(OSV News) — A retired New Orleans priest who walked back a public admission of sexual abuse has pleaded guilty to charges for offenses dating from 1975-1976.
Msgr. Lawrence Hecker was due to stand trial Dec. 3 for first degree rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft. The rape charge, initially filed as aggravated, was later upgraded to first degree. He had been indicted in September 2023 by a grand jury.
According to New Orleans Police Department reports, Msgr. Hecker raped and kidnapped a victim, who was not named, between Jan. 1, 1975, and Dec. 31, 1976.
During a brief Aug. 24, 2023, phone call with OSV News, Msgr. Hecker denied his admission of abusing several youth that he made in an interview that same month with a local television station.
“Things get twisted around,” he said before hanging up. At his September 2023 arraignment, Msgr. Hecker had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Now 93, Msgr. Hecker entered his guilty plea as jury selection was about to begin in his trial. Sentencing for the priest, who faces life in prison, is set for Dec. 18.
Following Msgr. Hecker’s guilty plea, the New Orleans Archdiocese told OSV News in a statement, “It is our hope and prayer that today’s court proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse. We continue to hold all survivors in prayer.”
The archdiocese also confirmed to OSV News that “Lawrence Hecker was permanently removed from priestly ministry with no faculties in 2002.
“The archdiocese reported him to the law enforcement authorities in multiple jurisdictions in a series of meetings between 2002-2003, and a survivor reported him to the police in another jurisdiction in 2012,” the archdiocese’s statement said. “He was included on the list of those clergy in the Archdiocese of New Orleans removed from ministry for abuse of a minor in 2018.”
It also added that “Hecker was receiving sustenance as required by Canon Law until that was eliminated by the court in our Chapter 11 Bankruptcy case.”
Proceedings against Msgr. Hecker included a lengthy back-and-forth over his mental competency to stand trial, with defense attorneys asserting that the priest — who was hospitalized during several of the court proceedings — suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
Ultimately, the court found in September that amid “various reports from psychiatrists” Msgr. Hecker was “competent on a day to day basis” and “able to stand trial depending on his health on any given day.”
Also delaying the proceedings was the decision of District Judge Ben Willard to recuse himself from the case in September, citing “the negative activity of the state towards this court.”
In a 1999 statement made to the archdiocese, Msgr. Hecker himself had acknowledged having committed “overtly sexual acts” with at least three underage boys in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also confessed to having close relationships with four other boys into the 1980s.
The admission was an about-face from interviews over the years in which Msgr. Hecker had denied or avoided saying that he had inappropriately touched children.
Reports of his Msgr. Hecker’s behavior over the years ultimately led to him being sent by the archdiocese in 1999 to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment facility, where he was diagnosed as a pedophile, according to a personnel file obtained by The Guardian, a newspaper based in the United Kingdom.
The newspaper, which recently published an extensive investigation of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, teamed up with New Orleans television channel WWL-TV for a surprise joint interview with Msgr. Hecker at his apartment.
Both in the 1999 statement and in the WWL-Guardian interview, the priest — who appeared slightly disheveled as he spoke at the gate of his residence — chalked his abuse up to widespread sexually permissive behavior of the time. The journalists noted in the final version of the video, which was posted to WWL’s YouTube channel Aug. 22, that Louisiana’s age of consent in the 1960s and 1970s was 17, as it remains today.
Despite his 1999 statement to the archdiocese and clinical diagnosis, Msgr. Hecker still undertook some two additional years of ministry, having been assigned in 2000 to a parish with an elementary school. He quietly retired in 2002 and was added to the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ list of credibly abused priests in 2018.
From 2010 to about 2020, the archdiocese paid at least $332,500 out-of-court settlements for five complaints of sexual abuse by Msgr. Hecker, according to The Guardian.
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @GinaJesseReina.
