Retired New Orleans priest sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to child rape | Clergy Abuse in New Orleans

A serial child molester and retired Roman Catholic priest declined the opportunity to apologize to his victims on Wednesday after pleading guilty to child rape in early December.

Lawrence Hecker’s silence came Wednesday in New Orleans state criminal court as a judge handed him a life sentence.

Early in the trial, the victim who prosecuted the case that led to Hecker’s guilty plea described his rape in harrowing detail.

“I don’t forgive him,” said the victim, who was about 16 when the priest attacked him in 1975 in a church next to a high school the then-teenager attended.

Alluding to how Hecker’s superiors protected him from law enforcement for decades, he added: “In my opinion, the archdiocese should sit on his side – because they, too, are complicit in this.”

Other victims who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Hecker, now 93, and who agreed to testify at the trial that was averted by the clergyman’s guilty plea on Dec. 3, also spoke at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, including one who called him dismissed as “an animal”.

Judge Nandi Campbell wept with compassion for the abuse survivors as she sentenced Hecker, who did not testify before imposing the sentence.

“I hope this sentence gives you some closure,” Campbell told Hecker’s victims, but acknowledged how difficult it would be.

Hecker’s lawyer Robert Hjortsberg later told reporters that his client’s admission of guilt was an expression of remorse.

Wednesday’s emotional hearing finally closed the book on a grueling legal saga made largely necessary by a decades-long cover-up by Roman Catholic church officials in New Orleans, whose archdiocese counts hundreds of thousands of believers and is therefore one of the faith’s most trusted strongholds in the USA.

The survivor at the center of the case said he was a student at St. John Vianney High School in New Orleans – named after a patron saint of Catholic priests – when Hecker befriended him. He was in the habit of training in a weight room constructed from a room in the bell tower of an adjacent church, colloquially known as “Little Flower”, which has since closed along with St. John Vianney and is known for being primarily home to The Catholic priesthood was aimed at interested boys.

One day, Hecker showed up unannounced at the weight room and chatted with the boy about his ambition to join a St. John’s sports team. According to court documents, he suddenly put the child in a wrestling-style headlock, rendered her unconscious and raped her.

The survivor later recounted how he told his mother and the school principal about the rape. But he said the principal, Paul Calamari, never alerted police and instead threatened him with expulsion if he didn’t undergo psychological treatment for what school officials dismissed as “anger issues and fantasy stories.”

Hecker initially rejected these allegations. But in 1999, he admitted in writing to Catholic Church leaders in New Orleans that he had abused or sexually molested several other children he met in the course of his ministry.

The Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans nevertheless allowed Hecker to return to work before he retired several years later. The archdiocese then waited until 2018 to finally inform the public that Hecker and dozens of his clergy colleagues were the subject of significant, credible child sexual abuse allegations that ultimately led the organization to file for bankruptcy in 2020.

Calamari was also included in this list after admitting what he downplayed as a “sin” to a teenage student.

After Hecker was exposed as a child predator, the former St. John Vianney student filed a formal complaint with law enforcement about his rape – but the case progressed slowly despite the best efforts of him and his attorney Richard Trahant. Things accelerated after the Guardian managed to obtain a copy of Hecker’s 1999 approvals and made them available to the public for the first time in June 2023, even though most of the information related to the bankruptcy was sealed by the court.

Weeks later, the Guardian shared the confession with New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana, and both networks confronted Hecker on camera outside his apartment.

Hecker confirmed during this conversation that his written confession was authentic. And within 15 days, New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams’ office secured a grand jury indictment against Hecker for crimes including child rape, kidnapping and theft.

The theft charge was based on the theory that measures to cover up the rape had deprived Hecker’s victim of the opportunity to seek maximum civil damages for the abuse he survived.

In a civil lawsuit over the abuse of another victim, Hecker gave private testimony describing how his superiors at the church protected him from exposure. In a video of that deposition, obtained exclusively by the Guardian and WWL Louisiana, he can be seen saying, among other things, that clergy abuse was simply “none” for his organization at the time it learned he was an abuser big deal.”

Hecker’s case was delayed for more than a year after he filed charges over age-related questions about his mental capacity. Nevertheless, he was repeatedly found to have constitutional authority to stand trial, and shortly before jury selection began on December 3, he pleaded guilty as charged.

Not only did it guarantee him a life sentence, it was also the first time in recent memory that a Catholic priest in the city of New Orleans was convicted of child rape, one of the most punishable crimes under Louisiana law.

Hecker’s conviction was in stark contrast to the outcome of the last attempt to prosecute a New Orleans clergyman for child rape. In that case, George Brignac died while awaiting trial in 2020, causing prosecutors to fail in their attempt to bring him to trial for the fourth time since the late 1970s.

At Hecker’s sentencing on Wednesday, the survivor whose case led to his conviction recalled the lifelong negative impact of his rape on his personal relationships, including with his parents, his children and even his wife when he began dating her.

“Lawrence Hecker raped me … and … my whole aspect of the church changed,” he said.

“I didn’t trust anyone,” said the survivor, who later made a career in one of the US military branches. “I have zero friends. I pushed everyone away.”

Another Hecker survivor who reached out to him Wednesday was Aaron Hebert. Hebert shares a lawyer with the victim in Trahant, who successfully prosecuted Hecker’s rape allegations.

And he has previously spoken publicly about being fondled by Hecker under the guise of a hernia exam while serving under him as an altar boy.

Hebert – whose civil trial paved the way for Hecker’s damaging testimony – said the perpetrator’s reputation was so well-established that it earned him the derisive nickname “Hecker, the Pecker-Checker.”

He also called Hecker “Satan in priestly clothing” and recited a Bible verse: “It would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their necks and drown in the depths of the sea than to offend one of these little ones.”

“You don’t qualify as a ‘father’ or a man,” a childhood friend of Hebert’s and fellow survivor of Hecker’s later added. “You are an animal…You have done terrible things to each of us.

“Thank God for this day.”

Hecker followed the statements of his victims in a wheelchair and in an orange prison jumpsuit. Occasionally he trembled, groaned, cried, and wiped his eyes.

The case brought by Louisiana State Police against Hecker has since expanded into an investigation into whether the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans operated a child trafficking ring responsible for “widespread…abuse of minors for decades” that “covered up and “not reported”. to authorities, according to law enforcement affidavits.

The assistant district attorney who led the prosecution against Hecker, Ned McGowan, said in court Wednesday that the clergyman’s “decade-long career … of child rape” was “aided and abetted by the Catholic Church.”

Scott Rodrigue, the lead State Police investigator in the Hecker case and the broader investigation surrounding it, questioned Calamari.

In fact, Rodrigue wrote in court papers that Calamari admitted that he had previously “sexually abused a minor” himself.

However, it was not clear whether Calamari would be called as a witness in Hecker’s trial if the trial had moved forward. And it remained to be seen Wednesday whether any of Hecker’s enablers might be similarly charged with crimes, although both Rodrigue and an FBI agent were present at Wednesday’s sentencing.

Williams said outside court that legal filing deadlines, known as statutes of limitations, are a barrier to taking action against at least some of Hecker’s protectors. There is no statute of limitations for child rape, but something like failing to properly report Hecker for that crime could apply, according to Williams.

“A lot of people have failed a lot of children,” Williams noted.