‘It wasn’t a big deal’: secret deposition reveals how a child molester priest was shielded by his church
Longtime New Orleans Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker received a special honor from the Vatican in 2000 despite having confessed to molesting children. Then, for another two decades, church leaders in the city strategically shielded him from law enforcement and media exposure – while also providing him with financial support ranging from paid limousine rides and therapeutic massages to full retirement benefits, according to his own, previously unreported testimony.
“It wasn’t a big deal in those days,” Hecker said at the deposition about how his archdiocese coddled him despite his acknowledged abuse of children.
The plaintiff, Aaron Hebert, has publicly alleged he was an underage altar boy at a church in Gretna, Louisiana, in the late 1960s when Hecker lined him and other children up against a wall, ordered them to drop their pants and fondled their genitals.
When Trahant asked “You have committed so many sexual felonies against children that you can’t remember them all, correct?”, Hecker pleaded the fifth amendment.
For decades, Hecker testified, his superiors did not take victims or their advocates seriously, even in the rare instances when they promised a vigorous investigation.
Hecker admitted taking showers, swimming in the nude and sleeping in the same bed as the altar boys, according to documents referenced in the deposition. Yet Hecker insisted he stopped short of inappropriate contact with any of those children, and the archdiocese believed him and dismissed the accusations.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...urch-abuse
Longtime New Orleans Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker received a special honor from the Vatican in 2000 despite having confessed to molesting children. Then, for another two decades, church leaders in the city strategically shielded him from law enforcement and media exposure – while also providing him with financial support ranging from paid limousine rides and therapeutic massages to full retirement benefits, according to his own, previously unreported testimony.
“It wasn’t a big deal in those days,” Hecker said at the deposition about how his archdiocese coddled him despite his acknowledged abuse of children.
The plaintiff, Aaron Hebert, has publicly alleged he was an underage altar boy at a church in Gretna, Louisiana, in the late 1960s when Hecker lined him and other children up against a wall, ordered them to drop their pants and fondled their genitals.
When Trahant asked “You have committed so many sexual felonies against children that you can’t remember them all, correct?”, Hecker pleaded the fifth amendment.
For decades, Hecker testified, his superiors did not take victims or their advocates seriously, even in the rare instances when they promised a vigorous investigation.
Hecker admitted taking showers, swimming in the nude and sleeping in the same bed as the altar boys, according to documents referenced in the deposition. Yet Hecker insisted he stopped short of inappropriate contact with any of those children, and the archdiocese believed him and dismissed the accusations.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...urch-abuse
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
