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(LifeSiteNews) — A disgraced former cardinal has been charged in Wisconsin with sexual assault.

Theodore McCarrick, 92, stands accused of assaulting an 18-year-old boy at a lakeside cabin in the south-eastern region of the state in 1977. According to Associated Press, the alleged victim told investigators that McCarrick had been sexually abusing him since he was 11 years old. He also alleged that McCarrick took him to parties where other men sexually assaulted him.

 

The complaint was lodged on Friday.

McCarrick was once one of the most influential prelates in the United States. Ordained by New York’s Cardinal Spellman in 1958, he reached the heights of his profession by being named Archbishop of Washington in 2000 and a cardinal in 2001. After retiring as archbishop, the then-cardinal maintained his influence as a globe-trotting fundraiser. His ecclesiastical career came to a definitive end only in 2017 after a credible allegation that he had sexually molested a teenage boy was received by the Archdiocese of New York. It was then discovered by the public that rumors of his predatory behaviour had swirled around American Church circles for decades and that settlements had been made to victims.

McCarrick was laicized in 2019 after a Vatican investigation concluded that he had sexually abused both children and adults, including young priests and seminarians.

The alleged victim has not been named. However, James Grein, who was born in 1958, is perhaps the best known of all McCarrick’s alleged victims. He has stated that McCarrick began assaulting him when he was around the age of 11 and continued to maintain a coercive sexual relationship with him well into adulthood.

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