A retired New Orleans priest who walked back a public admission of sexual abuse will spend his remaining years behind bars, after pleading guilty to charges for offenses dating from 1975-1976.
Msgr. Lawrence Hecker was sentenced to life in prison Dec. 18 by Judge Nandi Campbell of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in News Orleans.
The 93-year-old Archdiocese of New Orleans priest had entered his guilty plea just as jury selection was about to begin in his trial Dec. 3.
He was charged with first-degree rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft. The rape charge, initially filed as aggravated, was later upgraded to first degree. He had been indicted in September 2023 by a grand jury.
According to New Orleans Police Department reports, Msgr. Hecker raped and kidnapped a victim, who was not named, between Jan. 1, 1975, and Dec. 31, 1976.
During a brief Aug. 24, 2023, phone call with OSV News, Msgr. Hecker denied abusing several youth, after he had admitted earlier that month to a local television station he had done so.
“Things get twisted around,” he said before hanging up. At his September 2023 arraignment, Msgr. Hecker had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In a Dec. 18 statement, New Orleans Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond said, “Today, it is our hope and prayer that the survivors of abuse perpetrated by Lawrence Hecker have some closure and some sense of peace in his sentencing.
“On behalf of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, we offer our sincere and heartfelt apologies to the survivors for the pain Hecker has caused them to endure for decades,” said the archbishop.
According to The Times-Picayune, the unnamed survivor in Msgr. Hecker’s court case took to the witness stand. He recounted the attack, which took place as the priest purported to teach him, then a student, wrestling moves in preparation for a Catholic school team tryout.
While the event “started innocently enough,” explained the survivor, Msgr. Hecker ultimately raped the teen, choking him into unconsciousness when he tried to resist. The survivor also recounted that after he reported the attack to his mother and church authorities, he was threatened with expulsion from school unless he underwent a psychiatric evaluation for his “fantasy.”
According to prosecutors, several victims had been prepared to testify against the priest.
Judge Campbell was visibly moved at the sentencing hearing, thanking the survivors for their testimonies.
“Closure is not going to come from an apology,” she said. The Times-Picayune noted that an unkempt Msgr. Hecker — who fidgeted in his wheelchair and occasionally groaned throughout the proceedings — did not offer one. He also avoided eye contact with his accusers.
Still, said Judge Campbell, “I hope that this plea and this sentence give you some kind of closure.”
In his statement, Archbishop Aymond commended survivors for their courage.
“To those who have so recently come forward after struggling with this pain for so many years, we commend your bravery and echo Judge Campbell’s words as we hope you can again learn to trust,” he said.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020 in the wake of the clergy abuse scandal, faces the settlement of more than 600 sex abuse claims.
OSV News has confirmed with the New Orleans Archdiocese that while Msgr. Hecker was “permanently removed from priestly ministry with no faculties in 2002” he has not been dismissed from the clerical state.
The archdiocese has claimed it reported Msgr. Hecker to law enforcement authorities in 2002-2003, and that a survivor reported him to the police in 2012. The archdiocese has also stated he was included on the list of archdiocesan clergy removed from ministry for abuse of a minor in 2018. The priest was also supported by the archdiocese per what canon law required until the bankruptcy court eliminated it.
But in a 1999 statement made to the archdiocese, Msgr. Hecker himself had acknowledged having committed “overtly sexual acts” with at least three underage boys in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also confessed to having close relationships with four other boys into the 1980s.
The admission was an about-face from interviews over the years in which Msgr. Hecker had denied or avoided saying that he had inappropriately touched children.
Reports of his Msgr. Hecker’s behavior over the years ultimately led to him being sent by the archdiocese in 1999 to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment facility, where he was diagnosed as a pedophile, according to a personnel file obtained by The Guardian, a newspaper based in the United Kingdom.
The newspaper published an extensive investigation of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, and teamed up with New Orleans television channel WWL-TV for a surprise joint interview with Msgr. Hecker at his apartment.
Both in the 1999 statement and in the WWL-Guardian interview, the priest — who appeared slightly disheveled as he spoke at the gate of his residence — chalked his abuse up to widespread sexually permissive behavior of the time. The journalists noted that Louisiana’s age of consent in the 1960s and 1970s was 17, as it remains today.
Despite his 1999 statement to the archdiocese and clinical diagnosis, Msgr. Hecker still undertook some two additional years of ministry, having been assigned in 2000 to a parish with an elementary school. He quietly retired in 2002 and was added to the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ list of credibly accused priests in 2018.
From 2010 to about 2020, the archdiocese paid at least $332,500 out-of-court settlements for five complaints of sexual abuse by Msgr. Hecker, according to The Guardian.
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