NEW ORLEANS (LA)
nola.com
March 11, 2020
By Ramon Antonio Vargas
Alleged victim’s attorney twice asked church lawyers if church was contemplating bankrupcty, didn’t get answer
An attorney for the Archdiocese of New Orleans said Wednesday that the church learned of at least one abuse allegation against accused predatory priest Lawrence Hecker in 1988, or 14 years before he was removed from public ministry and three decades before archdiocesan officials informed the community that he was a suspected serial child molester.
The lawyer also revealed that the archdiocese has paid out financial settlements in four cases involving Hecker, who worked at more than a dozen Catholic churches in the New Orleans area over 44 years before his forced retirement in 2002.
The statements from archdiocesan attorney Dirk Wegmann came in what was supposed to be a routine status conference in a lawsuit filed by an alleged Hecker abuse victim before Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Nakisha Ervin-Knott. However, the proceeding was often far from routine.
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