Ex-Cardinal McCarrick Faces Milestone Charges in Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis
It seems worth noting that the crime described in this article took place in 1974, 47 years ago. If you had known McCarrick over those years and were aware of the abuse he inflicted on children, you would have laughed if someone asked you if you believed that “what goes around comes around.”
You would have said, “no way! If it was true this supposed Priest would be serving time! But look at him, free as a bird with no vultures circling!”
But that person, who thought he knew the truth of the matter first hand, would have been wrong! There was a vulture of sorts, right there in the shadows, just waiting for the “right” time to appear. It’s name is “The Law of Cause and Effect,” the fundamental law of nature and physics that explains literally everything that happens on this planet, including human behavior and consequences.
It is said that, “the blossom, whether flower or thorn, is in the very seed that is planted!”
Is it true? McCarrick didn’t think so.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/us/cardinal-mccarrick-sexual-abuse-charge.html?smid=em-share
Ex-Cardinal McCarrick Faces Milestone Charges in Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis
Theodore McCarrick, 91, is the highest-ranking U.S. official in the Roman Catholic Church to be charged with sexual abuse. He is accused of assaulting a 16-year-old boy in 1974.
The wedding reception took place on a June weekend in 1974. But it was this week that Theodore E. McCarrick, the former Roman Catholic cardinal expelled by Pope Francis, was criminally charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting a teenage boy at the event.
The complaint, issued on Wednesday, makes Mr. McCarrick the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to face charges in the sexual abuse crisis that has plagued the church for decades.
Mr. McCarrick, 91, the former archbishop of Washington, was expelled from the church in 2019 after a Vatican trial found him guilty of sexually abusing minors and adult seminarians over decades. But to the frustration of many prosecutors, he avoided punishment time and time again because statutes of limitations made cases difficult to pursue, and victims have lamented that he has largely escaped legal accountability.
Attorneys general in about 20 states, from Nebraska to Illinois to New Jersey, opened investigations into sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church following an explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report in 2018. But the widespread subpoenas and investigations produced only a handful of criminal charges. Some state officials attempted innovative lawsuit strategies that ultimately did not work.
This week’s criminal charges against Mr. McCarrick, filed in Dedham District Court in Massachusetts, represent a new moment in victims’ efforts to hold church officials accountable. The charges could proceed because of a feature of Massachusetts law: Because Mr. McCarrick was not a resident of Massachusetts, the clock on the statute of limitations there stopped when he was not in the state.
Mr. McCarrick, who now lives in Missouri, was charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person age 14 or over, and is expected to appear for arraignment on Sept. 3. Each charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and the requirement to register as a sex offender.
The complaint says that the alleged assaults occurred when the boy was 16. Now in his 60s, the man, whose name is redacted in the complaint, told investigators in January he had been assaulted repeatedly by Mr. McCarrick, a family friend, beginning when he was a young boy. He said the abuse took place not only in Massachusetts, but also in New York, New Jersey and California, and continued into adulthood.
The man said that at his brother’s wedding reception at Wellesley College on June 8, 1974, Mr. McCarrick asked to take a walk with him outside to discuss his “mischievous behavior.” When he stopped to urinate, he said, Mr. McCarrick sexually assaulted him. Later, when they returned to the building where the reception was being held, Mr. McCarrick assaulted him — while praying — inside a coatroom, he said. Afterward, he said, Mr. McCarrick told him “to say three ‘our fathers’ and a Hail Mary” so he would be redeemed of his sins.
Later that day, the man said, his father told him that he should listen to Mr. McCarrick and do what he told him.
“So maybe this was what it was supposed to be,” the man told investigators. “Maybe this was supposed to happen. I don’t know. I was still a naïve young man.”
Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for the man in civil matters, said it took enormous courage for him to come forward. “Let the facts be presented, the law applied, and a fair verdict rendered,” he said.
Mr. McCarrick’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, said in a statement, “We look forward to addressing this case in the courtroom.”
The charges were reported earlier by The Boston Globe.
Jeff Anderson, a lawyer who represents five people who said Mr. McCarrick abused them, said that news of the criminal charges brought a mixture of relief and anger among victims, and that he hoped for a speedy trial.
“The anger the survivors feel is so palpable,” he said. “The more they have known and the more that is unearthed, the worse it gets.”
Hours after the news of the criminal complaint on Thursday, a client of Mr. Anderson’s filed a civil suit against Mr. McCarrick and the Archdiocese of Newark, where Mr. McCarrick served as archbishop from 1986 to 2000. The suit alleges that Mr. McCarrick “inflicted unpermitted harmful and offensive sexual contact” on the plaintiff in the mid-1980s, when he was approximately 12 years old.
Mr. Coburn said he had no comment on the suit.
Mr. McCarrick has been the subject of several recent civil suits in New York and New Jersey, filed by men accusing him of abusing them when they were minors.
Mr. McCarrick was removed from ministry in 2018 after an investigation by the church found credible allegations that he sexually abused a 16-year-old altar boy in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan in 1971.
