Theodore McCarrick before his laicization. / Credit: Copyright Mazur_catholicchurch.org.uk
CNA Staff, Jan 10, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).
The criminal sexual assault case against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick in Wisconsin has been suspended aft… […]
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick outside the Dedham District Court in Massachusetts on Sept. 3, 2021. / Credit: Joe Bukuras/CNA
CNA Staff, Dec 6, 2023 / 14:45 pm (CNA).
Just months after former cardinal Theodore McCarrick was ruled not compet… […]
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives at Massachusetts’ Dedham District Courthouse for his arraignment, Sept. 3, 2021. / Andrew Bukuras/CNA
Dedham, Massachusetts, Jun 29, 2023 / 15:15 pm (CNA).
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick is not competent to stand trial on criminal sexual abuse charges in Massachusetts, a mental health expert hired by the state said after examining the disgraced ex-prelate.
The update in the case could lead to the dismissal of the first criminal charges against McCarrick, 92, following several accusations of sexual abuse of minors and seminarians, which led to his removal from the clerical state in 2019. Criminal sexual assault charges filed against McCarrick in Wisconsin in April are still pending, as are a number of civil lawsuits.
McCarrick is charged in state court with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14 relating to allegations that he sexually abused the teenager who was a family friend at a wedding ceremony in the 1970s at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
That teenager was identified by NorthJersey.com in February as James Grein, a now-64-year-old former New Jersey resident.
Grein went public with his allegations in 2018 in an interview with the New York Times, which referred to him only by his first name. He told the newspaper that McCarrick had serially sexually abused him beginning when he was 11.
According to a press release from the Norfolk District Attorney Office, the state of Massachusetts had a health expert examine McCarrick in Missouri following McCarrick’s filing of a motion in February claiming he is “legally incompetent” to stand trial, citing “significant, worsening, and irreversible dementia.”
That motion filed by McCarrick’s legal team was supported by a neurological exam of him that was conducted by Dr. David Schretlen, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
That exam was unavailable to the public, but McCarrick’s lawyers referenced the report in court documents that concluded he has a “severe cognitive disorder” and “everyday functional disability” that classifies as dementia and is most likely due to Alzheimer’s disease.
According to Thursday’s press release, the final report of the state’s exam is not available to the public, either. The health expert who conducted the exam is not identified in the release.
“The report is lengthy and is being evaluated,” the DA’s office said in the release.
The next hearing “on the available reports” in the case is scheduled for Aug. 30, which may include testimony from the state’s examiner, the press release said.
Barry Coburn, a lawyer for McCarrick, declined to comment Thursday.
Although silent through the whole case, which began in late 2021, McCarrick made comments about the charges in a phone call with NorthJersey.com in February.
McCarrick told the outlet that Grein’s testimony was “not true.”
“Do you remember James Grein?” the NorthJersey.com reporter asked McCarrick on a 10-minute phone call on Feb. 28.
“Yes. I remember him,” McCarrick responded to the reporter. Speaking of the allegations against him, McCarrick said, “It is not true.”
“The things he said about me are not true,” he added. “If you want more information about it, you can talk to my lawyers.”
The outlet reported that it attempted to reach McCarrick by phone several times before he returned the call. McCarrick told the outlet that he was currently in Missouri and that he was “feeling well, considering that I am 92 years old. It’s not like I’m 40 or 50 anymore.”
McCarrick declined to discuss the criminal case against him but answered questions about Grein “politely,” the outlet reported.
“I don’t want to speak of these things,” McCarrick said. “You can speak to my lawyer.”
Before getting off the phone, McCarrick told the outlet, “I hope you will not do a snow job on me.”
Grein told the outlet that McCarrick was a close friend of his family and would attend their gatherings. McCarrick was given the nickname “Uncle Ted,” he said.
“He sexually and spiritually abused me,” Grein said. He said that McCarrick had abused him in his home, hotels, and during confession.
James Grein speaks at the Silence Stops Now rally in Baltimore, Nov. 13, 2018. / Christine Rousselle/CNA.
Denver, Colo., Apr 18, 2023 / 16:38 pm (CNA).
The criminal complaint filed in Wisconsin this week against former cardinal Theodore McCarri… […]
Theodore McCarrick. / US Institute of Peace CC BY NC 2.0
Boston, Mass., Mar 6, 2023 / 10:45 am (CNA).
