Sacha is the one who says the word “rape”, and indeed she is one of only three people in the movie who do so, along with Saviano and Father Paquin. Similarly, the only people who say “molest” are Marty, Mike, Sacha, Matt, Robby, Garabedian and Joe; the only people who say “abuse” are Marty, Sacha, Saviano, Garabedian, and Robby. The only people in Spotlight who were critically looking at the Church and uncovering the abuse (or those who lived through it) use the blunt, unsanitized language about the abuse. The Church and those defending the Church, on the contrary, never use language of “abuse”, “molest”, or “rape.” In fact, Peter Conley tells Robby: “The Cardinal may not be perfect but we can’t throw out all the good he’s doing over a few bad apples.” By calling the 80 plus priests in Boston alone who abused children “a few bad apples”, Conley minimizes and downplays, or “sanitizes” the reality of the abuse. In light of Conley’s comment, Sacha’s urging that they cannot “sanitize” the abuse because “people need to know what really happens” makes more sense; while Conley might be able to minimize the abuse, if there was hope for the general public to not minimize it than the abuse needs to be called what it
Sacha is the one who says the word “rape”, and indeed she is one of only three people in the movie who do so, along with Saviano and Father Paquin. Similarly, the only people who say “molest” are Marty, Mike, Sacha, Matt, Robby, Garabedian and Joe; the only people who say “abuse” are Marty, Sacha, Saviano, Garabedian, and Robby. The only people in Spotlight who were critically looking at the Church and uncovering the abuse (or those who lived through it) use the blunt, unsanitized language about the abuse. The Church and those defending the Church, on the contrary, never use language of “abuse”, “molest”, or “rape.” In fact, Peter Conley tells Robby: “The Cardinal may not be perfect but we can’t throw out all the good he’s doing over a few bad apples.” By calling the 80 plus priests in Boston alone who abused children “a few bad apples”, Conley minimizes and downplays, or “sanitizes” the reality of the abuse. In light of Conley’s comment, Sacha’s urging that they cannot “sanitize” the abuse because “people need to know what really happens” makes more sense; while Conley might be able to minimize the abuse, if there was hope for the general public to not minimize it than the abuse needs to be called what it