Timeliness is so crucial
in any big project. For journalists,
you break a story. You’re ahead of
everybody else. You put a story out there
that no one else has done. Woodward and
Bernstein absolutely broke the Watergate story. Seymour Hersh
broke the My Lai story. And since it was 15 years
before The Boston Globe, it’s certainly fair to say
I broke the Catholic Church story. “It is a scandal that sent
shock waves from Boston to Rome.” “The Boston Globe uncovered
a massive sex abuse scandal and cover-up within a
local Catholic church.” “Defrocked priest John Geoghan
is accused of molesting and raping more than 100 boys,
some as young as 4 years old.” “He should go to prison. That’s what I think.” “It’s a report that
shook the world.” “I thought that this
story had to be told. It was the right
time to tell it.” “And the Oscar
goes to ‘Spotlight.’” [DRAMATIC MUSIC] So the story began
15 or 20 years before the Globe coverage — not
on the national radar screen. [MUSIC: “THE STAR
SPANGLED BANNER”] It was 1984. “Thank you very much.” “Nobody steps on a
church in my town.” “Introducing Macintosh.” “All-you-can-eat
fried shrimp.” [APPLAUSE] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] I remember my Mexican
grandmothers were so happy in church with me. They believed in a
certain joy in faith. So I had a very benevolent
sense of the church. And then later, I got
to Jesuit high school, that stresses the
Socratic method, where a question leads to answer,
answer leads to question, and with each answer comes a
stronger foundation to branch out with more questions. I never set out to
become a journalist. I thought that I
would write a novel. In the meantime, I was earning
a living as a freelance, and I just sort of became
a reluctant muckraker. I started doing
investigative reporting. Gilbert Gauthe was a priest
in the Lafayette Diocese. He was ordained. He had been molesting children
for a number of years. And they kept moving him
to different parishes, until finally, one parent
went to the district attorney. And by chance, I got
access to depositions about this pedophile priest. I will never forget sitting
in that law office in New Orleans with the shades
open in the late afternoon and the light coming in,
powdering these deposition pages, and reading
the bishop explain why he had allowed Father
Gauthe to go from one parish to another to another,
back in circulation. I said, “This is a
priest molesting kids.” I had just become a
father for the first time. And I was just so
appalled by it and how much the bishop knew
about this man’s history and had kept recycling him. Nuns gave me textured,
well-detailed interviews. When a child would be
called out of class to go see Father
Gauthe, they knew exactly what he was doing
and told the bishop and got nowhere. I’m here chronicling
this darkness, this evil, that has beset the oldest
church in Christendom. My church. The case had been building up. This is not about one
sick man who has committed crimes against children. This is about a sick hierarchy
that’s been covering up. This is like Watergate. “I shall resign the presidency
effective at noon tomorrow.” For two young reporters
outside the inner circle of the newsroom to get this
kind of information that would cause the president of
the United States to resign, that was quite a
remarkable feat. And I kept thinking
of the line by Senator Howard Baker of
Tennessee, a Republican, who said, I just want
to know, what “did the president know,
and when did he know it?” My mother was — the
conversations with my mother. We went over there one
Sunday night for dinner. And she started asking
me all these questions. “Well, what did
the bishop know?” And I said, “Look, off the
record, off the record, off the record — he
knew everything.” She said, “It has to come out.” And my grandmother was sitting
next to her, and she says, “It absolutely has to come out.” [CHEERING] I had a contact at
The Washington Post. They didn’t want
to go near it. Rolling Stone didn’t want it. The Nation. I think you know The
New York Times Magazine. Nobody wanted this thing. Maybe I’m not doing
it the right way. I’ve got information that
something’s happening here, but I can’t believe this is
the only place that this has happened. Someone had told me about
National Catholic Reporter. And I got through to
the editor, Tom Fox. And he started
talking about cases they had learned about in
other parts of the country. And my light bulb went off. I thought, “A-ha. This isn’t just in the
swamps of Louisiana. Whoa.” Here’s the stuff. The piece ran in
three parts in 1985, with a joint assignment for
National Catholic Reporter and The Times of Acadiana. “You’re 19, Denton, and you’re
from Abbeville, La. In your early teens, you
were molested and sodomized by Father Gilbert —” “Gauthe.” “Gauthe. Father Gauthe.” To me, it was a political
