Children’s voices are often silenced, especially when it comes to speaking out against a trusted adult, let alone a priest.
This fact was driven home for Broadway star, musician, and actor Brian d'Arcy James when he starred in the Oscar-winning film "Spotlight," where he played a Boston Globe reporter whose investigative team uncovered systemic sexual abuse at Boston area Catholic Churches. The film was released in 2015; the following year it was nominated for 138 awards in which it won 71 of said awards.
Speaking to Northeastern University students recently, James and the reporter he depicted, Matthew Carroll, described the atmosphere in Boston in the early 2000s, when Carroll's investigative team dug into allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
Investigative journalists at The Boston Globe’s Spotlight uncovered evidence proving that not only had Boston priests sexually assaulted children, but the Boston Catholic Church worked with lawyers to pay off the victims and hide any evidence of the assaults. After their lengthy investigation, Spotlight published an article in 2002 presenting their findings. This past January marked the 20th anniversary of the released article.
These children’s voices were initially taken away, but the Boston Globe’s article brought their stories into the light, through “supplying information in a very concise, palatable way.. so that people can understand what happened so they can use that to inform their own lives” Carroll, now a Northeastern journalism professor stated firmly.
Carroll stated in the interview with James that the information the team uncovered had a “huge impact that spread nationally than internationally as other newsrooms jumped on the story. In the end thousands of victims came forward that the Catholic Church had paid untold millions of dollars” to cover up their crimes. Carroll emphasized the importance of accurate and logical written storytelling, “these really horrible things happened to people and this is exactly what happened and this is what the church did.” Even after 20 years, the work the Spotlight team produced has an impact on readers and survivors. The “Spotlight” film amplified the information they uncovered.
Carroll distinguished the difference between the effects of visual and written storytelling. He humbly pointed out that although the published article reached a wide variety of readers, the film “reached so many more people in such a different level in kind of a more visceral level… because you could see people on screen acting out the agonies, they were going through whereas there’s something about the print that is between you and the actual pain.” The authenticity of the film comes from witnessing “people on screen acting out the agonies they were going through” stated Carroll.
There's a great responsibility James said portraying real people in a film. He quickly added that the authenticity of the film, “Spotlight”, is the best way to “be mindful of the victims” and he “hoped that the overall gesture of all the components of the [film] [were] going to be in service of their story and [honor]” the experiences the survivors endured.
The goal of both the editorial and film were to spread awareness and direct attention to the cruel actions of the guilty priests and the Boston Catholic Church. James added that both written and visual storytelling are successful in sharing the “injustice that was happening, [that] people didn't know about.”
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