BOSTON — Lawyers for former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick filed a motion Monday to dismiss a case charging him with sexually assaulting a boy decades back, stating the 92-year-outdated after-impressive American prelate has dementia and is not capable to stand trial.
McCarrick pleaded not guilty in September 2021 in the Massachusetts scenario that alleges the priest sexually abused the boy at a wedding ceremony reception at Wellesley Higher education in June 1974. He is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, present or previous, ever to be criminally charged with little one intercourse crimes.
His lawyers mentioned in their movement to dismiss that McCarrick was examined by a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Drugs, who concluded the previous cardinal suffers from dementia, most likely owing to Alzheimer’s sickness.
“While he has a constrained comprehending of the prison proceedings from him, his progressive and irreparable cognitive deficits render him unable to meaningfully seek advice from with counsel or to successfully help in his possess protection,” McCarrick’s lawyers wrote. They say McCarrick maintains his innocence of all expenses.
A prosecutor explained to the decide throughout a hearing before Monday at the Dedham District Court docket that the Norfolk District Attorney’s Workplace would be using the services of its have pro to carry out a 2nd belief on competency, according to David Traub, a spokesperson for that office. The prosecutors’ business declined additional remark on the protection motion.
McCarrick, who lives in Dittmer, Missouri, faces three counts of indecent assault and battery on a man or woman over 14. He can still encounter charges because he was not a Massachusetts resident and experienced remaining the point out, stopping the clock on the statute of constraints.
Mitchell Garabedian, a very well-recognized attorney for church sexual abuse victims who is symbolizing the man accusing McCarrick, stated Monday that his customer has “shown a great deal of bravery in coming ahead to report the crimes and he intends to see this issue through to the end.”
“Experience has taught me that the closer in time to demo the far more an accused priest gets incompetent,” Garabedian stated in an e-mail.
No trial day has been set in McCarrick’s situation.
The man explained to authorities during a 2021 job interview that McCarrick, who was close to the man’s relatives when he was expanding up, commenced abusing him as a youthful boy. Prosecutors say McCarrick would show up at family members gatherings and journey on vacations with them and that the sufferer referred to the priest as “Uncle Ted.”
Prosecutors say the abuse ongoing all over the a long time and took place once again when the boy, who was then 16, was at his brother’s marriage ceremony reception at Wellesley Higher education.
Prosecutors say McCarrick instructed the boy his father wanted him to have a chat with the priest due to the fact the boy was “being mischievous at home and not attending church.” The gentleman instructed investigators that they took a stroll all over campus, and McCarrick groped him ahead of they went again to the party. The man mentioned McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a coat room immediately after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the paperwork.
Prosecutors say McCarrick advised the boy to say the “Hail Mary” and “Our Father” prayers right before leaving the space.
The Associated Push usually doesn’t determine persons who report sexual assault unless of course they agree to be named publicly, which the target in this scenario has not finished.
Ordained as a priest in New York City in 1958, McCarrick ascended the church ranks irrespective of apparently widespread expertise in the U.S. and Vatican leadership that “Uncle Ted,” as he was recognised, slept with seminarians.
McCarrick became a single of the most noticeable Catholic Church officers 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 monks in 2002.
His slide commenced in 2017, when a former altar boy came ahead to report the priest experienced groped him in New York when he was a teen.
The upcoming 12 months, the Archdiocese of New York announced McCarrick had been taken off from ministry soon after finding the allegation to be “credible and substantiated,” and two New Jersey dioceses unveiled they experienced settled statements from him in the earlier of sexual misconduct involving grownups.
Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in 2019 after a Vatican investigation decided he sexually abused minors, as nicely as grown ups.
A two-calendar year internal investigation observed that three a long time of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed stories of sexual misconduct. Correspondence showed they consistently turned down the facts as rumor and excused it as an “imprudence.”
The conclusions unveiled in 2020 pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., in spite of possessing commissioned an inquiry that verified McCarrick slept with seminarians.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that the findings of the Vatican investigation have been released in 2020.
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