A disgraced 93-year-old New Orleans priest pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of sexually assaulting a teenager in 1975.
Laurent Heckerwho left the ministry in 2002, was to be tried on Tuesday. Hecker’s eyes were fixed on the ground as a sheriff’s deputy pushed him into the courtroom of Judge Nandi Campbell in Orleans Parish Criminal Court, the Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.
Hecker entered pleas to aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, first-degree rape and robbery before Campbell, moments before jury selection was scheduled to begin, multiple media outlets reported. Sentencing was set for December 18. He faces life imprisonment.
The trial had been delayed for several months because of concerns about Hecker’s mental capacity and because District Judge Ben Willard recused himself from the case, citing a conflict with prosecutors. The case was reassigned to Campbell, who ordered Hecker to undergo routine physical and psychological evaluations before trial.
A doctor confirmed that Hecker suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, but Hecker was deemed competent to stand trial, according to his attorney Bobby Hjortsberg, WDSU-TV reported.
A grand jury indicted Hecker last year following an investigation that revealed that he had confessed for molesting multiple minors during his decades of service to the Archdiocese of New Orleans. But the charges against him stem from a single alleged incident that occurred between 1975 and 1976, prosecutors said.
The indictment comes amid a years-old legal battle over a trove of secret parish records that were protected by a broad confidentiality order after the archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020 following a flood of abuse complaints. The documents reportedly chronicle years of such allegations, interviews with accused clergy and a pattern of church leaders transferring problem priests without reporting their crimes to law enforcement.
The alleged survivor of the criminal case against Hecker is among those who have filed abuse claims against the archdiocese as part of its long-running bankruptcy case. To date, more than 600 alleged abuse survivors have filed complaints against the archdiocese.
“We hope and pray that today’s legal proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse,” the Archdiocese of New Orleans said in a statement. “We continue to pray to all survivors.”
Last year, Hecker admitted in an interview with CBS affiliate WWL-TV that he had sexually assaulted or harassed several teenagers during his career.
The station reported that in 1988, information about his actions reached the Archbishop of New Orleans, Philip Hannan. Hecker convinced Hannan that he would “never find himself in such circumstances again” and suffered no consequences until 1999, when continued reports against Hecker led the archdiocese to send him to a treatment facility psychiatry outside Louisiana. There, he was diagnosed as a pedophile and the facility recommended that he be prohibited from working with minors or other “particularly vulnerable individuals,” according to a personnel file reviewed by WWL-TV.
The 1999 complaint also led to his statement, in which Hecker admitted to committing “overtly sexual acts” with three minor boys and said he had close relationships with four others that lasted into the 1980s .
When asked if he performed the acts described in the statement, Hecker responded “Yes” twice to WWL-TV. His confession was recorded on video.
