Seeing and Saying the Truth
The film Spotlight hit the headlines this weekend. Walking off with the award for Best Film at the Oscars, the film has turned the spotlight once more on the evil of covering up sexual abuse in many organisations.
The impact of the cover-up is all the more shocking when the organization is one that is revered and trusted. Churches, police forces, educational institutions, ethnic and religious groups and political parties have been paraded across our TV screens for their failure to prevent or to expose abuse of the innocent and the vulnerable.
Spotlight focused on the difficulties faced by journalists on the Boston Globe who gathered the evidence and published the facts about the cover-up of sexual abuse by priests in the archdiocese of Boston over many years. One of the film’s producers asked how such evil could have been hidden in a community for so many years. I answer that question in my book The Devil to Pay.
I write about a group of boys growing up in Ireland while the rest of humanity was tearing itself apart in the Second World War. They had their own war to fight as they battled with adults, school and the dictates of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
In their early years there is a lot of humour and comic activities. They disappoint adults. Their experience of school is made bearable by their refusal to knuckle down to the regime imposed for ‘their own good’. The absurdity of superstition and ritualistic religious practices is met head on by the boys who see through the sham of religion as it is foisted upon them.
The humour they generate and their comic antics along with their acceptance of physical abuse as normal, exaggerate the wickedness of what was going on. It is only when they are older and look back, that they see the enormity of what happened. It is then that they realise how much of a cover-up there was. They decide the best response is to support the victims by going public with their information. That is when they hit the brick wall of authority. In the face of opposition and serious threats they have to make a choice between their own safety and saying the truth.
My book The Devil to Pay shows how the evil crept in and why the authorities were so desperate to prevent any publicity. The archdiocese of Boston didn’t invent cover-up, they imported a ready made version of it from Ireland. One commentator said the film Spotlight that won the Oscar Award for best film this weekend is almost part two of my book because it focusses on how difficult it was for the journalists to reveal the truth.
I have not been surprised at the level of interest in my book The Devil to Pay. I have received numerous emails about the book along with requests for radio interviews from stations across North America, from El Paso to Seattle, from Wisconsin to Ontario.
Cardinal Pell is addressing many questions today in the enquiry into sexual abuse by priests in the Australian diocese of Ballarat during the 1980 and 1990s. I suspect many of the questions he will face will resonate with each of us when confronted by another example of institutional failure.
Why do individuals do these terrible things?
How could this evil have gone unnoticed?
Would I have noticed had I been there?
What would I have done?
You will find the answers and maybe even more questions in The Devil to Pay.
