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Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives at Massachusetts’ Dedham District Courthouse for his arraignment, Sept. 3, 2021. / Andrew Bukuras/CNA

Washington D.C., Sep 16, 2021 / 13:30 pm (CNA).

Three sex abuse lawsuits, including one naming disgraced former archbishop Theodore McCarrick as the alleged abuser, were filed on Thursday, Sept. 16 in a New Jersey court. All three lawsuits also named the Diocese of Metuchen as a defendant.

Jeffrey Anderson, a prominent attorney who represents sex abuse victims, brought the lawsuits. In an online press conference on Thursday, Anderson called on the Metuchen diocese to release additional information on accusations against current and former clergy. 

“We challenge you to account and take responsibility for each of these cases, and also challenge you to come clean with the full truth,” Anderson said.  “[We] invite you, implore you, to release more names and information that have been kept secret by the Diocese of Metuchen for too long.”

The first lawsuit filed named McCarrick, who served as the first bishop of the diocese from 1981 until 1986, as the abuser in question. According to the lawsuit, McCarrick engaged in “unpermitted sexual contact” with the plaintiff while he was bishop of Metuchen from approximately 1982 to 1985. The plaintiff was between the ages of 19 and 22 during that period.

McCarrick’s attorney Barry Coburn declined to comment on the lawsuit on Thursday. 

McCarrick, 91, on July 28 was criminally charged in a Massachusetts court with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14. The incidents allegedly took place with a 16-year-old male in the 1970s. McCarrick appeared for his arraignment on Sept. 3 in Massachusetts’ Dedham District Court, and pleaded “not guilty” to the charges. His next court date is Oct. 28.

He was once an influential and high-ranking figure in the Catholic Church, before numerous accusations against him were made public in 2018, alleging past sexual misconduct with children and seminarians. McCarrick was laicized in February 2019, after a Vatican canonical investigation found him guilty of “solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”

The second lawsuit filed on Thursday named Fr. John Butler, a laicized priest who died in 2016, as the alleged abuser of a minor. Butler, who was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Richmond, served in numerous dioceses throughout his career including in Metuchen. 

According to the lawsuit, Butler engaged in umpermitted sexual contact with a minor between the ages of 9 to 12, from approximately 1995 to 1998. The plaintiff was attending St. John Vianney school in Colonia, New Jersey at the time, where Fr. Butler was employed.

Butler was removed from public ministry in 2002 and was laicized shortly thereafter. He is not on the list of credibly-accused priests from the Diocese of Metuchen, but does appear on the list of accused priests from the Diocese of Richmond, his home diocese. 

The third lawsuit names Br. Regis Moccia, S.C. of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, who similarly does not appear on the list of credibly-accused priests from the Diocese of Metuchen. Moccia is accused of abusing a young teen at St. Joseph’s High School in Metuchen, in 1981 and 1982. He died in 2000. 

Moccia was first accused of abuse in a September 2020 lawsuit; Anderson claimed that this suit inspired another alleged victim of his to come forward. 

“It’s also notable that Moccia is not on the list [of credibly-accused clergy] released by the Diocese of Metuchen, even though that suit has been brought by us naming him as an offender of children at St. Joseph’s high school in Metuchen, earlier,” Anderson said on Thursday.  

Anderson called on the Diocese of Metuchen to release additional names of credibly accused clergy, and claimed that there are at least 15 additional names that have not yet been released.

The Diocese of Metuchen did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication on Thursday. 

New Jersey in 2019 relaxed the statute of limitations in sex abuse cases, allowing for new lawsuits in old cases of child sex abuse and sex abuse of adults. The two-year window for such lawsuits to be filed expires Nov. 30.

Anderson has filed other civil sex abuse lawsuits naming McCarrick. In July, he filed a civil lawsuit in a New Jersey court accusing McCarrick of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy in 1986.

In July 2020, Anderson filed a lawsuit alleging that McCarrick had sexually abused a boy and aided his abuse by several other priests in the early 1980s, characterizing McCarrick as leading a “sex ring.”

Anderson has sued many Catholic dioceses and religious orders over the years. While some say he has been an effective advocate for sex abuse victims, critics say he has sensationalized and embellished claims in order to attract media attention to litigation, and that he is a self-promoter.

According to the lawsuit naming McCarrick, the plaintiff’s family resided in the Archdiocese of New York and had contact with McCarrick while he was a representative of the archdiocese. McCarrick was a priest secretary to Cardinal Terrence Cooke of New York beginning in 1971, and served as auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese from 1977 until 1981, when he was made bishop of Metuchen.

McCarrick later served as Archbishop of the Archdioceses of Newark and Washington, and played an influential role in the global Catholic Church. He helped craft the U.S. Church’s response to revelations of widespread clergy sex abuse in 2002. He also made numerous international trips for peacebuilding and ecumenical causes, and was known as an effective fundraiser.

