The McCarrick nightmare continues; not competent to stand trial

 

Case against disgraced Catholic cardinal suspended; McCarrick not competent to stand trial

Laura Schulte

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - A Wisconsin judge on Wednesday ruled that a former Catholic cardinal is not competent to stand trial, due to a diagnosis of dementia, suspending charges of sexually assaulting a boy in the 1970s.

Theodore McCarrick, the defrocked former cardinal, will not have to go before a jury in the case, but the decision will be reviewed at the end of the year, according to online court records. He did not appear in person for the hearing, but did dial in by phone.

Prosecutors in Walworth County and the Department of Justice in April charged McCarrick with sexual assault in a 1977 incident. He was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault, and if convicted, McCarrick would have faced up to nine months in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Peter Isely, a member of Ending Clergy Abuse, said the charge would have brought some sort of justice for survivors of McCarrick's abuse. The survivor in this case likely won't see that justice, he said.

"For a victim to see his offender before a judge – even if that appearance is by phone – it can be a day of emancipation and liberation from carrying the awful burden of shame and secrecy that are an inevitable consequence of these crimes," Isely said in a release. "Inexplicably, Judge Reddy did not give the victim that day.”

In the incident for which he is charged, prosecutors said McCarrick groped an 18-year-old while they were both staying as guests at a residence on Geneva Lake. According to documents, the teen was in the lake off a dock when McCarrick and another adult man entered the water. Both groped him and discussed his genitals, the complaint alleges.

The teen tried to get away from the men and splashed and made noise, he said, according to the complaint. He got out of the lake with one leg in his swim trunks and ran to the house. He got dressed and asked for a ride to the train station, according to the complaint.

The complainant said McCarrick began sexually assaulting him at age 11. According to the complaint, he reported several incidents in which McCarrick inappropriately touched or assaulted him before he was 18 years old.

McCarrick took the teen to lavish parties and events, the complaint said. The accuser also reported that McCarrick had taken him to an event where several adult men assaulted him. The accuser also said McCarrick had sex with him the day before the incident on Geneva Lake.

In 1977, McCarrick would have been 46 years old. He was a priest in the Archdiocese of New York and was working as the private secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke. The incident is said to have occurred a month before McCarrick was named auxiliary bishop of New York. He would go on to become the bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, then the archbishop of Newark and the archbishop of Washington. He was named cardinal in 2001.

McCarrick never lived or worked in Wisconsin but made visits to the state. He was able to be charged because the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse tolls, or pauses, if the perpetrator leaves the state and does not return, meaning a case can be charged at any point, instead of within a limited number of years.

The Walworth County charge is the latest development in a years-long fall from grace for the once-powerful cardinal. He was also charged in a Massachusetts case, which alleged he assaulted a teenage boy at a wedding in 1974. He pleaded not guilty in 2021. That case was dismissed last year, because McCarrick, who lives at a residence for troubled priests in Missouri, has dementia and was deemed not competent to stand trial.

McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former, ever to be criminally charged with child sex crimes.

McCarrick's legal issues 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 two-year internal investigation into McCarrick found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct. Correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information outright as rumor and excused it as an "imprudence."

The investigative findings released in 2020 pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.

Prosecutors in Wisconsin charged McCarrick after someone reported the abuse to the state Department of Justice's ongoing clergy abuse investigation.

Since launching the investigation in 2021, Kaul's office has forwarded two other cases to local law enforcement for charges: 33-year-old Remington Jon Nystrom in Waushara County for a 2019 incident and 61-year-old Jeffrey Anthony Charles in Douglas County for incidents that occurred between 2005 and 2010.

The investigation is still ongoing, with no end date set at this point.

Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on X at @SchulteLaura.

Disgraced McCarrick found not competent to stand trial; outrage and disappointment follows

 

Bishop accountability group: Dismissal of charges against McCarrick ‘hugely disappointing’

By Peter Pinedo

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 30, 2023 / 16:20 pm

A group known as BishopAccountability.org, which tracks sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, condemned a Massachusetts district judge’s Wednesday decision to dismiss criminal charges against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The criminal charges involving the sexual assault and abuse of a minor were dismissed Wednesday after a judge ruled McCarrick, 93, was not mentally competent to stand trial.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the bishops accountability group, told CNA that “the dismissal of the case against McCarrick is hugely disappointing” and that “our hearts go out to the courageous victim who brought this case, and to all of McCarrick’s victims.”

McCarrick, the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, D.C., was facing three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14 relating to allegations that he sexually abused a 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.

The charges in Massachusetts were the first criminal charges that McCarrick has ever faced following several accusations of sexual abuse of minors and seminarians. 

Doyle asserted that Wednesday’s dismissal “is a reminder of the Catholic hierarchy’s cynical strategy of cover-up.”

“McCarrick’s predations were an open secret,” Doyle said. “Many of his fellow cardinals and bishops knew, and they did nothing. They didn’t report him to law enforcement, they didn’t go public with the information, and they didn’t reach out to those he assaulted.” 

