Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was on Thursday charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy. He is the first cardinal to be criminally charged in the US with a sexual crime against a minor.

In 2019, Pope Francis had defrocked McCarrick in a first for the Roman Catholic church. In 1974, He had sexually assaulted a teenager during a wedding reception at Massachusetts. The charges had first been reported on by The Boston Globe.

The victim’s lawyer in an email told Associated Press that they want the facts to be presented and a fair verdict to be rendered. “It takes an enormous amount of courage for a sexual abuse victim to report having been sexually abused to investigators and proceed through the criminal process. Let the facts be presented, the law applied, and a fair verdict rendered,” Mitchell Garabedian wrote in the email.

The Dedham District Court has charged McCarrick with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14.

According to the court filing, the unnamed victim narrated several incidents of abuse. He stated that most of these took place in New York, New Jersey and California. McCarrick attended the wedding of the victim’s brother in Massachusetts in 1974. At the wedding, the former cardinal allegedly pulled the victim aside and told him that his dad wanted him to have a talk with McCarrick.

The victim alleged that McCarrick then pulled down his pants and kissed his genetelia. The Cardinal later also asked the boy to say some prayers so that God would redeem him of his sins, said the complaint.

McCarrick has been accused of assaulting a teenager in the past. That case was from New York in the early 1970s. He was also accused of forcing men to sleep with him at a beach house in New Jersey while they studied for the priesthood.

He is among hundreds of members of the clergy accused of sexually abusing children over several decades. McCarrick’s next court appearance is slated in Massachusetts next month.