story from the outset. It was a story of a cover-up. The bishop engaged, really,
in a systematic cover-up, and that cover-up
has been replicated across the country. A number of priests I’ve
interviewed believe very strongly, and I agree, that
pedophilia in the clergy has really become the Watergate
of the Catholic Church. This was in 1988. And I became an
article machine. It was sort of like
a flare, if you will. Gradually, I realized,
OK, now what? Where do I go with this? “‘Lead Us Not Into Temptation,’ It’s just out in paperback. Jason Barry —” It’s called “Lead Us
Not Into Temptation.” It took six and a half years. And I kept getting
rejections from publishers. It was an uphill push. I wrote that book as
a freelance writer. I kept that reporting alive. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] When the book
came out in 1992, the presidential primary
was moving into high gear. The media just moved on. By that time, I was in
severe financial straits. Credit card didn’t work. And my wife, Lisa, had
our second child, Ariel, who had Down syndrome and
congestive heart failure. And I knew that Ariel
would have a hard road. She had open heart
surgery at 2 1/2. I lost a great deal of working
time because of my child’s needs. When the bishops say that
life in the womb is sacred and at the same
time, for years, have been playing musical
chairs with pedophiles, something doesn’t wash. I would go off to
these talk shows. And I’d go on “Donahue” or
“Oprah” and say my piece. Nobody ever asked
me, “What does this do to you as a Catholic?” And I was in a
freefall spiritually, wondering what to believe. I wondered, what
was the pope doing? Why weren’t there powerful
statements coming out of the Vatican? Question leads to answer,
answer leads to question. Why is this
continuing to happen? “From 15 to 17.” “From 15 to 17 years old.” Testimony was there, and the
news media ignored the story. “The priest admitted
to the sexual abuse. The priest was still
allowed to stay a priest. Then the abuse continued. I continued to be
sexually abused.” “In other news —” “In other news —” “In other news —” [DRAMATIC MUSIC] But the overriding
concern in my life was my daughter, Ariel. That is where I was focused. I thought, OK,
I’ve said my piece. Ten years of my life, and
the media lost interest. If the church isn’t
going to change, I’m not going to spend
the rest of my life trying to lead the mule to water. I just had one
prayer for years. Let my little girl live. Please let her live. Who understands why we suffer? I’ve never found
the answer to that. But to me, the
narrative of life has to have some
kind of resolution. “In the wake of a Boston Globe
Spotlight investigation —” [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] “— story of how The Boston
Globe uncovered a massive sex abuse scandal.” “It is a scandal that sent
shock waves from Boston to Rome.” “A recent Globe Spotlight
report uncovered documents supporting the allegations.” “In Boston today, the
Catholic Church has given law enforcement the names of
22 more priests who were suspected of sexually
abusing children.” “Geoghan abused seven
boys in her family —” “— while top church
officials knew.” [SOMBER MUSIC] “Two-time Academy Award
nominee Mark Ruffalo plays Mike Rezendes —” “And I thought, Wow. If the church had put him in
charge of altar boys after knowing that he’d been
abusing children for 30 years, we’re onto something very,
very seriously wrong.” Rezendes called me. He said, “Oh, I’m in
Toronto on the set.” I’m like, “What kind
of set are you on?” He said, “They’re making
a movie of the Spotlight.” I said, “Oh, oh, what do you need from me?” He said, “Jason, we got this scene
with a survivor. And the actor holds up your
book and says your book.” “Have you read
Jason Berry’s book? He wrote about the Gauthe
case in Louisiana.” “Uh, that’s G?” “G-A-U-T-H-E.” It was a good film. It deserved the Academy Award. It deserved the
Pulitzer Prize. What can I tell you? Look, I don’t feel any
proprietary ownership of this story. Rather, the opposite. The meaning, for
me, is knowing I played some small
role and to treat these narratives
with the respect that the victims deserve. The impact that I had on other
journalists. My relationships with survivors, with renegade
priests, with radical nuns — and I mean “radical”
in the best sense. Roots. First things. Human justice. I wouldn’t trade that for
a barrel of money or high prizes. I do think Pope Francis
is a historic figure and a reformer. But I think it’s a start. I go to church
because I feel closer to my deceased daughter. My little girl loved
going to church. And she was maybe the most
loving human being I’ve ever known. Paul to the Corinthians, he
says, “For our boast is this: the testimony of
our conscience that we have behaved in
the world to be decent.”