For the first time since criminal court proceedings began against him, former cardinal Theodore McCarrick spoke publicly about allegations tha… […]
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives outside Massachusetts’ Dedham District Courthouse for his arraignment on Sept. 3, 2021. / Andrew Bukuras/CNA
Boston, Mass., Feb 27, 2023 / 16:57 pm (CNA).
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 92, filed a motion in a Massachusetts court claiming he is “legally incompetent” to stand trial for sex abuse charges, citing “significant, worsening, and irreversible dementia.”
McCarrick is charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14 relating to allegations that he sexually abused the teenager who was a family friend at a wedding ceremony in the 1970s at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
McCarrick, laicized by Pope Francis in 2019, held one of the highest offices in the Catholic Church and has been accused of serially abusing his priestly authority by sexually abusing minors and seminarians.
The state of Massachusetts told CNA that it wants an opportunity to examine McCarrick’s competency to stand trial.
McCarrick’s motion to dismiss the charges comes about a month after his legal team said a neurological exam of him was being conducted by Dr. David Schretlen, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
That exam remains unavailable to the public, as Schretlen’s final report includes “extensive confidential information” about McCarrick’s health and personal life, and would be “harmful” to McCarrick if it were available to the public, one of McCarrick’s lawyers, Daniel Marx, said in a separate court document.
However, there are certain details from the report that were available in McCarrick’s motion to dismiss the case, such as his consistently low performance scores on cognitive tests.
The document says that McCarrick performed “below expectation” on nearly two-thirds of the cognitive tests administered to him. Quoting the report, the document says that he performed “worse than 92% of reasonably healthy men of similar background and estimated premorbid on 38% of the cognitive measures.”
The report on McCarrick says that his “reported inability to retrieve memories of the alleged incident and potential witnesses” and “any exculpatory factors related to it” are consistent with his performance on the exams and testimony from those who know him well, according to the document.
Schretlen’s report concluded that McCarrick has a “severe cognitive disorder” and “everyday functional disability” that classifies as dementia and is most likely due to Alzeimer’s disease, the document says.
McCarrick is not legally competent to stand trial, the document says. It adds that his dementia is also “irreversible” and “likely to progress over time” with no expectation of improvement.
The document says that although McCarrick “remains intelligent and articulate,” he is unable to stand trial because his dementia prevents him from “meaningfully consulting with counsel and effectively participating in his own defense.”
It would be a violation of McCarrick’s 14th Amendment right in the Constitution and Article XII of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights if he were to stand trial with his dementia, his lawyers maintain in the court document.
David Traub, director of communications for the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, told CNA in an email Monday that “the Commonwealth will hire its own expert to assess competency.”
Traub said that an update court hearing in Dedham District Court on the state’s examination of McCarrick is set for April 20.
McCarrick’s lawyer Barry Coburn declined comment. Marx, his other lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment.
McCarrick hasn’t been seen publicly since his arraignment in Dedham on Sept. 3, 2021, when he pleaded not guilty to all three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14.
He appeared in frail condition that day, arriving at the courthouse wearing a mask and hunched over a walker. He made no comment either inside or outside the courthouse, where a demonstrator yelled, “Shame on you!” as McCarrick slowly walked past reporters and photographers alongside one of his attorneys.
The document says that McCarrick continues to maintain his innocence on all charges.
Theodore McCarrick outside Dedham District Court, Friday, Sept. 4, 2021. / Joe Bukuras/CNA
Dedham, Mass., Jan 17, 2023 / 16:43 pm (CNA).
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick is in “significant” mental decline and may not be fit to stand trial for… […]
I am dating myself with this reference, but in the old BBC sketch comedy show, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” there was a sketch in which Michael Palin plays a cheese shop proprietor and John Cleese […]
Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives at Massachusetts’ Dedham District Courthouse for his arraignment, Sept. 3, 2021. / Andrew Bukuras/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 5, 2022 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
One of the more graphic sexual abuse lawsuits against former cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick is still pending in New Jersey after the parties recently failed to settle the nearly two-year-old case, court filings show.
The civil lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Newark in September 2020, accuses McCarrick of raping and sexually assaulting an unnamed adolescent boy on more than 50 occasions from 1985 to 1990.
The lawsuit also names the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen as defendants, alleging that they failed to protect the boy from McCarrick while he led those New Jersey dioceses. All the defendants deny the claims against them.
The parties met with a private mediator June 23 but were unable to settle the case, court records show.
