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

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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

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

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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.

• Theodore McCarrick