93-year-old retired priest pleads guilty to rape in 1970s sex abuse of teen
A 93-year-old retired priest has pleaded guilty to rape, kidnapping and other charges in connection with the sexual abuse of a teen boy in the 1970s.
Lawrence Hecker pleaded guilty Tuesday to state charges in Louisiana his lawyer, Bobby Hjortsberg, told The New York Times. He faces up to life in prison at his sentencing on Dec. 18.
The case garnered national headlines after a report in The Guardian revealed that he told superiors in 1999 that he had molested or otherwise engaged in sexual misconduct with teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s. Hecker told The Guardian he committed “overtly sexual acts” with at least three boys."
Hecker had given various interviews and repeatedly denied touching children inappropriately.
The Guardian obtained a copy of a decades-old statement that Hecker gave church leaders.
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"Asked if he did the specific sexual acts he laid out in the statement, Hecker twice said, 'Yes,' while being recorded on video. He also claimed that society was more permissive of such behavior at the time, even though Louisiana’s age of consent to have sex in the 1960s and 70s was the same as it is now: 17," the report said.
When asked if he should be charged, Hecker replied at the time that he “really can’t answer."
“I just don’t know,” he said, before adding: “Not one chance in a million anything like this would ever happen again. Obviously, I’m truly repentant.”
The New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy four years ago facing a deluge of abuse claims.
A spokesman for the archdiocese told the Times in a statement after Hecker’s plea that it was the church’s “hope and prayer that today’s court proceedings bring healing and peace to the survivor and all survivors of sexual abuse.”