"Holy Water-Gate" receives prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award

Holy Watergate: Abuse Cover-up in the Catholic Church, a documentary that explores the lengths to which sexual abuse has been systematically obscured throughout the nation, has been honored with a CINE Golden Eagle Award. The award is presented by CINE, founded in 1957 to distinguish excellence in professional filmmaking, and is recognized around the world as a symbol of the highest production standards in film and video.

Over 300 judges viewed and evaluated hundreds of entries for the awards. Prior recipients of CINE Golden Eagles include Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, John Lasseter, David Grubin, Barbara Kopple, Charles Guggenheim, Ken Burns, Albert Maysles and many others distinguished for their work with the moving image.

"With swift, deft scalpel strokes, Holy Watergate lays bare hypocrisy and institutionalized abuse in the Catholic Church. Mary Healey's cool, skillful exposure of child sexual predation and of the human anguish inflicted by pedophile priests makes you tremble with outrage. The Church's reflex is to speak honeyed words, then use every corporate dirty trick to intimidate, buy off, and silence the victims. Its sympathy lies with the predatory priests, not their victims; its ancient priorities are (like any multinational) to preserve its power and influence at all costs. The film shows this graphically, but also that humble, decent priests still do Christ's work at grassroots level, and that some even risk everything to fight the snakes in their hierarchy."

- Michael Rabiger, Filmmaker, Author (Directing the Documentary), Educator, International Documentary Association Award Recipient

 

"This film explores the cover up of clergy child abuse with tenacious journalism and a deft touch in giving textured portraits of the survivors, their reform movement and in one startling sequence, a priest perpetrator whose haunting persona speaks volumes on institutional decay."

- Jason Berry, Journalist, Author of Lead Us Not Into Temptation, Vows of Silence