July 29 (UPI) — Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick faces new charges in Massachusetts that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy at a wedding in 1974, court documents indicate.
The Wellesley Police Department filed a criminal complaint in Dedham District Court on Wednesday charging the defrocked cardinal with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14.
The Boston Globe was the first to report on the complaint and CNN confirmed it.
According to court documents, the unnamed victim told investigators that McCarrick was a family friend and accused of him of multiple instances of abuse in New Jersey, New York and California.
One such instance allegedly took place in 1974 at a wedding reception for the victim’s brother at Wellesley College. McCarrick allegedly pulled the 16-year-old aside, saying, “Your dad wants you to come with me and have a talk. You’re being mischievous at home and not attending church. We need to go outside and have a conversation.”
There, McCarrick told the teen to pull down his pants and “kissed” his genitalia, the complaint says. The former cardinal allegedly told the teen to say prayers “so God can redeem you of your sins.”
The complaint said the abuse continued for several years until the victim was an adult.
Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in February 2019 after the Vatican found him guilty of sex abuse unrelated to the current complaint. The Congress of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith found him guilty in January of “solicitation in Confession” and sins with minors and adults, along “with the aggravating circumstance of the abuse of power.”
McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals in July 2018 amid fallout from an Archdiocese Review Board investigation into allegations he abused a teenage altar boy while he was a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. The pope prohibited him from exercising public ministry at the time and requested that he lead a life of prayer and penance.
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