NEW ORLEANS (AP) 鈥 A state grand jury has charged a now-91-year-old disgraced priest with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 1975, an extraordinary prosecution that could shed new light on what Roman Catholic Church leaders knew about a child sex abuse crisis that persisted for decades and claimed hundreds of victims.
The priest, Lawrence Hecker, has been at the center of state and federal investigations of clergy sex abuse and a deepening scandal over why church leaders failed to report his admissions to law enforcement even as they permitted him to work around children until he quietly left the ministry in 2002. It wasn鈥檛 until 2018 that the Archdiocese of New Orleans publicly identified Hecker as a suspected predator when it released its list of 鈥渃redibly accused鈥 priests.
Hecker faces felony counts of rape, kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft. He is accused of choking the teen unconscious under the guise of performing a wrestling move and sexually assaulting him.
Reached by telephone Thursday, Hecker declined to talk about the charges. His attorney, Eugene Redmann, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The indictment comes amid a years-old legal battle over a trove of secret church records that were shielded by a sweeping confidentiality order after the archdiocese sought protection in 2020 amid a flood of abuse claims. The records are said to chronicle years of such claims, interviews with accused clergy and a pattern of church leaders transferring problem priests without reporting their crimes to law enforcement.
last year that the documents, including a deposition of Hecker, have drawn the attention of the FBI and federal prosecutors, who are considering federal charges against priests accused of taking children across state lines to molest them. The Guardian the church files on Hecker include a written confession and other explosive documents suggesting the last four archbishops of New Orleans had reason to believe he was a child molester.
The current archbishop, 73-year-old Gregory Aymond, has rebuffed calls by clergy abuse survivors to step down, saying he would not do so until canonically required to when he turns 75. Aymond did not respond to a request for comment.
鈥淗e should have been prosecuted a long time ago,鈥 Jason Williams, the Orleans Parish district attorney, told reporters Thursday. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had to fight very vigorously in the courts and behind the scenes.鈥
The alleged victim鈥檚 attorneys called the indictment a 鈥渧ictory for all victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse.鈥
鈥淟awrence Hecker got away with grotesque sexual felonies against children for many decades under the protection of the Archdiocese of New Orleans,鈥 attorneys Richard Trahant, Soren Gisleson and John Denenea said in a joint statement. 鈥淥ur client and several other Hecker victims whom we represent believe that he should spend the rest of his life in prison where he should have been for at least the last 60 years.鈥
New claims against Hecker have surfaced as recently as this year. One alleged victim filed court papers in February claiming Hecker in 1983 forced him and other altar boys to strip naked so he could 鈥渋nspect鈥 them inside the changing room of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church. 鈥淗e then proceeded to fondle my genitals as well as the other boys in the line,鈥 the now 48-year-old man wrote.
That claim echoed the account of another survivor, Aaron Hebert, who says Hecker abused him in the late 1960s when he was an eighth-grader at St. Joseph鈥檚 Catholic elementary school outside New Orleans. Hebert has said Hecker groped him and several classmates while purporting to demonstrate 鈥渨hat a hernia examination would be like鈥 for those interested in playing sports.
鈥淚t was all swept under the rug,鈥 Hebert wrote in a letter to a federal judge. 鈥淚n my opinion, the Archdiocese of New Orleans is morally bankrupt, not financially bankrupt.鈥
A New Orleans native, Hecker was ordained as an archdiocesan priest in 1958. Court records indicate he was relocated at least 10 times to various parishes despite repeated red flags, his own admissions and an undisputed complaint of child molestation made in the late 1980s.
鈥淓ven after Father Hecker made monumental admissions in 1988 and again in 1999, the archdiocese failed to report him to any authorities,鈥 attorneys for Hecker鈥檚 alleged victims wrote in a court filing.
The sheer age of the Hecker case presents legal and evidentiary hurdles for prosecutors, who also face the political sensitivity of prosecuting a longtime clergyman in heavily Catholic New Orleans. Many predator priests have escaped criminal consequences in Louisiana for those reasons.
A notable exception came in 2019, when prosecutors filed a against George F. Brignac, a longtime deacon and schoolteacher who faced a flood of sex abuse claims. That prosecution also involved a former altar boy who said he was sexually assaulted repeatedly in the 1970s. Brignac died in 2020 while awaiting trial at the age of 85.
Litigation involving Brignac turned up thousands of emails documenting that New Orleans Saints executives did for the archdiocese in 2018 and 2019 to contain fallout from clergy abuse scandals. Like the other secret church records, those emails remain under lock and key today.
鈥淚f the church truly wants to clean up the wreckage of the past, it needs to detail every transfer of known abusers, why and how it happened,鈥 said Mike McDonnell, interim executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. 鈥淭hey must be fully accountable for the decades in a victim鈥檚 life that could have been totally different had church officials taken care of the wounded sheep instead of the abusive shepherd.鈥
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Associated Press writer Kevin McGill contributed to this report.
