New Orleans priest’s accuser ‘relieved’ by indictment after 48 years, lawyer says

The accuser of a retired New Orleans Catholic priest who was indicted on a child rape charge on Thursday remembers immediately reporting the assault to the high school where it happened – and being heartbroken that nothing was ever done about it.

Now, 48 years later, the victim is hopeful that Lawrence Hecker – the man charged with raping him at a church attached to his school – will finally face justice, his attorney told the Guardian and WWL-TV in an interview Thursday.

“I would say he’s very relieved,” said Richard Trahant, the attorney. “But he knows that this is not the end of it – that this is the beginning of the prosecution. And his involvement will become more and more necessary from here until however this gets resolved.”

As Trahant tells it, his client was either 15 or 16 in 1975 when Hecker approached him at St Theresa the Little Flower of the Child Jesus church, which was adjacent to the boys’ high school, St John Vianney prep. Hecker at the time worked at St John Vianney, a New Orleans school that served boys interested in joining the clergy.

The client recalled that Hecker went up to him purporting to want to teach him a wrestling move – then, he squeezed the boy’s neck until he fell unconscious and sexually attacked him, said Trahant.

“Very shortly thereafter, my client reported this to the school,” Trahant revealed in Thursday’s interview. But Hecker faced no consequences.

In the ensuing decades, persistent claims of misconduct by Hecker caused the priest to give a typed statement to leaders at New Orleans’s Catholic archdiocese in 1999, as was previously documented by the Guardian. Hecker’s statement acknowledged that he had sexually molested or harassed numerous children whom he had met after becoming an ordained priest in 1958.

The archdiocese subsequently sent Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment center, which diagnosed him as a pedophile. The facility recommended that the archdiocese isolate Hecker from working with minors or other “particularly vulnerable” people, according to secret church documents reviewed by the Guardian and WWL.

Hecker’s career, however, continued for three more years, and he faced no public rebuke for the next 19 years. He was stationed at a church with an elementary school attached to it in 2000. He worked there until he quietly retired in 2002, when a Catholic clerical molestation and cover-up scandal plunged Boston’s archdiocese into scandal, prompting reforms and promises of transparency from the worldwide church.

Later, over a decade-long period beginning in 2010, the archdiocese paid more than $332,000 to reach out-of-count settlements on five complaints accusing Hecker of sexual abuse.

Yet the New Orleans archdiocese did not inform local Catholics that it strongly surmised Hecker had molested minors until it released a 2018 list of priests and deacons who were considered credibly accused sexual predators, a step which the church marketed as an act of transparency and contrition. And the archdiocese paid Hecker full retirement benefits until 2020.

The 2018 list marked the first time Trahant’s client grasped that he wasn’t the only one abused by Hecker. Also appearing on that list as a strongly suspected child molester was a priest named Paul Calamari, who was the principal of the high school at the time that Trahant’s client reported being raped by Hecker.

Ultimately, Trahant’s client decided to report his abuse at the hands of Hecker again – but this time, he circumvented the church and went to law enforcement. The client met with FBI agents in late June of last year, said Trahant.

“That was a very retraumatizing experience – I was there in the room with him, and his [post-traumatic stress disorder] was palpable,” Trahant said Thursday.

Investigators also interviewed Hecker at some point last year, but nothing was immediately done.

Prosecutors with New Orleans district attorney Jason Williams’s office had taken over Hecker’s case by the beginning of this summer. In June, they served a subpoena on the archdiocese for the church’s records on Hecker.

Hecker in August granted an interview to WWL and the Guardian in which he admitted that he indeed committed the sexually abusive acts he described in his 1999 confession to church leaders. Trahant said his client watched and read about the interview in awe.

“He was less surprised by the content than he was by the fact that after all these years, Hecker finally admitted it,” said Trahant.

In that interview, which made headlines across the US, Hecker denied ever choking out or raping a child.

Yet that did not stop Williams’s office from securing a grand jury indictment Thursday which charged Hecker with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping and other crimes. The case resulted directly from what Trahant’s client reported to authorities, including the lead state police investigator on the case, Scott Rodrigue. It was the first time Hecker had ever been criminally charged.

Statutes of limitation in Louisiana do not prevent authorities from pursuing long-ago allegations of aggravated rape.

That crime and aggravated kidnapping call for mandatory life imprisonment if convicted. An arrest warrant was issued for Hecker on Thursday. No bail was immediately set.

Williams on Thursday credited a group of Hecker victims, their advocates, and media organizations who reported incriminating information about the retired priest with also helping set the stage for the indictment.

“Thanks for keeping this fire burning when a lot of people tried to put it out,” said Williams.

Trahant said he and his client realize that Hecker’s age, 91, means he may not live long enough to be brought to trial. The last Catholic clergyman whom New Orleans prosecutors charged with child rape was deacon George Brignac, a suspected serial predator who was indicted in 2019 and died months later at the age of 85 without a jury ever hearing the case against him.

Nonetheless, Trahant said Thursday’s indictment was significant validation for his client and others with reports of abuse by Hecker.

“Lawrence Hecker got away with grotesque sexual felonies against children for many decades,” Trahant said. “This indictment is a victory for all victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse.”

In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International

Originally published in The Guardian by Ramon Antonio Vargas and David Hammer.