Homosexual American Catholic priest of New Orleans accused of raping teenage boy in 1975 gets trial date

Lawrence Hecker will face court on kidnapping and rape charges in September pending a final competency ruling

By Edward Era Barbacena 

A doctor’s report says that Lawrence Hecker, the retired New Orleans priest who faces charges of raping a teenager after strangling him unconscious in 1975, has dementia – but it says nothing about Hecker’s competency to stand trial.

On Thursday, after seven hearings and still no definitive determination on Hecker’s competency, his trial on rape and kidnapping charges has been set for 24 September.

Judge Benedict Willard said a report by the physician Michael Russo said Hecker “has come across Alzheimer’s, dementia”. But Sarah Deland, a court-appointed psychiatrist, was busy testifying in other cases and did not make it to testify about her separate report on Hecker’s mental state.

Deland’s report is for the court’s sanity commission, which tends to carry more weight. Both the prosecutors and Hecker’s defense attorneys spent the morning waiting for Deland to finish her work. After the hearing adjourned, Deland showed up in Willard’s court and told the judge: “Next time you’re first.”

Jason Williams, the Orleans parish district attorney, said he had seen Deland’s report, and he believed it meant Hecker was competent. He said the new dementia diagnosis from Russo was irrelevant to what is known as the Bennett criteria for determining if a defendant understands the charges against him and can assist in his own defense.

Williams said he planned to try the case himself in September. But without a final determination on his competency to assist in his own defense, Willard said: “If he’s competent we’ll have trial on September 24.”

If not, that court date could be converted into another update on Hecker’s status.

“This is as close as we’ve gotten to holding him accountable when I’m going to do my dead level best to make sure that we can,” Williams said.

Williams blamed the defense for causing delays in the case, but Hecker’s attorneys, Eugene Redmann and Matthew McLaren, said they haven’t stood in the way of a final ruling and a trial. They said they want a decision on their client’s competency as soon as possible, so he won’t have to remain in custody and under armed guard at a long-term care facility.

Williams, meanwhile, has been hailed by survivors of child sexual abuse for pursuing the case against Hecker and fighting to get the church’s secret files on the former priest. WWL Louisiana and the Guardian recently told the story of Greg Livaudais, who also accused Hecker of kidnapping and sexually abusing him during a trip to a scouting retreat in 1974, but could not get DAs in other parishes to press charges.

It is too late under Louisiana law to file child molestation charges from the 1980s and earlier, but there is no statute of limitations on aggravated rape or kidnapping. In Livaudais’s case, he claimed Hecker held him against his will in West Feliciana and East Baton Rouge parishes, but the DAs there did not feel they could bring kidnapping charges.

Aaron Hebert, who filed a civil lawsuit alleging Hecker fondled his genitals when he was a child in 1968, came to court on Thursday and shook Williams’s hand as the DA left the courthouse.

“I thanked him for at least taking this case on, because no other DA would take this case on in the parishes that Hecker represented with the archdiocese,” Hebert said.

In his August 2023 interview with WWL and the Guardian, Hecker spoke at length about why he thought he was free to do what he had done because of the “sexual revolution” and acknowledged that he now knew it was wrong and was “truly repentant”. Williams has repeatedly said Hecker’s interview was proof that he was competent to stand trial.

In that same interview, Hecker quickly and emphatically denied ever having “unwilling” sex with anyone. Confronted with his written statement from 1999, he said he remembered the boys with whom he admitted engaging in “overtly sexual acts”.

Hecker was indicted and arrested in September, just two weeks after that interview. He walked unassisted to a vehicle that took him to jail. But in mid-January, he was rushed to intensive care, and in court hearings since then his defense attorneys said he had experienced mental decline, disorientation and a number of physical ailments. He was later transferred to a long-term care facility while held in custody in lieu of the $800,000 bail.