MASSACHUSETTS
The Salem News
BY JULIE MANGANIS
STAFF WRITER
IPSWICH — As his trial on child molestation charges nears, the former head of a religious order in Ipswich yesterday made another attempt to have the case against him dismissed.
The Rev. Richard McCormick, 73, who once ran the Salesian Brothers of Don Bosco retreat in Ipswich, is accused of raping two boys attending summer camp there back in the 1980s.
McCormick has already lost earlier bids to have the charges dismissed.
Last year, he and attorney Stephen Neyman argued that under the First Amendment’s right to freedom of religion, a law that allows the calculation of time for the statute of limitations to stop during periods when McCormick was out of state is unconstitutional. McCormick, as a member of a religious order, has no say when he is ordered to move to another state, they argued.
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