Spotlight is the early favourite for Best Picture for the Oscars to be held in Hollywood in about three months’ time.  It is too early to say whether it is going to be the favourite at that time still to win the award, but it is certainly a movie worth watching. It tackles a controversial topic, that of the Catholic Church and its cover-up of Priests involved in molesting children – both boys and girls.  In almost all instances they targeted people that had problems – such as making moves on young boys just after their father had died and the Priest came to comfort them!  

It details how the reporters of The Boston Globe did a proper investigation, revealing that approximately 6% of all Priests are involved in molesting and sexually abusing children and they eventually exposed how a Cardinal had known of all the abuse and covered it up and repeatedly lied to people when he denied that there were any other Priests involved in the abuse.  He lost his position – but was lucky enough to be relocated to the Vatican, so there was no real punishment for him and his role in the cover-up.  It also features lawyers and plaintiff lawyers who, for example, to keep the issue out of the media, it would appear, would never actually issue summonses, but simply send letters of demand to the Church and then settle the cases quickly.  This allowed the abuse to carry on for far longer and far more people to be victimised and it illustrated how lawyers sometimes use their ethical code of keeping quiet as an excuse and don’t really fulfil their role in society – which is something that can be said for many lawyers as well during the apartheid era in South Africa.  It is not the kind of movie that you may want to watch with your 13 year old child, as there are topics that some would consider sensitive, but it is the kind of movie that you should watch with them, because children need to be aware that there are predators out there in all sorts of guises who will prey on them.  As sad as it may be, they cannot be brought up in a world where they believe that they can absolutely trust that doctor with the examination that he or she is about to do of them, or that everything that a Priest does with them is “right”.  

I think that we live in a world where you can believe that most people are good, but that you have to be aware that in every field and every profession and in every corner of society there are people who will abuse or take advantage of children who cannot make proper decisions for themselves at times, and children need to be aware that no matter who it is that starts behaving in a funny way with them, that they should be able to approach their parents with confidence about it.  Sadly movies like this, which have an important message to convey, are never particularly popular and I am sure that there are staff members in my office who, as there are all over, if they went to this movie would say, “It is not my type of movie at all, and I will certainly never go to another movie that Michael recommends.”  The reality is, and I enjoy rubbish movies as much as the next person, a lot of the time we want light entertainment, and this is not light entertainment.  It does tell a gripping story about what journalism should be about, how lawyers can also be a part of the problem, and I would hope more journalists in South Africa would watch a movie like this. I will touch on that in my next blog.

In short, this is a serious movie for serious people and even the Catholic Church is obviously aware as to how damaging the movie could be, has come with a very clever approach – welcoming and encouraging the movie and saying that it is factual and correct.  To come with any other approach would be suicidal and of course, as with all companies, organisations or groups that are ever involved in a scandal, they assure us that things have been cleaned up, largely as a result of this particular newspaper,  In reality we all know that that cannot be true, no matter how sincere the efforts of the Church are, because any organisation will always have rotten apples, we can at least know that the more people that see movies like this, the more likely the next time a Priest puts his hand on a young boy’s pants and starts squeezing his leg a little bit, that the boy might feel more encouraged to speak up.