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Summary of Spotlight
Team Coverage in 2002
In
January 2002, the Spotlight Team of The Boston Globe began an
investigative series on sexually abusive clergy in the Catholic
Church. Since then, the Spotlight Team has written hundreds
of articles on the crisis. While taking the lead in
publicizing certain cases,
Spotlight reporters have consistently refused to report the stories of female victims. In fact, The New York Times, The Washington Post,
The Boston Herald, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The
Christian Science Monitor, and many other mainstream newspapers have
all published comprehensive
stories on women who were victimized as
children, but until December 27,
after complaints from
all sides forced its members to make a symbolic gesture, the Spotlight Team never profiled any female
survivors of clergy sexual abuse.
Although experts
believe that girls make up
one third to one half of all victims of priests who prey on
children, and nearly
half of the members of major survivor groups are women, the
Spotlight Team has repeatedly asserted that the
vast majority of victims are boys, an unsupported claim
that is especially troubling in view of the
Vatican's attempts to blame the crisis on homosexual clergy.
Moreover, by hanging a males-only sign on the scandal, Spotlight
reporters have made it harder for female victims to come forward and
easier for predatory priests to walk away from their crimes.
While this web site began
in response to the Globe's indifference to repeated complaints from
women, gay men, and other groups, monitoring Globe coverage
has uncovered a level of irresponsibility among both editors and
reporters that extends beyond their mistreatment of female victims of clergy sexual abuse.
In addition to rudely dismissing almost all female survivors, the
Globe has interfered
with efforts to investigate allegations, derailed legal
proceedings, and spread false information about important cases. While the motivation for this journalistic
misconduct is still unknown, this page will be updated as relevant
information is revealed both directly by survivors and in the press.
Updates, 2003
2/16/03:
More Contrasts: Check out the gulf between the
Globe's flattering profile of Bishop Richard Lennon,
Cardinal Law's replacement, and the Herald's latest report on the
way that the
Boston Archdiocese is revictimizing
victims.
To get the whole picture, juxtapose Lennon's efforts to hide his
involvement in reviewing sex abuse cases with revelations published
months ago in the Herald:
Lennon
Tied to Priest Probe.
2/10/03:
Leaving out
women and focusing on the most troubled male victims led the Globe
to present a profoundly distorted picture to the public all last
year, but at
least we can't accuse the Spotlight Team of inconsistency. As evidenced by
the Globe's retooling of its
web page on victims, hostility toward
survivors has
been the most consistent feature of its coverage since the scandal
broke. See Victims as
Criminals? to find out more about this persistently biased
approach. Contrast the
Globe's page with a more realistic
view of survivors of clergy sexual abuse.
2/7/03:
Excuses, Excuses: The Spotlight Team reveals
why it under-reported female victims all last year.
In a front-page article,
Church board dismissed accusations by females, Globe
reporters Matt Carroll and Thomas Farragher used the announcement of
a series of cases involving female victims to explain why the
Spotlight Team refused to cover this aspect of the crisis throughout
2002. Click here for new insight into
Globe standards of investigative journalism.
1/15/03:
Church claims new victim: Spotlight editor Walter V. Robinson duped
by Archdiocese
Months ago, after Paul R. Edwards alleged that the late Rev. William
J. Cummings and Monsignor Michael Smith Foster had sexually abused
him during the 1980's, the Globe's Spotlight Team
concluded that it was safe to annihilate the accuser because neither
priest had ever been charged with abuse before. The Globe proceeded
to
publish over a dozen articles that were designed to
demolish Edwards'
credibility. Now, new information on Cummings has
forced Spotlight editor
Walter V. Robinson to take back some of the lies that he used to
destroy Edwards and depict Foster as the poster priest of the falsely accused.
Click here to see Robinson's efforts to
hide his misjudgments and shield himself from blame.
Updates, 2002
12/31/2002: A
Boston Herald investigation of Globe reports
on Paul R. Edwards, who alleged that he had been abused by
Monsignor Michael Smith Foster and the late Rev. William J.
Cummings, shows that the Spotlight Team published false and
misleading statements about the accuser. Despite repeated
complaints, the Globe has yet to
correct any of its documented errors. Instead, Spotlight
reporter Matt Carroll
has elected to perpetuate public confusion by drawing a
distinction between "napping" with a half-naked priest and suffering
genuine sexual abuse. Click here to
learn more about Carroll's surprising opinions on child
molestation. |
apologies by Church officials, and
explicit admissions of guilt issued by members of the Church
hierarchy, it is impossible to
imagine what kind of evidence these journalists need to confirm our
accounts. Moreover, after reviewing evidence presented by
women, the Spotlight Team ignored the information, not because it
lacked credibility, but because it did not seem to meet