NEW JERSEY
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
December 5, 2019
By Joe Atmonavage
Disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually abused a New Jersey child for 20 years into adulthood, even after that the victim personally told Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Vatican about the abuse, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
It is the second complaint filed against McCarrick in the last week under a new law that gives more time to people to sue their alleged abusers and the institutions who protected them.
Both lawsuits include allegations of sexual abuse and claim that church officials were aware of McCarrick’s alleged misconduct.
According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Esssex County Superior Court, McCarrick began sexually abusing 11-year-old James Christopher Grein in 1969 when McCarrick was a priest in the Archdiocese of New York. (Grein filed a lawsuit last year against the Archdiocese of New York, alleging they were negligent in their supervision of McCarrick.)
As McCarrick moved to New Jersey and became the the bishop of Metuchen in 1981, he continued to allegedly engage in “unlawful sexual contact” with Grein, who was then an adult, in the rectory of St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral in Metuchen from 1982 to 1986, according to the lawsuit.
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