Sexual Assault Charges Against McCarrick Dropped
World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0
CV NEWS FEED // On Wednesday, sexual assault charges against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick were officially dropped after a judge ruled he was not competent to stand trial in a Massachusetts case involving decades-old charges.
In June, a Massachusetts state expert recommended after a mental assessment that the 92-year-old be deemed mentally unfit to participate in his own defense due to severe dementia.
Though other allegations against McCarrick have surfaced in the five years since his laicization by the Vatican, the charges in this case involve an alleged encounter with a sixteen-year-old boy at a 1974 wedding reception in Wellesley, Massachusetts. The accuser alleges that McCarrick sexually molested him there.
McCarrick was facing three counts of indecent exposure and assault against a person over the age of 14 in the case.
Before the charges were dropped, he had pleaded not guilty and has continued to maintain his innocence.
The Massachusetts case is one of two criminal cases against McCarrick. In April, he was charged with the sexual assault of a minor in Wisconsin in 1977.
Many of the other allegations against the former cardinal have fallen beyond state statutes of limitation, meaning that he cannot be prosecuted in state courts.
McCarrick, who turned 93 last month, is the first U.S. Catholic bishop to face criminal charges over sexual assault allegations.
