Tom McCarthy’s 2016 Oscar winning movie Spotlight gives the true story of how the Boston Globe, under its first Jewish editor Marty Baron uncovered Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal in 2002 in a city that is deeply religious and Catholicism is the way of life. The movie starts at the offices of the Globe in 2001 where the new editor Baron, alienated form the deference to the Catholic church sets the Globe’s investigative “Spotlight” team on an old story about John Geoghan, a retired priest who had been accused of child abuse multiple times. Though reluctant to pursue sealed documents that could implicate the church and the Cardinal Law in an overarching scandal. Initially reluctant to pursue sealed documents that could implicate the …show more content…
“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one,” says Mitchell Garabedian, the attorney whose clients have faced sexual abuse and he alleges that Cardinal Law, the Archbishop, knew about the existence of such priests and covered up for them. Calling most of these cases “shitty” the attorney who had represented a number of victims earlier, Eric MacLeash, highlighted the way such cases were dealt with. Statue of limitation on such cases is 3 years and since most of the victims are kids, they usually do not come forward until years. Even if you argue your way around it the Charitable Immunity statue in U.S. limited the liability to $20,000 and all such cases were dealt in private mediation and were hence never reported. As the team starts investigating the history of Father Geoghan, they come across a victim organisation called Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) headed by one Phil Saviano. Saviano, who had himself been molested as a child links the team to other victims and provides other leads. As the movie subtly starts taking an investigative journalism turn, the team starts uncovering more and more evidence by interviewing victims, looking for patterns and finding documents. The aim then is to prove that such cases of child molestation weren’t those of some “rotten apples” but the whole system knew about it and yet did
One of the most shocking cases involving victims of crime failed by the criminal justice system is the Jimmy Savile scandal that was uncovered in 2012, a year after his death. Jimmy Saville was renown as a famous television, DJ and radio personality and a highly respected man for his charity work within the UK. Nevertheless, he was also one of the UK’s most famous sexual predators and paedophiles who had many victims. His victims included women as well as up to 1,000 young girls and boys, the age range of victims were as low as 5 all the way up to 75, over a 50-year period. He led this lifestyle by abusing his power, and taking advantage of his celebrity status, to feed his
· Dolan, Robert. American Catholic Experience. Philadelphia: University of ND. 1994. · Gleason, Phillip.
The number of sexually abused children is five times what it was in 2012. Jerry Sandusky has contributed to this statistic. Jerry Sandusky was the head coach of the Pennsylvania State Football team (Penn. State). He has a wife and a few children, some adopted from his charity organization, the second mile, but this did not stop him from committing the crimes he did. Jerry Sandusky was convicted of raping ten innocent children, some of which he met through his charity. This earned him thirty-sixty years behind bars. There are issues from this case that are similar to some issues in the play, Twelve Angry Men. Ultimately, throughout both cases the jury was faced with difficult decisions. In both cases the verdict took a long time and a lot of thinking. But, in the end both came out with the right resolution. Sandusky’s reputation of being the guy everyone looked up to made the overall decision of the jury, in this case, inordinately difficult.
Brott, A. (2010). A System Out of Control: The Epidemic of False Allegations of Child Abuse. Retrieved from http://www.fathersmanifesto.net/armin.htm
Malone, Peter. “Catholic Analysis of ‘Doubt’ on Independent Catholic News.” Catholic Analysis of ‘Doubt’ on Independent Catholic News. N.p., 2 Jan. 2009. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Randall, P. (2008). Psychological profiles of clerical and non-clerical men who have sexually abused children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hull.
Sexual abuse is a growing concern in society today. So many people are hurt by the actions of other people when they abuse them, especially in a sexual manner. The Catholic Church is also now being targeted for sexual offenders. Priests have been charged with sexually abusing young boys that are involved with the church. The church has been looking the other way on this issue for many years. The children as well as their family are being hurt and its time something was done to prevent the further exploitation of young boys in the Catholic Church.
For the duration of the 1950's America was absorbed with the fear of the Communists taking control of the country. Joseph McCarthy, a Republican Senator from Wisconsin, heightened the fears many Americans already possessed. McCarthy had a deep hatred for communists, so he devised a plan to make American’s hate communists as much as him, and also had hopes that it would get himself re-elected. McCarthy gave a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia where he held up a piece of paper announcing, "I have here a list of 57 known Communists who are currently employed by the U.S. State Department." Shortly after his speech, McCarthy changed the number of communists in the U.S. State Department from 57 to 205. America had felt safe and at peace from the communists. Now; however, they felt uneasy and panicked at the thought of communists working in their own government. Americans started to demand the names of these people listed on McCarthy's "Blacklist." Congress then started attempting to seek out the people on McCarthy’s list. A particular group that was closely examined was the actors and actresses in Hollywood that McCarthy declared to be communists. Joseph McCarthy used and abused his power of being a senator. In doing so, he created chaos and destruction in the lives of many people, and in most of America.
Alphin, Elaine Marie. An Unspeakable Crime: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, 2010. Print.
In “12 O’Clock News,” Elizabeth Bishop accentuates the difficulty involved in perceiving the “truth.” She utilizes a technique of constructing an exotic world out of objects that can be found in a newsroom. By defamiliarizing a newsroom, she questions our trust in what we perceive. Is it truly a journey to another world or just another perspective on something we are already familiar with? The intent of this transformation is to create a substitute for reality, analogous to the substitute reality which the media presents to us each day as its product, the “news.” The news media are capable of creating a world beyond what we see everyday, presenting us with what appears to be the truth about cultures we will never encounter firsthand. Bishop’s manipulation of a newsroom parallels the way the media distorts our perception of the world, and by doing so questions our ability to find our way out of this fog which is “reality.”
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that 4% of all priests who had served in the US from 1950 to 2002 had allegations of child sexual abuse made against them (John Jay College, 2004; Terry, 2008). Most victims were male and older in age compared to victims in the general population (Terry and Ackerman, 2008).The John Jay College study of child sexual abuse in the US Catholic Church found that 81% of the victims of abuse were male. Richard Sipe, a leading expert on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, reported that of the priests with a tendency to abuse young children, about three-quarters had a preference for abusing boys. The gender preference was more equal among the group of priests who targeted adolescents (Sipe, 1995: 27). Rossetti, (1995) reported on the results of a questionnaire that was sent to more than 7000 adults. Of the 25% that responded, most of the people who completed the questionnaire were either priests, nuns or actively involved in the Catholic Church. 3.3% of the men said that they had been sexually abused by a priest before the age of 18, and 1.7% of the women reported being a...
Childhood sexual abuse has been and continues to be a major issue in American society. Victims of such trauma can illustrate both short-term and long-term side effects, stemming from the damage endured during childhood. In severe cases, unresolved trauma of sexual abuse can have dire consequences. One of the most infamous and publicized case (cases) that illustrated these dire consequences was the Menendez murders of 1989.
The newscast began with a story on the impending appointment of Chicago's next archbishop and a new development in the story – the addition of Francis George, a dark horse candidate, to the list of possible replacements for John Cardinal Bernadin who died five months ago. The new development and the news that...
Widom, Cathy S. "Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Later Criminal Consequences." Trooper (March 1995): 1-8. NCJRS. Web. 15 Mar. 2011.
...Catholic Church authorities had known about the many abuse cases, but sought to deal with the many problems they presented by moving the