MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald
By Matt Stout
Friday, August 31, 2012
The priest and former head of a Catholic order charged with raping a victim multiple times on the North Shore in the 1980s has a decades-old history of alleged abuse that includes nine civil cases — including five from Boston dating back to the 1960s — but before now, had never been charged criminally, a lawyer representing the victims told the Herald.
Father Richard McCormick, arrested yesterday in New Rochelle, N.Y., was scheduled to appear in Salem Superior Court today on five counts of a rape of a child, charges stemming from the alleged sexual abuse of a victim, then 11 and 12 years old, during 1981 and 1982 in Ipswich, according to the Essex County district attorney’s office.
Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston lawyer representing the alleged victim civilly, declined to comment on the current case, citing it as a “pending criminal matter.”
But Garabedian said he’s represented nine other victims who had their cases settled against McCormick, who once served as the provincial, or head, of the Salesians of Don Brosco’s entire Eastern United States order.
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