(ProsperNews.net) – A New Orleans priest has admitted to molesting several children during his career. The 91-year-old acknowledged his actions to reporters in Louisiana and said he was “truly repentant.” The case goes back many decades and involves an apparent church cover-up.
Lawrence Hecker joined the Catholic priesthood in 1958, and complaints first began to surface thirty years later in the diocese of New Orleans. Archbishop Philip Hannan took no action following initial reports of Hecker’s behavior toward children, leaving the abuser free to victimize young people for another decade.
In 1999, Hecker’s abuse came to the fore again, and on that occasion, church authorities sent him to a psychiatric treatment center where he was described as a pedophile. The facility recommended that Hecker never again be allowed to work with children or “vulnerable people.”
Shockingly, he was sent to minister at an elementary school just a year later. He retired quietly in 2002, having spent decades denying any wrongdoing. When finally acknowledging his crimes, he argued that life was more permissive in the past and said he could not answer a question on whether it was right for law enforcement to pursue charges against him.
The scandal involving pedophile priests dominated the headlines throughout the early 21st century. Thousands of priests were jailed all over the world, and in the United States, dozens were exposed by a Boston newspaper in 2010.
In response to allegations of abuse against Father John Geoghan, Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law filed papers in which he acknowledged reassigning the priest to a new parish, knowing he was alleged to be abusing children. This admission cracked open an enormous scandal that would rock the church and bring to light an apparent worldwide cover-up that reached all the way to the Vatican.
The Boston Globe newspaper spotted Law’s admission and broke the story in America’s most predominately Catholic city. The paper uncovered dozens of reports of American victims sidelined or ignored, as well as priests protected from accountability.
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