United States: A 93-year-old priest from New Orleans, Lawrence Hecker, said on Tuesday that he was guilty of sexually hurting a teenage boy in 1975. Hecker, who stopped being a priest in 2002, was going to have a trial, but he admitted his guilt instead. He was taken to court while looking down at the ground.
Hecker entered his plea to aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature, first-degree rape, and theft before Campbell, just before jury selection was to have occurred, several media outlets said. The verdict was scheduled for December 18. He faces life in prison.
As reported by the CNN, the trial had been delayed because of some concern over Hecker’s mental competency, and because District Judge Ben Willard could no longer preside over the case due to conflict of interest with the state debt collectors. On this case, the judge handed over the case of Hecker to Campbell, who ordered Hecker to go through normal physical and psychological examinations before the trial.
A doctor substantiated that Hecker suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia but the later was declared fit to be tried, his lawyer, Bobby Hjortsberg quoted in WDSU-TV news.
Hecker was indicted by a grand jury last year due to an investigation showing the disgraced priest systematically abused multiple juveniles throughout his career with the Archdiocese of New Orleans after admitting to the abuse. Nevertheless, the accusations made against him are based on a single reported occurrence that reportedly took place between 1975 and 1976, according to the prosecutors.
The indictment occurs amid a legal fight over thousands of files of secret church records that were sealed under the broad gag order after the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020 in the wake of an influx of abuse allegations. The records are said to contain years of such claims, the interviews of the accused clergy and that church officials transferred problem priests without alerting authorities.
The woman, identified in the criminal case against Hecker only as the alleged survivor, is among those who brought claims of abuse against the archdiocese that dates back to the church’s bankruptcy. At present, over 600 plaintiffs with abuse claims have come forward in the clergy sex abuse case against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
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