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Reports of sexual misconduct by the late British entertainer
Jimmy Savile and other high profile cases are an indication of
the global scope of the problem, and of failures to deal with
it, Tom McCarthy said before his film's screening on Thursday at
the Venice Film Festival.
"These moments where we know people have done things wrong and
we don’t, as a society, we don’t stand up to them, it takes
years and years and years and the question is why? Why does it
take so long?," McCarthy said in an interview on Wednesday.
The Globe's Spotlight team exposed the attacks over a period of
decades by priests in the Boston archdiocese who molested young
boys and girls but instead of being reported to the police were
given counseling and moved to a different parish. The expose led
to the resignation of Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law in 2002.
The film for the most part focuses on how the Globe's team
tracked down and confronted some of the offending priests.
They interviewed victims who were still distraught and disturbed
decades later, and established that the Roman Catholic Church
had a policy of paying victims to remain silent, and not rock
the boat by making their allegations public.
McCarthy said that despite making some concessions to legal
authorities by eventually turning over church records, he
doubted the Church had fundamentally reformed.
“There are still cases in the Church, right? The new Pope
(Francis) just appointed a tribunal with Cardinal (Sean Patrick)
O’Malley out of Boston to oversee these cases but then SNAP (a
victims' group) and all these different organizations are saying
it’s not enough, you’ve appointed an in-house tribunal, we are
not going to get justice from that," McCarthy said.
"I still believe in the Catholic Church, I believe in the good
they can do but they are an institution that has to sort of take
responsibility for the crimes they’ve committed against their
parishioners and their constituency and own it - and they are
not yet."
Ruffalo said he hoped the film would help to build pressure on
the Church to undertake further reforms.
"Many people left the Catholic faith because of a lot of this
and it suffered but I feel like maybe now we can have a
discussion with the Pope that’s in...and maybe it could start
doing some reparations to the credibility of an institution that
has meant a lot to people over the centuries.
"I think it’s essential, it must be done."
(Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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