Contributors

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Host

Melanie Perkins McLaughlin

Melanie Perkins McLaughlin is an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker. She has produced non-fiction content for HBO, the BBC, ABC, PBS and the A&E Network including voice-over narration. Perkins McLaughlin wrote, produced, directed and narrated the HBOMax documentary Have You Seen Andy, a personal story about the disappearance of her childhood friend. 

A former ward of the state, Perkins McLaughlin graduated from Harvard and Fitchburg State college. She has committed her life’s work to documenting stories of marginalized children and families and revealing systemic injustice. Her HBOMax documentary won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. Her dogged research and investigative reporting has reopened several long-term unresolved cases. 

She lives in a Boston suburb with her husband, children and two dogs. 

https://linktr.ee/OpenInvestigation

Guests

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Guest

Anne Barrett Doyle

Anne is a co-director of BishopAccountability.org. In 2002, before joining BishopAccountability.org, Anne co-founded Coalition of Catholics and Survivors, a group that organized activism in the Boston archdiocese. Previously, she was an editor with the Public Conversations Project, a group that facilitates dialogue about divisive issues, and a vice president of a Ma

https://www.bishop-accountability.org/Who_We_Are/
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Billy Giblin

Billy Giblin is a CSA (clergy) survivor and advocate. Billy offers testimony on legislation preventing CSA and advocating for zero tolerance Statute of Limitation SOL laws. He resides in Massachusetts. 

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Eric MacLeish

Roderick "Eric" MacLeish is a lawyer known for representing hundreds of sexual abuse victims in the Boston area during the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal while he was a Boston-based partner of Greenberg Traurig, a Miami-based law firm. His clients included those abused by Paul Shanley. He was portrayed in the Academy Award winning film, Spotlight, about the Boston Globe's Pulitzer prize winning investigation into clergy abuse by actor Billy Crudup. 

https://www.macleishlaw.com/
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Kathryn Robb

Kathryn Robb directs the Children’s Justice Campaign at Enough Abuse. She is a lawyer and legislative advocate who has been fighting to pass meaningful child sex abuse legislation across the country for over 2 decades. She is a national expert on Statute of Limitations reform/elimination aimed at providing justice for survivors, accountability for abusers and the prevention of sexual abuse for more children. She consults with lawmakers and governors to write and edit legislative language and has testified in over thirty jurisdictions as a national expert before legislative committees.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-robb-esq-31971a9
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RC Stevens

RC Stevens is a licensed private investigator and former MA state police officer. Stevens was among the first law enforcement officials to publicly identify clergy abuse as coordinated organized crime. He has worked to draw attention to the issue with an interest in federal RICO indictments. RC is an expert on the Danny Croteau murder allegedly at the hands of Father Richard Lavigne. He serves on the Executive Board of the Cold Case Foundation. 

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Robert Hoatson

Robert Hoatson is president and co-founder of Road to Recovery and a survivor of clergy sexual abuse.  He joined the Irish Christian Brothers at Iona College where he earned a bachelor’s degree. He later earned a master’s degree from Manhattan College and a Ph.D. from Fordham University.  He was ordained a priest in 1997 and served at parishes throughout northern New Jersey.  However, he encountered difficulties with his superiors because of his work exposing clergy sexual abuse cases and cover-ups after founding Road to Recovery in 2003. He was ordered to cease R2R operations, but he believed his work with victims of sexual abuse and their families was an integral part of his calling as a priest and did not back down.  He petitioned the Vatican in 2011 to be relieved of his priestly duties.  The Vatican granted his voluntary removal from the priesthood in 2011. Hoatson has been the president of Road to Recovery, Inc. since its founding.

https://www.road-to-recovery.org/about-us/
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Senator Joan Lovely

Senator Joan Lovely is in her sixth term as State Senator for the Second Essex District, comprised of Beverly, Danvers, Peabody, and Salem. Senator Lovely has been serving in the Massachusetts Senate since January 2013.Senator Lovely serves in Leadership as Assistant Majority Leader and as Chair of the Senate and Joint Committees on Rules. She also proudly serves as Senate Vice-Chair of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight, and as a member of the Senate Committees on Ethics, Global Warming and Climate Change, and Juvenile and Emerging Adult Justice, in addition to the Joint Committee on Agriculture.

Senator Lovely publicly identifies as a CSA survivor and advocates on behalf of all survivors. 

https://www.senatorjoanlovely.com/about-joan/