NEW ORLEANS – A judge sentenced a 93-year-old former Catholic priest Wednesday to spend the rest of his life behind bars for raping a teenage boy decades ago.
Lawrence Hecker had pleaded guilty to charges including first-degree rape and aggravated kidnapping moments before jury selection was scheduled to begin in his trial this month.
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Hecker's sentence comes as the Archdiocese of New Orleans deals with fallout from a wave of sexual abuse lawsuits and allegations that church leaders had long ignored predatory priests, leading to a long-running bankruptcy proceeding.
The survivor of the assault to which Hecker pleaded guilty said that Hecker had offered to instruct him in wrestling moves ahead of tryouts in the mid-1970s for a school team and that he recalled the training “started innocently enough," The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. Then Hecker raped him.
“I tried to get up. I pulled up,” the survivor said. “I realized his left arm was over my neck. I don’t remember much after that.”
After the survivor told his parents and church authorities, he was threatened with expulsion and forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, the newspaper reported.
Witnesses had been prepared to testify that Hecker had abused them, as well, and provided impact statements during his sentencing.
Hecker was ordained as an archdiocesan priest in 1958 and left a trail of red flags, including his own admission and an undisputed complaint of child molestation leveled against him in the late 1980s, court records indicate. Hecker left the ministry in 2002.
Legal proceedings had been delayed for months amid questions of Hecker's mental competence.
Another survivor, Aaron Hebert, has said Hecker abused him in the late 1960s when he was an eighth grader at a Catholic elementary school outside New Orleans. Hecker groped Hebert and several classmates while he claimed to demonstrate what a hernia examination entailed, Hebert has said.
The Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they have been sexually assaulted, but Hebert has long been open about his story.
“In my opinion, the Archdiocese of New Orleans is morally bankrupt, not financially bankrupt," Hebert wrote in a letter to a federal judge.
New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who has rebuffed calls from survivors of clergy sexual assaults to step down, said in an emailed statement that he hoped survivors of Hecker's abuse would find “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," Aymond said.
Richard Trahant, an attorney for a victim of Hecker's abuse, said in an emailed statement that Aymond had not supported survivors.
“Aymond’s words are hollow and false,” Trahant said. “Aymond should have been sitting right there next to Hecker.”
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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96