MASSACHUSETTS
Daily Mail (UK)
By MARTIN GOULD IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
It’s the story you won’t see on the big screen when Oscar front-runner Spotlight hits theaters this week: how the biggest sex scandal to hit the Roman Catholic Church might never have been exposed if it wasn’t for one man contracting AIDS.
It wasn’t that Phil Saviano had caught the disease from an abusive priest, but rather that he thought he had only weeks to live so decided to forgo a five figure payout from the church that would have forced him to keep silent.
Instead Saviano’s tenacity provided the essential evidence that led to The Boston Globe’s team of investigative reporters breaking the story that the church had deliberately covered up the fact that dozens — later learned to be hundreds — of children had been molested.
‘If I hadn’t had AIDS, I would have been at the top of my career in public relations and coming out as having been sexually assaulted as a child would have been very difficult for me,’ Saviano told Daily Mail Online in an exclusive interview.
‘AIDS freed me up to do something I would not have done otherwise.’
Saviano, now 63, is a minor but key player in the movie — which is being compared to the 1976 Watergate classic All the President’s Men for the way it shows intrepid journalists breaking a major story.
Spotlight is already tipped to run off with the top Oscar. Tom O’Neil, editor of the awards prediction website Gold Derby has installed it as 13/2 favorite for the honor ahead of such blockbusters as Steve Jobs, The Danish Girl and Bridge of Spies.
‘It’s a very powerful movie,’ O’Neil told Daily Mail Online. ‘It has an “ick” factor because of the subject matter which is a little scary, but that’s what makes it such a brave film.
‘It really resonates with the audience because it seems fair, it doesn’t go out to crucify the Catholic Church.’
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