After a Vatican trial, Mr. McCarrick was expelled from the priesthood in 2019, marking the first time a cardinal, the church’s highest-ranking position after the pope, was defrocked for sexual abuse. It was also the first time an American cardinal was removed from the priesthood.
A Vatican report on Mr. McCarrick, released in November, stated that Pope John Paul II, who is now a saint, personally decided to elevate Mr. McCarrick even after a U.S. cardinal warned that he had been accused of sexual misconduct. Pope Benedict XVI removed Mr. McCarrick as archbishop of Washington but did not investigate him, the report said, and Pope Francis initially assumed his predecessors had appropriately addressed the issue.
Mr. McCarrick’s history of predation was well-known among some church officials, who had been warned for decades that he had been accused of sexual harassment, including the inappropriate touching of adult seminarians, according to a New York Times investigation.
Multiple reports about the cardinal’s misconduct toward seminary students were made to American bishops, the papal ambassador to the United States, and Pope Benedict XVI between 1994 and 2008. Two dioceses in New Jersey secretly paid settlements, in 2005 and 2007, to two men who had accused Mr. McCarrick of abuse.
Despite these allegations, Mr. McCarrick climbed the ranks of the Catholic Church in the United States, becoming auxiliary bishop of New York in 1977, bishop of the newly created Diocese of Metuchen in New Jersey in 1981, archbishop of Newark in 1986, and ultimately archbishop of Washington in 2001.
Maria Margiotta, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Newark, said it would be “inappropriate” for the archdiocese to comment on the criminal charges against Mr. McCarrick because he is “a now-private individual who is no longer affiliated with the archdiocese.” Ms. Margiotta said she had not seen the lawsuit filed against Mr. McCarrick and the archdiocese and had no comment about it.
The Archdiocese of New York declined to comment and the Diocese of Metuchen and the Archdiocese of Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
The Norfolk district attorney, Michael W. Morrissey, who is representing the state in the Massachusetts case, declined to comment before the arraignment, said his spokesman, David Traub.
In the few instances when Mr. McCarrick has commented on the accusations against him, he has denied wrongdoing.
That has not deterred accusers and prosecutors from pressing forward.
Ex-Cardinal McCarrick Faces Milestone Charges in Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis
Ex-Cardinal McCarrick Faces Milestone Charges in Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A stable, positive, non preachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Jury Awards $125 Million After Walmart Fires Woman With Down Syndrome
Jury Awards $125 Million After Walmart Fires Woman With Down Syndrome
Is it true that “What Goes Around Comes Around”? We may be getting close to another prime example of how that particular law of nature and physics plays out in the life of all humans, even those who have seemed impervious to its reach.
Now that the lengthy inquiry into accusations of sexual harassment and other improprieties related to the Governor’s handling of Covid, nursing-home data and state resources he may have illegally used to publish his book so quickly has advanced significantly, we’ll soon know the results of what at least appears to be a thorough and exhaustive investigation. There is always the risk of jumping the gun and assuming the worst, which we want to avoid in fairness to all parties, including the Governor.
From the current perch we all share of only having publicly available sources of info, it appears that Mr. Cuomo’s bluster and denials and the support he still has from political allies may see him through what appears to be the most significant threat he’s faced to his political career and legacy. If not, we’ll soon see another Governor’s career go down in ignoble flames due to their disbelief that those words applied to them, in spite of their use of them on many occasions to describe the plight of other people.
Drake Bell Given Two Years of Probation
Drake must have felt a sense of empowerment, the big star over the impressionable fan. It’s been called intoxicating and at the right time and place, with the right profile of a fan it might indeed have been just a “good time!”
But when that person turned out to be a minor it was a whole other ballgame and now Drake is someone who has been charged with the felony of attempted child endangerment. It lead to a plea deal including financial penalties, probation with various conditions for a minimum of two years and registration as a sex offender!
Have to ask though as we always should, is it possible its not so black and white? Were there mitigating circumstances? Had Drake himself been a victim of child abuse? Was this a one-off mistake or just one of a series? Does it indicate a much deeper problem and need for help, but with the proviso to also keep him away from other potential victims?
A deeper analysis might answer those questions and let us have a dose of sympathy. But in the end, sympathy or not, he made the choices! He lured her in! He pounced!
There’s at least one thing we can be pretty sure he didn’t have, which is the insight that whether there seems to be someone watching or not, that there IS something taking note.That something is the universal Law of Cause & Effect which explains every action/reaction in the physical universe and nature, but also applies to all human thoughts, words and actions and their consequences.
In our time and culture, the common vernacular for this principle in action is the expression “What Goes Around Comes Around.” Most of us use those words, perhaps many times, but only when describing someone else’s misfortune. We didn’t understand at first, but when the facts came out we could see why it happened!
However another truth is that, what is so easy to see in others can be so hard to see in ourselves. Unfortunately for Drake, he didn’t either! If he’d only read the book I wrote with that title he might not be in this fix!
The former star of the Nickelodeon series “Drake & Josh” had pleaded guilty to two charges related to a girl he met online. She attended one of his concerts in 2017.