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Bangor Daily News
By Shonna Milliken Humphrey, Special to the BDN
Posted April 15, 2016
The Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight” compels audiences to re-think institutionalized child sex abuse and the systemic protections for those responsible. Because of “Spotlight,” it is now impossible to sanction intimate relationships between little boys and clergy members without first considering child safety.
But what about lesser-known, secular or smaller organizations with a similar history? Instead of victims numbering in the thousands, what happens when the victim count is in the mere hundreds? Or dozens?
As the real-life Boston Globe Spotlight news team reported its story in 2002, a lawsuit against the American Boychoir School was working its way through the New Jersey court system with similar details — decades of abuse and systemic protection of perpetrators.
However, whereas the Catholic Church is being held accountable by Mark Ruffalo’s hard-charging investigative “Spotlight” reporting, the American Boychoir School is now fictionalized and celebrated on film via “Hear My Song” with Dustin Hoffman cast as choirmaster to an unwanted and troubled young boy.
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