According to Doyle, “McCarrick might have been prosecuted years ago if even one of his brother bishops had called the police.” 

“Instead,” she said, “yet again, a predator has evaded accountability. While the institution may have been spared the embarrassment of an ex-cardinal on trial, the disgrace of its complicity with McCarrick remains.” 

Despite the group’s frustration over the dismissal, Doyle said the case remains an important milestone. 

“McCarrick was the first U.S. cardinal and only second U.S. bishop ever to be charged with abuse,” Doyle said. “Two years ago, the world witnessed what was unimaginable 20 years ago, when the Catholic abuse crisis first broke in Boston: a former U.S. cardinal in a courtroom answering to criminal charges of child sexual abuse.”

Once a powerful figure in ecclesiastical, diplomatic, and political circles in the U.S. and around the world, McCarrick was formally removed from the clerical state by Pope Francis in 2019. 

Criminal sexual assault charges filed against McCarrick in Wisconsin in April are still pending, as are several civil lawsuits.

Citing dementia and increasing weakness, McCarrick asks for all charges of abuse be dropped

Ex-cardinal McCarrick asks for dismissal of sex abuse case against him, citing dementia

By Joe Bukuras

Boston, Mass., Feb 27, 2023 / 16:57 pm

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. 

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick not competent for trial says his attorneys

 

BREAKING: McCarrick’s Lawyers Say He’s Not Competent to Stand Trial

A new court document was filed Jan. 13 in Dedham District Court in Massachusetts.

Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick is in “significant” mental decline and may not be fit to stand trial for allegedly sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy, his attorneys say in a new court filing.

The legal team for the 92-year-old ex-prelate said it plans to file a motion to dismiss the case, citing a neurological exam conducted by Dr. David Schretlen, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The exam took place on Dec. 5, 2022, at a facility in Missouri where McCarrick is living.

The results show McCarrick to be suffering from “significant neuropsychological deficits” that “appear to have started relatively recently, to be worsening rapidly, and to impair both Mr. McCarrick’s cognition and his memory,” according to the court document filed Jan. 13 in Dedham District Court in Massachusetts. A final report is expected within 30 days.

“Based on preliminary discussions with Dr. Schretlen, counsel have developed serious concerns that Mr. McCarrick may no longer be legally competent to stand trial, because he would be unable to assist meaningfully in the preparation of his own defense or to consult effectively with counsel during trial with a reasonable degree of rational understanding,” the court document states.

McCarrick hasn’t been seen publicly since his arraignment in Dedham on Sept. 3, 2021, when he pleaded not guilty to 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 criminal complaint alleges that the abuse took place in the 1970s. 

In their court filing, McCarrick’s legal team also said it plans to argue that the charges should be dismissed “on the grounds that, in the unusual circumstances of this case, due process forbids his prosecution for misconduct that allegedly occurred 50 years ago.”

“Because the Commonwealth bears the burden to establish that Mr. McCarrick is, in fact, competent to stand trial … it will need adequate time to review the report from Dr. Schretlen and, if necessary, to engage its own expert to evaluate Mr. McCarrick,” the court document states.

McCarrick’s attorney Barry Coburn declined comment when reached by CNA Tuesday. McCarrick’s other attorney, Daniel Marx, was not immediately available for comment prior to publication.

Disgraced Cardinal's prosecution moving forward

 

Prosecution of ex-Cardinal McCarrick takes next step in Massachusetts

DEDHAM, Mass. – A Dec. 21 motion for transcript, audio and video recordings of depositions related to the criminal charges against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was an important step for the prosecution, according to one of his alleged victims present in the courtroom.

The motion was a part of a brief second pre-trial hearing in the case at Dedham District Court in Massachusetts. In addition to the motion, the case was continued to March 3 for a status update.

McCarrick wasn’t present in the courtroom. His attorney Barry Coburn stated he had no objection to the commonwealth’s motion before exiting the courtroom without further comment. Crux couldn’t reach Coburn for comment after the hearing.

James Grein, a Virginia man who came forward in 2018 with two decades of abuse allegations against McCarrick, was present in the courtroom on Dec. 21 and told Crux that he had “high emotions” ahead of the hearing. Grein said it was “important” for him to be there “to see the motion go through and understand the victory” for the district attorney, adding that it was crucial to moving the case forward.

The alleged victim in the criminal case against McCarrick remains unnamed. He is represented by Mitchell Garabedian – an attorney long known for representing those who have made allegations against Catholic clergy – who was not present in the courtroom on Dec. 21. Crux couldn’t reach him for comment after the hearing.

McCarrick was criminally charged in July with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 stemming from the alleged sexual assault of a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception at Wellesley College on June 8, 1974.

McCarrick’s presence at the Sept. 3 arraignment was his first public appearance since 2018. He is the first former or current U.S. cardinal to be charged criminally with sexual abuse.

