Wesleyan, Baptist and Catholic are some of the more common Christian religions that people hear of. Unfortunately, for children who were Catholic, it wasn’t a good religion to be in. A team of investigative journalists–Robby, Mike, Sacha and Matt–who work at The Boston Globe start working on a story about a Catholic priest molesting children. Robby is the leader of them all and gives the other three the go ahead to look into it.
While they are looking into it, it becomes much bigger than they thought. Originally, it was 13 suspected priests and then it becomes almost 90 priests that are involved. People didn’t even know the priests were doing it because the children kept quiet for many years. Most didn’t speak up until adulthood. All of the reporters and Robby gave up precious time with their families and friends to work on this story and get sealed documents so that they could prove that all the priests did it. Eventually, Mike persuades a lawyer to help him make the documents public and he is able to get the documents, which prove the priests did it: all 90 of them.
This film teaches people about being persistent, even when someone doesn’t want to help. Mike was relentless when it came to the lawyer who eventually helped him make the documents public. Sacha had one person she was interviewing almost go to a different newspaper with the information he had and she persuaded him not to. Matt worked hard on a database so that they could figure out how many priests were suspected. Robby had a private source who was close to the Church and used him to figure out who did it. This film shows the resilience of the Spotlight team and how they spent a whole year working on this project even through the 9/11 attacks and still made this story possible. By doing this, they were able to help people across the world and open everyone’s eyes to the horrors behind church doors.