In June 2018, the Archdiocese of New York revealed that a decades-old allegation of sex abuse against McCarrick was “credible.” News reports subsequently detailed more allegations of McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct with children and seminarians. According to a July 2018 New York Times report, Metuchen was one of the dioceses to have reached a settlement with a former priest, regarding allegations of abuse against McCarrick committed while the priest was a seminarian.

McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals in July 2018, and was laicized in February 2019. He is the first U.S. Catholic cardinal to be criminally charged with sex abuse.

The Vatican in November 2020 released a report of more than 450 pages on the “institutional knowledge and decision-making” regarding McCarrick and his clerical career.

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CNA Staff, Dec 16, 2020 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- Bishop Daniel Flores has released a pastoral letter reaffirming the morality of Catholics receiving the coronavirus vaccines. Flores, the Bishop of Brownsville, Texas, was elected by the other American bishops… […]

Denver Newsroom, Sep 15, 2020 / 04:54 pm (CNA).- Catholic aid groups are expressing disappointment at a recent court decision that furthers the end of temporary protected status for immigrants from certain countries, saying that ending TPS will likely lead to the separation of thousands of families.

The 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruled Sept. 14 that the Trump administration can end the TPS program, which affects several hundred thousand immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan, many of whom have children who are American citizens.

TPS is an immigration benefit that allows persons who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of armed conflict, other violence, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions to remain in the United States while the situation in their home country resolves. It protects them from deportation and grants them permission to work.

“We urge the administration and Congress to find solutions that help families affected by TPS to remain together in the United States,” Catholic Charities USA said in a Sept. 15 statement.

“More than 270,000 U.S citizens have parents with TPS. If appeals are not granted, this decision will likely lead to more family separations within our borders.”

Since Congress established temporary protected status in 1990, U.S. immigrants with the designation from countries suffering natural disasters, armed conflict, or other major problems are not deported. There are about 200,000 Salvadorans, 50,000 Haitians, 2,500 Nicaraguans and 1,000 Sudanese in the United States who have temporary protected status.

The Trump administration had terminated the TPS designations of El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan in 2017 and 2018. The administration said the residents from the four countries no longer merited TPS, arguing that natural disasters from years previously should not continue to justify irregular residency.

At the time, U.S. bishops from California and Texas spoke out about the DHS decision. Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ migration committee, called the decision “heartbreaking.” Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles called for a permanent path to residency and citizenship for the affected families.

The Haitian population with protected status arrived in the U.S. after a 2010 earthquake killed 200,000 and displaced 1 million people. In addition, the landfall of Hurricane Matthew in 2016 destroyed much of the island’s infrastructure.

Beth Caroll, Head of Programs for Catholic Relief Services in Haiti, told CNA that conditions in Haiti remain dire, and the country’s problems would be greatly compounded if 50,000 people return there from the US.

Hurricane Laura, which passed over Haiti as a tropical storm in late August, caused extensive damage and loss of life on the island, and recovery efforts are still underway.

Compounding Haiti’s already poor economy, the coronavirus pandemic has caused a major economic hit to the country.

Catholic leaders in Haiti have been warning that the combination of economic woes, the pandemic, and natural disasters make this a “terrible time” to be considering an influx of 50,000 Haitians back to the island, Carroll said, especially since so many of those immigrants now consider the United States their home.

Another effect of so many Haitians leaving the US would be a loss of remittances from the US to families in Haiti, which by some estimates makes up nearly 34% of Haiti’s income, one of the highest percentages in the world.

A large influx of returning Haitians would likely frustrate the country’s efforts to manage the coronavirus pandemic, Carroll said. In addition, many of those returning would likely have difficulty finding work.

Nobody wants to leave their family or home, Carroll noted, and the Haitians who left the island in 2010 left out of necessity, because of root causes— in this case the earthquake— in Haiti.

Carroll said CRS remains committed to addressing those root causes in Haiti through humanitarian aid, with the goal of keeping Haitians from having to leave their home again.

The rejection of TPS for Haitians was “a sad decision,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told CNA in November 2017. Haitians “cannot go back to a situation that still is very difficult,” said Tomasi, who has served as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in Geneva and as a counselor for the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

In April 2018 a group of Salvadoran bishops and other Church officials visited the U.S. and asked the Trump administration to reconsider its decision ending the protected status for Salvadorans, who received TPS status after a massive earthquake in 2001.

The situation in El Salvador is still dangerous due to gang violence and severe poverty, they said. It is unsafe for people to live in the country and there are very few employment opportunities.

The influx of people returning to El Salvador from the United States could overwhelm the already-fragile economy, they warned. Additionally, many Salvadorans living in the United States send remittances to El Salvador, which provides a boost to their economy. These remittances would end if they were forced to leave.

The administration has extended the validity of work permits for El Salvadorans with TPS through Jan. 4, 2021, and has said that Salvadorans will have one additional year after the end of TPS-related lawsuits to return to their home country.

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