McCarrick’s presence was waived for the second pretrial hearing on Dec. 21, or the first on Oct. 28. He was released at his arraignment on the conditions he pay $5,000 cash bail, have no contact with the alleged victim or anyone under 18, not leave the United States, and surrender his passport. He was also warned that if he is charged with a crime in the time until his pretrial hearing he could be incarcerated.

Grein is hopeful that significant progress will be made in the case between Dec. 21 and March 3.

“The prosecution gets to listen and see if there’s anything that the defense is going to do and if the defense is going to want to try to make any motions whatsoever they have three months to get it done,” Grein said. “So the next time we meet all of those other things that are out on the sidebars are all done and the next one is right in front of the judge.”

Grein added that a conviction against McCarrick is important because it “opens the door” for other clerics to be criminally charged that have committed sexual abuse.

Even though the charges against McCarrick are from nearly 50 years ago, a specific aspect of the statute of limitations on criminal charges in Massachusetts allowed McCarrick’s accuser to pursue charges for the alleged sexual assault. The statute of limitations for criminal cases in Massachusetts is set up to “toll,” or pause, when the offender is out of the state. McCarrick has never resided in Massachusetts, therefore, the statute of limitations for this case doesn’t apply.

McCarrick was laicized – reduced to lay status – by the Vatican in 2019 after allegations of sexual abuse against adults were substantiated. To date, there have been a number of civil lawsuits filed against McCarrick, mostly in New Jersey and New York. However, none of them was filed criminally.

Disgraced pedophile Teddy McCarrick has gall to plead not guilty

 

McCarrick — Once A Powerful Cardinal — Pleads Not Guilty To Sexual Assault Charges

Updated September 3, 202110:40 AM ET 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked by the Roman Catholic Church over sexual abuse allegations, faces charges that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

DEDHAM, Mass. — Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the once-powerful American prelate who was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse, pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago.

McCarrick, 91, wore a mask and entered suburban Boston's Dedham District Court hunched over a walker. "Shame on you!" a protester shouted.

He did not speak during the hearing, at which the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf, set bail at $5,000, and ordered him to stay away from the victim and have no contact with minors.

McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former, to ever be criminally charged with child sex crimes.

McCarrick's attorney, Katherine Zimmerl, said afterward that they are "looking forward to addressing the allegations in court" and would have no other immediate comment.

The next hearing was set for Oct. 28.

Allegations against McCarrick publicly emerged four years ago

McCarrick, who now lives in Dittmer, Missouri, faces three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, according to court documents. 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.

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"Today's arraignment provides hope for many clergy sex abuse victims and survivors that justice will prevail, truth will be told and children will be kept safe," said Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney for the victim who has represented dozens of others who allege they were abused by clerics.

"My client, in coming forward, has shown an enormous amount of courage, and he's ready to see this trial through the end," he said.

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.

A two-year internal investigation into McCarrick found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct. Correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information outright as rumor and excused it as an "imprudence."

The investigative findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, left, arrives at Dedham District Court on Friday.

Michael Dwyer/AP

He allegedly told a victim to pray to be redeemed of his sins after the abuse

In the Massachusetts case, authorities began investigating McCarrick after the accuser's attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, sent a letter to the district attorney's office alleging the abuse, according to the court records.

The man told authorities during an interview in January that McCarrick was close to his family when he was growing up and that the abuse started when he was a young boy.

The man said that during his brother's wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974 — when he was 16 — McCarrick told him that his father wanted him to have a talk with McCarrick because the boy was "being mischievous at home and not attending church."

The man said that the two of them went for a walk around campus and McCarrick groped him before they went back to the party. The man said McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a "coat room type closet" after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the documents.

The man told investigators that before leaving the room, McCarrick told him to "say three Our Fathers and a Hail Mary or it was one Our Father and three Hail Marys, so God can redeem you of your sins," according to the report.

He also described other instances of sexual abuse by McCarrick over the years, including when the man was an adult, according to the court records. The Associated Press generally doesn't identify people who report sexual assault unless they agree to be named publicly.

McCarrick was a face of the church's response to the 2002 scandal

Ordained as a priest in New York City in 1958, McCarrick ascended the church ranks despite apparently common knowledge in the U.S. and Vatican leadership that "Uncle Ted," as he was known, slept with seminarians.

The case against McCarrick and other Catholic clerics is especially raw in Boston, where the global priest sex abuse scandal first was exposed.

Reporting by The Boston Globe's Spotlight team helped break open the scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002. The reporting uncovered how dozens of priests in the archdiocese had molested and raped children for decades while church higher-ups covered it up and shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish.

A movie about the Globe's reporting, "Spotlight," won the 2016 Academy Award for best picture.

McCarrick became one of the most visible Catholic Church officials in the U.S. and even served as the spokesman for fellow U.S. bishops when they enacted a "zero tolerance" policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

Cardinal George Pell was convicted of sexual abuse in his native Australia, but his conviction was ultimately thrown out. And French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted but later acquitted of charges that he covered up for a notorious pedophile priest.