NEW YORK (NY)
Catholic News Agency - EWTN [Denver CO]
August 4, 2021
By Matt Hadro and Christine Rousselle
A new civil sex-abuse lawsuit has been filed against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, also naming Opus Dei priest Father Michael Barrett, who is currently a pastor in the Archdiocese of New York.
Jeffrey Anderson, a prominent attorney who represents sex-abuse victims, announced the allegations against Father Barrett and McCarrick on Wednesday in a news conference that was broadcast online.
“My youth, my childhood was robbed from me,” said the plaintiff, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, in the case during the online press conference. He said he was “abused by two people involved in the Catholic Church, and this is Father Michael Barrett and Cardinal McCarrick, who wasn’t a cardinal then, and he should have never become one.”
According to Anderson, the plaintiff was abused by Father Barrett beginning at age 12, and the abuse continued for “three to four years.”
Neither the Archdiocese of New York nor Opus Dei immediately responded to CNA’s request for comment on Wednesday.
The lawsuit was filed under New York’s Child Victims Act, a law that created a temporary window for new civil sex-abuse lawsuits to be filed in old cases where the statute of limitations had already expired. The time window for civil lawsuits expires on Aug. 14.
Father Barrett was then a layperson “heavily involved with Opus Dei” when he allegedly “invited and recruited” the plaintiff to an Opus Dei house, Anderson said. Barrett was “grooming” the plaintiff at that time, which “led to criminal sexual assault.”
Barrett ultimately became a priest with Opus Dei and is currently a pastor at St. Agnes parish in the New York Archdiocese.
![Above is a screenshot of the Jeff Anderson & Associates press conference [Showing Jeff Anderson, Theodore McCarrick, and Fr. Michael Barrett.] (photo: Jeff Anderson & Associates via CNA)](https://www.bishop-accountability.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/c-2021-08-04-Hadro-New-Sex-Abuse-ph-Fr-Michael-Barrett-et-al.jpg)
The allegations to date to the 1970s. The defendants in the lawsuit are McCarrick, then a priest of the New York Archdiocese and secretary to then-Cardinal Terence Cooke, as well as Barrett, then a lay member of Opus Dei, Anderson explained. The archdiocese was also named in the lawsuit for alleged negligence in McCarrick’s case.
According to the lawsuit, McCarrick abused the plaintiff from 1975 to 1978, when he was approximately 13 to 16 years old. Barrett allegedly abused the plaintiff from approximately 1974 to 1978, according to the lawsuit.
Anderson called on Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York to release a list of all clerics the archdiocese has made settlements with, as well as the names of those in the archdiocese known to have committed abuse.
This story is developing.