Cleric pleads not guilty to sexual assault
Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the oncepowerful American prelate who was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse, pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a 16-yearold boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago.
McCarrick, 91, did not speak during the hearing in Dedham, Mass. He is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal to ever be criminally charged with child sex crimes. His attorney, Katherine Zimmerl, said afterward that they are “looking forward to addressing the allegations in court” and would have no other comment.
McCarrick, who now lives in Dittmer, Mo., faces three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14. He can still face charges in the case because he wasn’t a Massachusetts resident and had left the state, stopping the clock on the statute of limitations.
McCarrick’s fall began in 2017 when a former altar boy came forward to report the priest had groped him when he was a teenager in New York. The next year, the Archdiocese of New York announced that McCarrick had been removed from ministry after finding the allegation to be “credible and substantiated,” and two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against him in the past involving adults.
Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as adults.
The investigative findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.