Mike Rezendes: Nonconformist

Mike Rezendes

“When you’re a poor kid from a poor family and when the priest pays attention to you, how do you say no to God?”-Phil Saviano. After Mike Rezendes and the Spotlight team heard his testimony over the church allowing the abuse to continue and doing nothing about it, he was convinced that this was a story that needed to be heard. Mike Rezendes from Boston Massachusetts, and a reporter for the Boston Globe, graduated from Boston University with a BA in English. He then later received an MFA from The American Film Institute. Right away he started journalism at a very small neighborhood weekly newspaper in East Boston Massachusetts. At that time the purpose of the newspaper was to be a voice for low income people that were struggling

In his time with the Spotlight team he has covered the issue of sexual abuse in the catholic church, the Sept. 11 attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon, and financial corruption in the nation 's charitable foundations. If you were to ask me who is someone I would consider a nonconformist, to answer your question it 's this guy right here. particularly in the fifties and sixties the catholic church was an enormously influential institution and it was a place nobody dared to challenged until this story broke the silence in 2002, it still has an impact on people up to this very day. Mike rezendes was the lead reporter and writer on the opening story of the Globes series on the sexual abuse in the catholic church, six percent of the priest acted out sexually and have molested kids in 6 different perishes over the last thirty years the church found out about it and did nothing. Mike and the spotlight team investigated further and found no records of any of these settlements they had to show it came from the institution, so the Globe paid for the legal work necessary to sue for the sealed documents, they tried interviewing anyone who has been a victim of this abuse but the church will try to silence anyone who speaks out. Mitchell Garabedian was a lawyer in Boston who for years was filing public law suites against primarily John Geoghan one of the worst priest in the Boston archdiocese in terms of molesting kids. Largely due to

Mike Rezendes and the spotlight team had a number of 90 priest who have been reassigned and he pitch it to marty baron their editor at the globe but said no because they did not need to go after them, they needed to go after the system. In November Mitch finally got the judge to approve the sealed documents to be open to the public, Mike ran to the court and asked to see them and signed off to them he got to the Globe and showed Robby, Sacha and Matt he showed them a letter sent from a parent to the defence attorney but was never showened to the prosecutor or as evidence to the court this was law covering up for one priest there was ninety of them needed to be exposed, Mike wanted to print the story because he knew he got evidence of the church cover-up, but they needed the whole story so Robby denied permission for Mike, but there was a powerful scene in the movie where Mike ask them why