93-year-old Theodore McCarrick, who is a former Roman Catholic Cardinal previously accused of sexually assaulting a teenage boy nearly 50 years ago, has just been deemed not fit to stand trial by a judge; thus allowing him to escape all charges.
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On Wednesday (August 30), Massachusetts’ Judge Paul J. McCallum ruled that the former Roman Catholic Cardinal “is not competent to stand trial,” on the charges accusing him of sexually assaulting a teenage boy in the state nearly 5 decades ago.
Against the charges, 93-year-old Theodore McCarrick has maintained his innocence, and pleaded not guilty in September 2021 to claims accusing him of abusing a teenager at a wedding reception taking place at Wellesley College in 1974.
McCarrick was also hit with additional charges pressed in April 2023, accusing him of sexually assaulting other young boys in Wisconsin between the 1970s and 1990s. This case is still pending, with no plea entered and a hearing set for September 18.
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In his Massachusetts case that he’s narrowly escaped, the former Roman Catholic Cardinal, who is currently staying at an assisted living facility in Dittmer, Missouri, was facing three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14.
In this case, Theodore McCarrick’s accuser claimed, “Mr. McCarrick was a part of my immediate family since 1945 and my abuser from 1969 until 1989. These proceedings were to have provided a modest level of payback. But now the court has come to the conclusion that Mr. McCarrick is not competent to stand trial. I brought the charges in this matter, in the hope of finding justice in this court. Instead, McCarrick walks a free man and I am left with nothing. Nothing except the continuing fear of the twice-threatened retaliation.”
For those wondering how he was charged for a decades-old alleged incident, it is reported that prosecutors were able to still file charges because he wasn’t a Massachusetts resident upon leaving the state. So he stopped the clock on the statute of limitations.
After pleading not guilty in the case last year, this April, McCarrick’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case being that he had been diagnosed with dementia, likely due to Alzheimer’s disease. In their motion, his legal team said the former Roman Catholic Cardinal had been examined by a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and came back with the diagnosis.
Then in June, Dr. Kerry Nelligan, a psychologist hired by prosecutors, had interviewed McCarrick twice and administered psychological tests. During Wednesday’s court hearing, Dr. Nelligan testified on the results and said that McCarrick’s poor performance on the tests showed that there was no sign of him faking his symptoms.
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Dr. Nelligan concluded that McCarrick did not meet the standard for competency and that he had “significant deficits” in his memory and ability to retain information. The doctor even added that his deficits were so bad they couldn’t be fixed and would only progress and get worse; thus making him not fit to stand trial.
Following Dr. Nelligan’s conclusion and referencing the defense’s argument to dismiss over the same claims, the Massachusetts judge in the case agreed with their motion and the prosecution immediately moved to dismiss the complaint against Theodore McCarrick.
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