Oscar-nominated movie probes clerical sexual abuse
“You know nothing.”
So says the mother of a man who died last year after losing a long-term battle with alcoholism to people who pass judgment on matters relating to child sex abuse without having personally dealt with it in their families.
“Wait until you’ve walked in our shoes,” she says.
The grief that personally engulfed her family was spawned initially by a priest’s sexual abuse of her son when the child was serving as an altar boy in a Catholic church in Los Angeles.
In a sort of perverse way, what is serving as an instrument of healing for that mother and high numbers of other individuals and families across the country who have been victimized by child sexual abuse is the movie Spotlight, which debuted last November and is now gaining momentum leading up to the Academy Awards. That film is in the running for multiple Oscar nods, including best film.
Spotlight resulted from the efforts of a reporting team from the Boston Globe investigating and subsequently uncovering what a recent Los Angeles Times article calls “rampant child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.”
An actress in the movie says she is proud of her participation in a project “that is speaking for a group of people who have been marginalized for decades.’
That is essentially how one person cited in the Times article says he felt for years. He and other victims have noted a cathartic effect from viewing Spotlight, underscored especially by a realization that “survivors are not the ones who should feel the shame.”
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