Retired New Orleans priest accused of child rape found competent - but trial could be delayed

An undated photo of Lawrence Hecker. Photograph: Provided photo

A court-ordered psychiatrist evaluated self-acknowledged child molester and retired priest Lawrence Hecker for a third time on Thursday, declaring him “fragilely competent” to stand trial on rape and kidnapping charges.

New Orleans criminal court judge Benedict Willard initially stopped short of declaring Hecker competent to stand trial and assist in his own defense. But a minute entry later said Willard found Hecker competent and kept a 24 September trial date in place.

The tense court hearing for Hecker, who turns 93 on 14 September, was unscheduled and unannounced. It came a day after WWL Louisiana and the Guardian reported the details of the psychiatrist’s 29 August report diagnosing Hecker with “mild dementia”.

Tulane forensic psychiatrist Dr Sarah Deland examined Hecker in April and May before evaluating him again on Thursday in court. As she testified about her findings, Hecker, seated in a wheelchair and wearing an orange jumpsuit, repeatedly moaned loudly – at one point muttering, “I can’t hear, I can’t understand,” before Willard temporarily closed the courtroom.

“How am I supposed to deal with this during the trial?” the judge said in response to Hecker’s groaning.

When Deland finally retook the witness stand, Ned McGowan of the New Orleans district attorney’s office pressed her about whether Hecker would be competent if the trial were held on Thursday.

“It’s a difficult question,” she responded. “He shows some symptoms, but he is better today than the last time we saw him.”

She went on to testify that Hecker’s long-term memory didn’t appear to be impaired. But he had short-term memory loss consistent with dementia, which could make it difficult for him to assist the attorneys defending him.

To be constitutionally competent, defendants must both be able to assist their lawyers as well as understand the nature of the proceedings against them. Hecker does grasp the court case pending against him, Deland reiterated.

“He’s fragilely competent today, but I don’t know what he’ll be like tomorrow,” Deland testified.

Ultimately, Willard found Hecker competent but said that conclusion would be re-evaluated on the date of the trial.

Deland also testified that she had seen a joint WWL-Guardian interview with Hecker in August 2023, during which he stood in the heat for 18 minutes, admitted to sexually abusing or harassing at least seven underage teens in the 1960s and 70s, and gave an extensive explanation about how the sexual revolution had made him feel “free” to do things he now realized were wrong. She said the interview was “pertinent” to establishing Hecker’s ability to understand the charges against him.

Willard’s ruling Thursday sets the stage for a trial that could see 10 or more witnesses testify against Hecker, including several victims who allege having endured sexual abuse at his hands. Yet the decision does not rule out the trial being postponed on the day of jury selection if Hecker presents badly then and Willard deems him incompetent to proceed.

That outcome would devastate the victim in the case, who would need to travel in from out of state for the trial to be prosecutors’ star witness, his lawyers – Richard Trahant, Soren Gisleson and John Denenea – said in a statement on Thursday.

“This process has been excruciating for our client,” the attorneys’ statement said. “In addition to demonstrating the incredible fortitude to be the ‘victim’ in this case, he will be putting his life and job on hold to travel 1,000 miles in order to hold his rapist accountable. The thought that he could be told on the morning of trial that rapist-Hecker is incompetent is both unfathomable and horrific.”

Hecker would not be the only Catholic priest accused of clergy abuse whose trial recently would be jeopardized because of a dementia diagnosis. Notably, in January, after the nonagenarian cardinal was diagnosed with dementia, a Massachusetts judge dismissed criminal charges that Theodore McCarrick molested a 16-year-old boy in 1974.

The victim alleges he was a minor studying at a Catholic high school to which Hecker had ties when the priest choked him unconscious and sodomized him in about 1975. The accuser maintains that he reported the rape to his school, though officials there never alerted police.

Hecker has pleaded not guilty to aggravated rape, kidnapping and other charges filed against him in New Orleans’ state criminal courthouse in September 2023 in connection with those specific allegations. But in 1999, he admitted to Catholic church leaders in New Orleans – in writing – that he had molested or sexually harassed several other children whom he met through his work as a priest.

The church allowed Hecker to work through his retirement in 2002, even giving him a promotion and stationing him at a church with a school attached to it. Then the church allowed him to collect full benefits and paid his living expenses for 18 years after his retirement.

New Orleans’ Catholic archdiocese waited until 2018 to notify the public that Hecker – along with dozens of other priests and deacons – had faced substantial child molestation allegations. The notification prompted so many abuse-related lawsuits that the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020, which at last cut off some of the Hecker’s financial support.

One of those lawsuits led Hecker to provide a deposition under oath to Trahant. In that deposition, Hecker affirmed his admission to serial child sexual abuse was genuine and described the years of support he enjoyed from the last four archbishops of New Orleans.

Two years after the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy filing, the victim pursuing rape, kidnapping and other charges against Hecker reported him again – this time directly to authorities.

The subsequent police investigation into Hecker has since evolved into an ongoing inquiry over whether the archdiocese ran a child sex trafficking ring responsible for the “widespread … abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported” to authorities, according to statements sworn out by authorities.

Hecker would receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment if he is ultimately convicted as charged in Willard’s courtroom.