“At this juncture, the parties do not believe that another settlement conference will be productive,” the plaintiff’s lawyers, Mark Lefkowitz and Kevin Mulhearn, wrote in a July 21 letter to U.S. District Court Evelyn Padin.
The lawyers revealed in the letter that the Newark Archdiocese has produced 172,734 pages of documents requested by the plaintiff’s legal team, which is still reviewing the records.
Depositions of McCarrick and the plaintiff, who is now in his late thirties, have taken place, the letter said. Other individuals have yet to be deposed.
McCarrick, 92, was dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of sexually assaulting minors and adults.
The New Jersey lawsuit is one of several civil complaints still pending against McCarrick.
The disgraced prelate also faces criminal prosecution in district court in Dedham, Massachusetts, for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy in 1974.
In that case, McCarrick entered a not guilty plea in September 2021 to three counts of indecent assault and battery. Each charge carries up to five years in prison.
No trial date has been set in the criminal case. The next hearing date is Sept. 8, a spokesman for the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office told CNA Friday.
The New Jersey civil case involving the alleged rapes of an adolescent boy has received significant media attention due to the graphic nature of the allegations. The 108-page lawsuit also chronicles in detail McCarrick’s steady rise up the Catholic hierarchy, despite multiple warnings and complaints about his alleged predatory behavior toward minors, seminarians, and young priests.
According to the lawsuit, McCarrick was “deeply revered, respected, and highly trusted” by the plaintiff’s “extremely devout Catholic” parents and extended family.
“Plaintiff’s parents were thrilled that McCarrick, a high-ranking Catholic bishop whom they viewed as God’s emissary, had decided to single out their family (and their son) for special attention and could not even begin to imagine that McCarrick’s desires toward Plaintiff were sexual or predatory in nature,” the lawsuit states.
“They thus strongly encouraged Plaintiff to spend considerable time with McCarrick, as they viewed his actions toward Plaintiff as a blessed manifestation of God’s grace,” according to the complaint.
In 1985, while McCarrick was bishop of Metuchen, the then-12-year-old boy stayed overnight at the Metuchen rectory with his parents’ approval, the lawsuit states.
The next day, McCarrick took the boy to a beach house owned by the diocese in Sea Girt, New Jersey, where McCarrick sexually assaulted the boy for the first time, the lawsuit alleges.
Subsequent sexual assaults allegedly took place in a variety of other locations, including the rectory in Metuchen, a fishing cabin in the woods at the Eldred Preserve in the Catskills in New York State, and a hotel in Ireland, the lawsuit states.
The assaults continued when McCarrick became archbishop in Newark, the lawsuit states. In one incident alleged to have taken place at McCarrick’s private Newark residence, McCarrick brought another, unidentified priest to the apartment.
“This is my friend. He’s like us. We all do the same thing,” McCarrick allegedly told the then 13- or 14-year-old boy by way of introduction, according to the lawsuit. “I’m gonna leave now. And you two enjoy yourselves.”
The other priest then sexually assaulted and raped the boy, the lawsuit states. After the priest left, McCarrick raped the boy again, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit alleges that McCarrick’s alleged predatory behavior was known within the dioceses and spoken of at high levels of the Catholic Church, yet nothing was done to stop him, in part “because McCarrick was an exceptional fundraiser for the Catholic Church, and was charismatic and viewed by many as a rising star in the Church.”
The plaintiff had been a straight A student prior to McCarrick’s abuse, the lawsuit states.
“Upon suffering sexual abuse by McCarrick, however, Plaintiff’s grades slipped dramatically, as he was unable to concentrate, and his behavior at school worsened considerably,” the complaint alleges.
“Plaintiff attended three separate high schools, as he was expelled from several high schools for excessive fighting and general bad behavior. He became a wild, unruly child, prone to bursts of anger and untamed aggression, and frequently got into fights with other children (particularly when other boys touched him, as he hated physical contact with other males),” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiff never attended college and instead joined the U.S. Coast Guard, requesting to be stationed in Alaska “to separate himself from McCarrick and his nightmarish experiences to the greatest extent possible,” the lawsuit states.
Lawyers for McCarrick, the Archdiocese of Newark, and the Diocese of Metuchen could not be reached for comment Friday.
Theodore McCarrick arrives at Dedham District Court on Friday morning, Sept. 3 for his 9 a.m. arraignment / Joe Bukuras/CNA
Boston, Mass., Dec 3, 2021 / 21:30 pm (CNA).
At least 820 sex abuse lawsuits have been filed against New Jersey’s Cathol… […]
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