Ex-Cardinal Pleads Not Guilty To Molesting Teenager, Allegedly Told Boy To Pray For Forgiveness Afterwards

The Associated Press reports:

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.

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From my July 2020 report:

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick ran a depraved sex ring of underage boys at a beach house on the Jersey Shore, a disturbing new lawsuit claims.

The suit, filed by a man using the pseudonym Doe 14, claims that in 1982 and 1983, when he was as young as 14 years old, he and other victims were taken on weekend overnight trips to a Sea Girt beach house.

“McCarrick assigned sleeping arrangements, choosing his victims from the boys, seminarians and clerics present at the beach house,” according to the suit filed in state court under New Jersey’s Child Victims Act.

From a July 2021 NPR report

The man also alleges that McCarrick led him into a room and fondled the boy before telling 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 court documents. McCarrick, 91, was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation confirmed decades of rumors that he was a sexual predator.

McCarrick is the only cardinal, current or former, to have been criminally charged for child sex abuse.