(LifeSiteNews) — A court in Wisconsin has suspended a criminal sexual assault case against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick after a psychologist ruled the former prelate incompetent to stand trial.
McCarrick was charged with fourth-degree sexual assault in Wisconsin for an incident in 1977 where the former high-ranking prelate and “another adult male” are accused of repeated sexual abuse of the then-18-year-old James Grein near a house at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
According to Grein, the other alleged abuser next to McCarrick was Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the former archbishop of Chicago, who died in 1996.
READ: Boyhood sexual abuse victim of McCarrick interviewed by Vatican as canonical trial ramps up
The Walworth County court decision echoes that of a Massachusetts judge who ruled in August 2023 that McCarrick was not mentally competent to stand trial.
In both cases, the psychologists evaluating the former cardinal stated that he was too cognitively impaired due to dementia and, most likely, Alzheimer’s disease.
The suspension of the Wisconsin case effectively brings an end to the last criminal case against the defrocked former archbishop of Washington, D.C.
The court did not completely dismiss the case and scheduled a review hearing for December 27, 2024. However, it is unlikely that the 93-year-old McCarrick’s condition will improve by then.
When the court in Massachusetts decided on August 30, 2023, that McCarrick was not mentally competent to stand trial, James Grein expressed his disappointment in a statement addressed to the court.
“I understand that being found incompetent to stand trial is not an acquittal,” Grein wrote. “But, he will not be found guilty and there seems nothing to keep him and his defense attorneys from declaring ‘he was never convicted of the charges brought against him in Massachusetts.’”
Grein also recalled that McCarrick had threatened him with retaliation if he were to bring charges against him.
“I fear that I may face retaliation from his followers,” he said. “In 2018, after I went public with my name in Baltimore, MD, McCarrick sent followers to my house to remind me that he is the ‘most powerful man in the U.S., if not the world.’ The first time he said this to me was in 2012 at the funeral of my mother. His sinister eyes and voice warned me of retaliation if I went public.”
“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,” Grein concluded.
In recent years, 14 minors and at least eight adult clergy and seminarians have come forward to accuse McCarrick of sexual misconduct, according to BishopAccountability.org.
McCarrick was once one of the most influential prelates in the United States. Ordained by New York’s Cardinal Francis 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, 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 behavior had swirled around 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. He has always denied all sexual abuse allegations against him.
Defrocked in 2019, it is believed that McCarrick continues to live in Missouri.