NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Nola.com [New Orleans, LA]
June 20, 2023
By Joseph Cranney
Archbishop Gregory Aymond knew of nine allegations facing disgraced priest Lawrence Hecker in 2012. The church didn’t out him as a sexual predator until six years later.
A retired Catholic priest who worked in about a dozen New Orleans-area parishes admitted to his superiors more than 20 years ago that he had molested seven teenagers he met on the job, but he was allowed to continue working and never faced criminal charges, according to an investigation published Tuesday by The Guardian.
The newspaper cited a two-page 1999 statement from disgraced priest Lawrence Hecker, now 91, who confessed to “overtly sexual acts” with two boys and behavior with other children from 1966 to 1979 that included fondling, mutual masturbation and bed-sharing during a trip to a Texas amusement park.
Archbishop Gregory Aymond knew of nine allegations facing Hecker as early as 2012, including two that were received after Aymond became archbishop, The Guardian reported. But the church waited six years to acknowledge Hecker was a sexual predator, despite promises made in 2002 to be transparent with parishioners about credible claims of abuse by clergy.
An archdiocesan spokeswoman didn’t dispute any of The Guardian’s reporting Tuesday, but declined to elaborate, other than to say the church is cooperating with law enforcement.
Reached by phone, Hecker put a Times-Picayune reporter on hold, then hung up. Hecker’s criminal defense attorney, Eugene Redmann, told The Guardian that they “will address any charges if they are brought.”
In his confession, Hecker wrote, “I had thought I had buried this part of my life and would only think about it to remind myself not to have anything like this happen again. I have made it a point not to be alone with anyone under 18, and if possible not to be alone with anyone — and certainly not to hold anyone, except for a ‘holy hug’.”
The statement is part of a trove of records that are under seal in a lawsuit brought by one of Hecker’s accusers. The Times-Picayune and the city’s three leading television news outlets intervened in that suit in 2020, filing a motion requesting that a Civil District Court judge release the documents.
The church later filed for bankruptcy, and church lawyers have since argued that those proceedings prohibit them from turning over their file on Hecker. A federal judge heard arguments Thursday around the release of those and other records, including transcripts of a deposition Hecker gave in 2020.
The church did turn over “everything in their possession” on Hecker to Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams last week, an archdiocesan spokesman told WWL-TV.
Lawyers for Hecker’s accusers have compared Hecker to notorious Boston-area priest John Geoghan, who was accused of abusing 150 boys. Reporting by The Boston Globe that exposed the church’s cover-up of Geoghan’s behavior touched off a reckoning around clergy abuse in the Catholic church that reached virtually every corner of the globe, including New Orleans.
But the extent to which the New Orleans archdiocese’s higher-ups were aware of Hecker’s conduct has largely been shielded from public view.
The Guardian investigation revealed that three former New Orleans archbishops were aware that Hecker confessed or had received credible molestation complaints against him dating to at least the late 1980s.
Two former archbishops, Phillip Hannan and Francis Schulte, declined to remove Hecker, and a third, Alfred Hughes, allowed Hecker to retire in 2003 without alerting the public about the claims against him. Hecker collected retirement benefits from the church until 2020.
It’s unclear how much Aymond knew when he took over the archdiocese’s top position in 2009.
In 2000, when Schulte welcomed Hecker back into the fold after Hecker completed out-of-state psychiatric treatment, Schulte copied Aymond — who held a top church position — on a letter that referred vaguely to Hecker’s “health problems,” The Guardian reported.
An archdiocesan spokeswoman declined to say when Aymond became aware of Hecker’s confession.
By the time Aymond took over, the church had already reported Hecker to law enforcement, archdiocesan spokeswoman Sarah McDonald said. But it only alerted authorities to one of the seven cases that Hecker admitted to, The Guardian reported, and never shared his full written confession.
McDonald wouldn’t say if any additional Hecker accusers came forward during Aymond’s tenure. There were at least two, The Guardian reported, including one who went directly to Gretna police. It’s unclear if the archdiocese alerted police or prosecutors to the other.
Either way, it was clear to the archdiocese’s higher-ups that the complaints against Hecker were piling up.
“This is the NINTH allegation we have on record against Larry Hecker,” an aide wrote in a memo to Aymond, obtained by The Guardian, after the church was contacted by Gretna police in 2012.
The daughter of an accuser at the time asked church officials why the archdiocese still referred to Hecker as “monsignor,” an honorary title, and why the church hadn’t publicly outed him as an abuser, The Guardian reported. She never got an answer, and her father’s case was settled out of court for $37,000.
The diocese didn’t acknowledge that Hecker was a sexual predator until 2018.