Defrocked Cardinal McCarrick named in sex abuse lawsuit

Defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is facing another sexual abuse lawsuit, from a man who claims McCarrick abused him in the 1980s in New Jersey.

In the lawsuit filed in state court and announced Tuesday, Michael Reading alleged McCarrick engaged in sexual contact with him in 1986 while on a trip to the New Jersey shore, around the same time McCarrick ordained Reading as a priest.

The claim comes as a two-year window nears completion in New Jersey for people to file abuse lawsuits regardless of how far back the alleged abuse occurred. The suit names McCarrick and the Newark archdiocese and also alleges Reading was abused in 1978 by Father Edward Eilert, a priest employed by the Newark archdiocese.

In a videotaped statement, Reading said he wrote a letter to Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Newark, three years ago about the alleged abuse but never heard back.

“That was probably the most disappointing thing, that I never heard anything and got no response from the church,” Reading said in the statement.

The Associated Press does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, as Reading has done.

An attorney representing McCarrick declined comment Tuesday. A spokesperson for the archdiocese didn’t comment on the lawsuit but said the archdiocese is “fully committed to our comprehensive programs and protocols to protect the faithful and to working with survivors of abuse, their legal representatives and law enforcement authorities in an ongoing effort to resolve allegations of past abuse.”

McCarrick faces several abuse lawsuits in New Jersey that cover the time when he was Bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, in central New Jersey, and the archbishop of the Newark archdiocese. Like Reading’s, some of the accusations involve activities at a New Jersey shore house used by McCarrick and other clerics.