‘They covered up child rape’: how the New Orleans archdiocese protected a priest who preyed on children

New Orleans’ last four archbishops helped Lawrence Hecker avoid accountability for decades. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

In the case of serial child molester and retired Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker, the cover-up failed.

But it wasn’t for lack of trying by a coalition of high-ranking church officials and sympathetic judges, who prioritized the predator’s comfort above justice for his innumerable victims until the evidence against him was so overwhelming that – rather than stand the humiliation of a public trial – he pleaded guilty last Tuesday.