Defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick Charged With Sexually Assaulting Teen During 1970s Wedding

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has become the highest-ranking Roman Catholic official in the U.S. to face child sex crime charges. McCarrick, who was already expelled from the priesthood, has been charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14. The ex-Catholic official was accused of groping a 16-year-old boy in 1974 on the Wellesley College campus in Massachusetts, where the alleged victim’s brother was getting married. After the assault, McCarrick told the teen 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,” court papers allege.

Several men have filed civil suits in New York and New Jersey, accusing McCarrick of sexually abusing them when they were kids in the 1970s and 1990s. While the statute of limitations has run out in some of those cases, he could still be charged in Massachusetts. McCarrick, who now lives in Missouri, has denied the allegations against him. “I’m not as bad as they paint me,” he said to Slate in 2019. “I do not believe that I did the things they accused me of.”