a culture of secrecy that tolerates and even protects pedophiles.” The man went on to say that the Catholic Church had been notified that that priest pedophilia was a billion-dollar liability.
The team went around interviewing the victims. Without their statements, they wouldn’t have been able to get a story. One of the women said, “It was a lot of pressure to keep quiet” A reporter asked, “From the church?” The woman replied, “Yeah from the church…. But not just the church… from my friends, from the other parishioners.” The victims were told not to say anything about the situation. The Spotlight team was able to interview many people and get the information they needed. There were even priests who confessed to committing the crimes.
Before this film, few people would have been aware of this issue. If a viewer watches the film, it will talk about the people in situations wanting to keep everything “concealed.” This means that the church did not want a lot of people to hear about it. By watching this film, viewers will see how important journalists and media are to our society and country. This film shows that victims of assault and abuse often get overlooked and do not get justice. Viewers will learn that sometimes journalists must go against what the public is saying to get the real story. The people who partook in the situation will do their best to cover it up. This is why investigative journalists are so important. They show what is happening behind closed doors.
Each investigative journalist, including Robby, Mike, Sacha and Matt, had to give up some sort of relationship. They each had to give up on the story they had been working on at the beginning of the film. All of the special investigative journalists had to give up their reputations and not listen to the public’s opinion to work on this story. Each person on the special team gained the respect they had lost from the people questioning them. While investigating this story, each member of Spotlight had lost respect of the public because they would not let this story go. But by the end of the film, the Spotlight team had earned respect for getting the details of this case. Everyone on the Spotlight team wanted to bring justice to all of the people who had been so wronged when they were little children.
