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Kimberly Burnett
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The first of three events in Salem State’s “Thursdays in July” series brought a moving and inspirational discussion about the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic church to the Cynthia Pollack Theater at the Salem Visitors Center.
Hosted by the university’s academic affairs department, and moderated by Salem State Provost David Silva, the discussion featured Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Mike Rezendes, one of the members of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team, and Salem native and documentary filmmaker Joe Cultrera.
The event is the first of three events centered around the theme of social justice in conjunction with the inaugural Salem State Social Justice Institute Series, a series of weeklong academic institutes that explore the theme of social justice. Held in recognition of the 325th Anniversary of the Salem Witch Trials, these special undergraduate and graduate academic institutes offer students, scholars, professionals, and those who simply wish to indulge an interest an opportunity to explore social justice from a wide variety of perspectives including historical, literary, and environmental.
Both Mike and Joe have done extraordinary work in their respective mediums – Mike with over 600 articles written by he and his team which revealed the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and Joe with a documentary film that chronicles his brother’s struggle with the secret of being abused by a Salem parish priest as a child.
The documentary, HAND OF GOD, was screened for an audience of nearly 80 people and provided a raw look into Joe’s brother Paul’s struggle with keeping a secret for 30 years and the family’s processing of this hurtful reality following Paul’s revelation.
“It’s not the story of my life,” Paul says in the film. “It’s a thing that happened to me.”
Joe, who has not seen the 2006 documentary in 10 years, discussed his process of filming and the emotionally draining nature of the subject. He said he relied on his production team when things got too heavy for him.
For Mike, working on an emotional project for six months or a year offers its own challenges.
“There is a whole procedure that happens after the story is written where every paragraph, literally, in a 5,000-word story is rigorously fact-checked so that everything is accurate and you know where you got that information,” he told the audience.
Toward the end of the event, Mike gave a nod to scholars, saying he relies on them to gain knowledge for a topic he is researching for one of his long-form investigative pieces.
“Personally as an investigative reporter, every project I take also presents a learning curve for me and I'm always calling up experts to get educated,” he said. “Scholars are important to me because whenever I am doing research on a new topic I rely on them for a quick education.”
The “Thursdays in July” series, which explores the theme of Social Justice, has two remaining events on July 20 and 28. The first of which detailed the work done by The Gallows Hill Project team that confirmed the site where 19 women were hanged for witchcraft 325 years ago during the Salem Witch Trials, known as Proctor’s Ledge. The event of the same name was held at the Salem Visitor’s Center on July 20 and featured Salem State Professor Emerson “Tad” Baker, an internationally recognized expert on the trials. Prior to the “Proctor’s Ledge” event, Mayor Kimberley Driscoll of Salem dedicated a memorial on the site on Wednesday, July 19.
The final event in the series is “The Exonerated” and will feature Swampscott native and Salem Award Foundation recipient Anne Driscoll, along with Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle, both exonerees. The discussion will follow a film screening of The Exonerated which features a dramatized telling of six people’s stories who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit, including Sunny.
All events are hosted by the National Park Service at the Salem Visitor’s Center.