Retired New Orleans priest pleads guilty to kidnapping and raping boy in 1970s

Shortly before a jury was supposed to be chosen for his trial on criminal charges of kidnapping and raping a boy in the mid-1970s, the self-acknowledged serial child molester and retired Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker pleaded guilty on Tuesday morning.

The 93-year-old is scheduled to receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment on 18 December in New Orleans’s state criminal courthouse, where it has been rare for a Catholic clergyman to be charged – much less convicted – in connection with the church’s decades-old clerical molestation scandal.

Hecker’s attorney, Robert Hjortsberg, said on Tuesday that his client “took responsibility for the charges … and now everyone involved will have the opportunity to move forward”.

“It was his decision, and he made it of his own free will,” Hjortsberg said.

The victim in the trial Hecker avoided maintained that he was an underage student at a Catholic high school to which Hecker had ties when the priest choked him unconscious and raped him in about 1975.

The accuser reported telling his school principal about the rape, which unfolded in a space in a church bell tower that had been converted into a weightlifting room. But the accuser has said the principal, Paul Calamari, never alerted police and instead arranged for him to undergo psychological treatment.

Hecker initially denied those accusations. But in 1999, he did admit in writing to Catholic church leaders in New Orleans that he had molested or sexually harassed several other children whom he met through his ministry.

New Orleans’s Catholic archdiocese nonetheless allowed Hecker to return to work before he retired a few years later. The archdiocese then waited until 2018 to finally notify the public that Hecker – along with Calamari and dozens of their fellow clerics – had been the subject of substantial, credible child sexual abuse allegations that eventually drove the institution to file for bankruptcy protection in 2020.

The Guardian managed to obtain a copy of Hecker’s 1999 admissions and exposed them to the public for the first time in June 2023 despite a seal on information pertaining to the bankruptcy.

In August 2023, the Guardian shared the confession with the New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana, and both outlets confronted Hecker on camera in August 2023.

Hecker, during that confrontation, verified that his written confession was authentic. And a couple of weeks later, the New Orleans district attorney, Jason Williams, secured a grand jury indictment charging Hecker in connection with the child rape and kidnapping charges.

The case was delayed for more than a year over questions about Hecker’s mental competence to withstand a criminal trial. He has been grappling with dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Additionally, at a trial date set for September, moments before jury selection, the judge who was first assigned Hecker’s case – Benedict Willard – suddenly recused himself from the matter, citing a personality clash with the lead prosecutor, the assistant district attorney Ned McGowan. Judge Nandi Campbell then took over the case and accepted Hecker’s guilty plea on Tuesday as the first panel of prospective jurors waited in the hallway to begin the selection process.

As many as a dozen witnesses who allege enduring a range of sexually abusive acts by Hecker after he met them during their childhoods between the 1960s and 80s were prepared to testify against him. Williams said on Tuesday that he had called to inform them that Hecker had admitted his guilt.

Richard Trahant, the civil attorney representing the main victim in Hecker’s case, said he hoped the priest “suffers miserably” after admitting what he did to his client, who was traveling when news of the plea broke.

The law enforcement investigation into Hecker has since widened into an inquiry over whether the archdiocese ran a child sex-trafficking ring responsible for the “widespread … abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported” to authorities, according to statements sworn under oath by police.

None of Hecker’s superiors have been charged with crimes in the case against him. One of the supporting witnesses prepared to testify against Hecker, Aaron Hebert, said Tuesday he hopes that changes.

“Hecker is just the tip of the iceberg,” Hebert said.

The last Catholic clergyman charged in New Orleans with child rape was deacon George Brignac, who died while awaiting trial. The indictment pending against him at the time of his death was the last of four unsuccessful attempts to criminally prosecute Brignac. He had previously been arrested three times between 1977 and 1988, was acquitted at trial once and saw prosecutors drop charges against him on two other occasions.

The archdiocese on Tuesday issued a statement saying in part: “It is our hope that today’s court proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse.”

Williams on Tuesday hailed Hecker’s guilty plea as “a critical moment for some little boys who are now men” and had been living with the effects of their abuse at the retired priest’s hands for decades.

“This ends the criminal legal battle for these survivors,” Williams said.