FILE - In this May 16, 2006 record photograph erstwhile Washington Archbishop, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick pauses during a property league successful Washington. McCarrick, the once-influential American cardinal who was defrocked aft a Vatican probe confirmed helium had sexually molested adults arsenic good arsenic children, has been charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old lad during a wedding reception astatine Wellesley College successful the 1970s, tribunal records show. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this May 16, 2006 record photograph erstwhile Washington Archbishop, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick pauses during a property league successful Washington. McCarrick, the once-influential American cardinal who was defrocked aft a Vatican probe confirmed helium had sexually molested adults arsenic good arsenic children, has been charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old lad during a wedding reception astatine Wellesley College successful the 1970s, tribunal records show. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) (AP2006)

BOSTON – Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked aft a Vatican probe confirmed helium had sexually molested adults arsenic good arsenic children, has been charged with sexually assaulting a teenage lad during a wedding reception successful the 1970s, tribunal records show.

Court documents obtained by The Boston Globe shows that McCarrick is charged with 3 counts of indecent battle and artillery connected a idiosyncratic implicit 14.

McCarrick is the archetypal cardinal successful the U.S. to ever beryllium criminally charged with a intersexual transgression against a minor, according to Mitchell Garabedian, a well-known lawyer for religion intersexual maltreatment victims who is representing the antheral alleging the maltreatment by McCarrick.

"It takes an tremendous magnitude of courageousness for a intersexual maltreatment unfortunate to study having been sexually abused to investigators and proceed done the transgression process," Garabedian said successful an email. “Let the facts beryllium presented, the instrumentality applied, and a just verdict rendered.”

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Barry Coburn, an lawyer for McCarrick, told The Associated Press that they “look guardant to addressing the lawsuit successful the courtroom," and declined further comment.

A study filed successful tribunal says the antheral told investigators that McCarrick was a household person and began abusing him erstwhile helium was a boy.

The antheral says McCarrick groped him erstwhile helium was 16 successful 1974 arsenic they walked astir the field of Wellesley College, wherever his brother's wedding reception was being held. The antheral besides alleges that McCarrick led him into a country and fondled the lad earlier telling him to “say 3 our fathers and a Hail Mary oregon it was 1 our begetter and 3 Hail Marys, truthful God tin redeem you of your sins," according to the tribunal documents.

McCarrick, 91, was defrocked by Pope Francis successful 2019 aft a Vatican probe confirmed decades of rumors that helium was a intersexual predator.

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The lawsuit created a credibility situation for the religion since the Vatican had reports from authoritative cardinals dating to 1999 that McCarrick’s behaviour was problematic, yet helium became an influential cardinal, kingmaker and emissary of the Holy See’s “soft diplomacy.”

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