BOSTON (AP) 鈥� 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鈥檚 Dedham District Court hunched over a walker. 鈥淪hame on you!鈥� 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.
McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former, to ever be criminally charged with child sex crimes.
McCarrick鈥檚 attorney, Katherine Zimmerl, said afterward that they are 鈥渓ooking forward to addressing the allegations in court鈥� and would have no other immediate comment.
The next hearing was set for Oct. 28.
McCarrick, who now lives in Dittmer, Missouri, faces three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, according to court documents. He can still face charges in the case because he wasn鈥檛 a Massachusetts resident and had left the state, stopping the clock on the statute of limitations.
McCarrick鈥檚 fall began in 2017 when a former altar boy came forward to report the priest had groped him when he was a teenager in New York. The next year, the Archdiocese of New York announced that McCarrick had been removed from ministry after finding the allegation to be 鈥渃redible and substantiated,鈥� and two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against him in the past involving adults.
Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as adults.
A two-year internal investigation into McCarrick found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct. Correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information outright as rumor and excused it as an 鈥渋mprudence.鈥�
The investigative findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.
In the Massachusetts case, authorities began investigating McCarrick after the accuser鈥檚 attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, sent a letter to the district attorney鈥檚 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鈥檚 wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974 鈥� when he was 16 鈥� McCarrick told him that his father wanted him to have a talk with McCarrick because the boy was 鈥渂eing mischievous at home and not attending church.鈥�
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 鈥渃oat room type closet鈥� after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the documents.
The man told investigators that before leaving the room, McCarrick told him to 鈥渟ay 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,鈥� 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鈥檛 identify people who report sexual assault unless they agree to be named publicly.
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 鈥淯ncle Ted,鈥� 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 reporting, 鈥淪potlight,鈥� 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 鈥渮ero tolerance鈥� 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.
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Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press
