Ex-Cardinal McCarrick charged with sexually assaulting teen
WTOP News — Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked after a Vatican investigation confirmed he had sexually molested adults as well as children, has been charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts in 1974, court records show.
McCarrick is the first cardinal in the U.S. to ever be criminally charged with a sexual crime against a minor, according to Mitchell Garabedian, a well-known lawyer for church sexual abuse victims who is representing the man alleging the abuse by McCarrick.
“It takes an enormous amount of courage for a sexual abuse victim to report having been sexually abused to investigators and proceed through the criminal process,” Garabedian said in an email. “Let the facts be presented, the law applied, and a fair verdict rendered.”
McCarrick faces three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, according to documents filed in the Dedham District Court on Wednesday.
Barry Coburn, an attorney for McCarrick, told The Associated Press that they “look forward to addressing the case in the courtroom,” and declined further comment.
The charges against McCarrick were first reported by The Boston Globe on Thursday.
The man said the abuse started when he was a young boy, according to the court records. The man told authorities during an interview in January that McCarrick was close to his family and would perform wedding masses, baptisms and funerals for them.
The man said that during his brother’s wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974 — when he was 16 — McCarrick told him that his father wanted him to have a talk with McCarrick because the boy was “being mischievous at home and not attending church.”
The man said that the two of them went for a walk around campus and McCarrick groped him before they went back to the party. The man said McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a “coat room type closet” after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the documents.
Before leaving the room, McCarrick told him to “say three Our Fathers and a Hail Mary or it was one Our Father and three Hail Marys, so God can redeem you of your sins,” according to the report.
The man also described other instances of sexual abuse by McCarrick over the years, including when the man was an adult, the report said.
Authorities began investigating McCarrick after Garabedian sent a letter alleging the abuse to the district attorney’s office, according to the court records.
McCarrick can still be charged in this case because he wasn’t a Massachusetts resident and had left the state, stopping the clock on the statute of limitations, authorities said.
McCarrick, 91, was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation confirmed decades of rumors that he was a sexual predator.
If you go to the store to buy Meat, don't run to the Milk section or the Junk Food aisle looking for it!!
The Meat Section is the True Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Milk Section is likened to those who will not preach on sin and Hell, just a feel good message, the Social gospel.
The Junk Food Isle is the outright false doctrine AKA the prosperity gospel, name it and claim it, the Hebraic Roots movement and other false teachings!!
Feasting on just Milk and Junk will eventually cause you great harm, you can count on it!!
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