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. 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 AP reports.
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 New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. 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 for what were deemed "fantasy" stories, reports the Times-Picayune.
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.
- 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. "In my opinion, the Archdiocese of New Orleans is morally bankrupt, not financially bankrupt," Hebert wrote in a letter to a federal judge.
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- New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who has rebuffed calls from survivors of clergy sexual assaults to step down, said in a statement that he hoped survivors of Hecker's abuse would find "some closure and some sense of peace in his sentencing."
- Richard Trahant, an attorney for a victim of Hecker's abuse, said Aymond had not supported survivors. "Aymond's words are hollow and false," Trahant said. "Aymond should have been sitting right there next to Hecker."
- Outside the courthouse, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams said, "I am in awe of the courage it took these boys, now men, some fathers, some grandfathers, to share their truth," per the Times-Picayune. He criticized Aymond for protecting Hecker and dozens of other priests accused of abuse. Hecker, he said "still has to answer to someone else, in terms of justice, when he meets God."
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