GEORGIA
Connect Savannah
By Jim Morekis
jim@connectsavannah.com
@jimmorekis
A KEY SCENE in the movie Spotlight — which just won the coveted Best Picture Oscar — is when the Boston Globe investigative team finds the paper trail of transferred priests the Boston Archdiocese knew were guilty of child sex abuse.
Watching the film in Savannah, when Michael Corbett saw the real name of the priest who had abused him flash onscreen, it was a bittersweet moment of triumph.
“That whole montage, where they start finding all the names and begin unraveling the church’s coverup, really hit home,” he says. “It was a real sense of validation.”
A longtime counselor at Savannah Arts Academy after his move here from Boston in 2005, Corbett says he was the target of abuse by Father Robert Gale in July 1993.
The arc of his recovery has been long. Only recently has he been able to fully come to terms with the abuse and its impact on his life.
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