Previously unreported testimony shows how longtime New Orleans Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker received a special honor from the Vatican nearly 25 years ago 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, the Guardian reports, in “Shielded by His Church,” part of a series of reports about the Catholic Church’s abuses in Louisiana, reported by Ramon Antonio Vargas from the Guardian and David Hammer from WWL-TV.
“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. Hecker, now 92, avoided being publicly exposed as a predator for nearly two decades, until a grand jury indictment in September of last year charged him with child rape, kidnapping and other crimes. According to a bombshell search warrant Louisiana state police troopers served on the church in late April, the investigation which produced those charges has evolved into an inquiry over whether members of the archdiocese – in Hecker’s case and others – operated as a child sex-trafficking ring responsible for “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported to law enforcement.”