MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald
By O’Ryan Johnson and Matt Stout
Saturday, September 1, 2012
The onetime leader of a Catholic order known as the Salesians of Don Bosco, who also ran a summer camp in Ipswich, was arraigned in Salem District Court yesterday for terrorizing a 9-year-old boy at the camp in the early 1980s, forcing the youngster to hide under his brother’s bed at night to escape the cleric’s advances, prosecutors said.
Richard McCormick, 68, of New Rochelle, N.Y., pleaded not guilty to five counts of rape of a child and was released on $1,000 bail. Judge Timothy Feeley ordered McCormick to return to his New York home, but to stay away from an all-boys high school that sits 100 yards away.
Assistant Essex District Attorney Kate MacDougall asked that McCormick be held on $75,000 bail. The case against him is based on a year-long investigation led by Ipswich police and state police assigned to Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett’s office.
MacDougall said McCormick ran the camp for the Salesians in Ipswich and began abusing the victim, who was not named, almost immediately upon his arrival. She said the camp is for disadvantaged boys from the Boston area. She said McCormick abused the boy during summers in 1981 and 1982, until the boy was 11 years old. The abuse started as touching, she said, but escalated to rape.
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