On Jan. 6, 2002, the first in a series of reports by the Globe Spotlight Team unmasked the church's handling of pedophile priest John Geoghan (left). Nearly a year later, on Dec. 13, a special edition announced the resignation of Cardinal Bernard F. Law.

About this site

The Globe investigative team Projects Editor Ben Bradlee Jr. Members of the Spotlight Team Editor Walter V. Robinson Michael Rezendes Sacha Pfeiffer Matt Carroll Other investigative reporters Stephen Kurkjian Kevin Cullen Thomas Farragher Religion reporter Michael Paulson

On Jan. 6-7, 2002, The Boston Globe published an extraordinary series by its award-winning investigative Spotlight Team that revealed that the Archdiocese of Boston had shuttled defrocked priest John Geoghan from parish to parish over the course of several decades, despite having extensive evidence that he was sexually abusing children.

In subsequent months, the Spotlight Team and other Globe reporters chronicled a burgeoning scandal that has seen dozens of priests stand accused of abuse. It is a scandal that has spread beyond the Boston Archdiocese to other states and countries, stirred rebellion by laity, spurred US bishops to rewrite their policies on handling abuse allegations, and led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard F. Law, archbishop of Boston.

This site helps readers understand this complicated story by organizing the vast amount of material into categories; enhancing it with audio, video, message boards, and photo galleries, and making thousands of pages of depositions, letters, and internal Church documents -- original source material -- available for readers to peruse.

Critical to the Globe's coverage were church documents released after court challenges by the newspaper or by victims. These documents, available here, include pleading letters from parents asking Cardinal Law to take action against abusive priests, handwritten notes by Law and his top deputies discussing abuse allegations, and letters authorizing the shuttling of accused priests from one parish to another.

The deposition of Law in May - and again in following months - marked one of the rare times that a senior Catholic prelate was deposed. This site contains the transcripts of the depositions of Law and his bishops, as well as video excerpts so users can see and hear the demeanor of those being questioned.

An interactive map of parishes in the Archdiocese of Boston highlights the communities where priests accused of the most heinous attacks on minors - those convicted, criminally charged, or removed from ministry during 2002 -- were serving at the time of the alleged abuse, with details about each priest's history.

Finally, message boards allow users to express their thoughts, frustration, and anger about the scandal, and debate solutions for preventing such wide-scale abuse from ever happening again.