‘They covered up child rape’: how the New Orleans archdiocese protected a priest who preyed on children
In the case of serial child molester and retired Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker, the cover-up failed.
But it wasn’t for lack of trying by a coalition of high-ranking church officials and sympathetic judges, who prioritized the predator’s comfort above justice for his innumerable victims until the evidence against him was so overwhelming that – rather than stand the humiliation of a public trial – he pleaded guilty last Tuesday.
Files held by New Orleans’s Catholic archdiocese establish that Hecker was molesting children virtually immediately upon his ordination in 1958. Chronologically speaking, one of Hecker’s earliest victims was a preteen altar boy who described attending nude swimming parties with the priest – gatherings that would culminate in sexual assaults by the attacker.
Hecker eventually instructed that boy to bring a box containing a feather to a particular fellow priest at another nearby Catholic school and church. In short order, the second priest sexually attacked the boy – and the victim said he came to realize Hecker had used the feather to mark him as vulnerable to molestation.
Unsurprisingly, Hecker’s superiors became more than aware of his crimes. Accusations against him piled up at each of the major milestones in the US church’s reckoning with Catholic clergy sexual abuse, which began in the 1980s when Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe pleaded guilty in criminal court to molesting several boys.
Around that time, then New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan received a child molestation complaint against Hecker. Hannan’s response – carried out in private – was to fly Hecker to a sabbatical in New York City before letting him return to work once things back home cooled off.
More such claims against Hecker came in the 1990s, when another Louisiana priest – Robert Melancon – was convicted of raping an altar boy. The ensuing pressure prompted Hecker to confess in writing to church officials that he had sexually molested or otherwise harassed several children whom he had met through his ministry.
This time, Hannan’s successor as archbishop, Francis Schulte, was in charge of responding. Schulte sent Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric care facility that diagnosed him as an incurable pedophile who should not work with young people. Upon Hecker’s return, Schulte assigned him to work at a church with a grammar school attached to it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...e-analysis
In the case of serial child molester and retired Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker, the cover-up failed.
But it wasn’t for lack of trying by a coalition of high-ranking church officials and sympathetic judges, who prioritized the predator’s comfort above justice for his innumerable victims until the evidence against him was so overwhelming that – rather than stand the humiliation of a public trial – he pleaded guilty last Tuesday.
Files held by New Orleans’s Catholic archdiocese establish that Hecker was molesting children virtually immediately upon his ordination in 1958. Chronologically speaking, one of Hecker’s earliest victims was a preteen altar boy who described attending nude swimming parties with the priest – gatherings that would culminate in sexual assaults by the attacker.
Hecker eventually instructed that boy to bring a box containing a feather to a particular fellow priest at another nearby Catholic school and church. In short order, the second priest sexually attacked the boy – and the victim said he came to realize Hecker had used the feather to mark him as vulnerable to molestation.
Unsurprisingly, Hecker’s superiors became more than aware of his crimes. Accusations against him piled up at each of the major milestones in the US church’s reckoning with Catholic clergy sexual abuse, which began in the 1980s when Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe pleaded guilty in criminal court to molesting several boys.
Around that time, then New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan received a child molestation complaint against Hecker. Hannan’s response – carried out in private – was to fly Hecker to a sabbatical in New York City before letting him return to work once things back home cooled off.
More such claims against Hecker came in the 1990s, when another Louisiana priest – Robert Melancon – was convicted of raping an altar boy. The ensuing pressure prompted Hecker to confess in writing to church officials that he had sexually molested or otherwise harassed several children whom he had met through his ministry.
This time, Hannan’s successor as archbishop, Francis Schulte, was in charge of responding. Schulte sent Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric care facility that diagnosed him as an incurable pedophile who should not work with young people. Upon Hecker’s return, Schulte assigned him to work at a church with a grammar school attached to it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...e-analysis
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"
