A year ago, the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight” introduced the world to Phil Saviano, a Boston activist abused by a pedophile priest, a whistle-blower with a cardboard box full of evidence.
The film shows his repeated attempts to draw The Boston Globe into the story of widespread abuse covered up and ignored by the Catholic church, reporting that led to Cardinal Bernard Law’s resignation and won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize.
Before the film’s release, Saviano recalled, he got dismissed as a crank or conspiracy theorist.
“I guess they did think I was a little bit of a kook,” he said.
On Thursday night, Saviano will attend a Raleigh screening of “Spotlight,” speak briefly and then lead a round table discussion on Friday morning. Since the film’s release, he said, attention is easier to come by.
“A lot of people,” Saviano said, “including members of my own family, now they get it. I think they take me a lot more seriously then they did.”
Thursday’s screening, put on by YMCA of the Triangle and Prevent Child Abuse NC , also features an appearance by Charles Bailey, an abuse survivor who recently relocated to Fuquay-Varina from upstate New York. “We moved down here for the winters,” he joked.
Abused starting at age 10, Bailey authored the book “In the Shadow of the Cross” about his own experiences being raped more than 200 times by the late Rev. Thomas Neary, who was never prosecuted, and has unsuccessfully pressed for the bishop in Syracuse to resign.
He continues to man a national hotline on Wednesdays, talking to victims of abuse by priests nationwide, including in Raleigh. Bailey said reports of abuse have increased since “Spotlight” was released.
“Most of the media say that it’s pretty much over with,” Bailey said, “that the abuse has stopped since the pope said so.”
Watching the movie, Bailey said, is “gut-wrenching.”
“You don’t get over it it,” he said. “It doesn’t pass. It doesn’t go away. You’ve got a prosthetic leg, but every time you walk, every time you go to bed, you’re going to think of that.”
The appearance of Saviano’s character, played in “Spotlight” by Neal Huff, marks a turning-point in the movie’s plot, showing the first time the team of reporters spoke to a survivor. “How do you say no to God, right?” his character asks. “When a priest does this to you, he robs you of your faith. So you reach for the bottle, or the needle, of if those don’t work you jump off a bridge. And that’s why we call ourselves survivors.”
Saviano, who is a leader with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, noted one thing he considered inaccurate about Huff’s portrayal, in which he comes off being passionate, well-informed but a bit odd. The film’s director wanted Huff to leave some doubts in the minds of the audience, Saviano said, and the actor might have taken that direction too well.