A judge’s decision to remove himself from handling the child rape and kidnapping trial of a retired Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans left the victim in the case devastated, and that kind of disappointment “is why these victims don’t come forward”, said Richard Trahant, an attorney for the star witness in the case.
Judge Benedict Willard’s decision on Tuesday to remove himself from handling the trial of 93-year-old Lawrence Hecker, who has previously admitted to child molestation, stunned observers. Willard had presided over the case for more than a year after it was first filed in early September 2023, and his decision occurred on the morning jury selection was scheduled to begin.
Willard cited “disrespect” from one of the assistant district attorneys prosecuting the aging Hecker, who on Tuesday morning also happened to be hospitalized apparently with a urinary tract infection.
Tuesday’s chaotic sequence of events resulted in at least the eighth delay in the case since January and left Trahant’s client unsure of when Hecker may be tried.
“This dude put his life on hold, came down here, prepared … and [on the morning of jury selection] the defendant has a UTI and the judge suddenly recuses himself,” Trahant said about his client after the case was transferred from Willard’s courtroom. “It was like a double safeguard” against going to trial, he said.
Trahant added: “Hecker might live to be 100. But I would imagine every time a trial date comes up, he is going to have some kind of ailment.”
Behind Willard’s last-minute decision to recuse himself from Hecker’s case was what he said were conflicts between him and assistant district attorney Ned McGowan. Though Willard didn’t elaborate, in August, McGowan moved to recuse the judge during a trial in a different case.
McGowan’s motion to recuse Willard came after a male juror made a verbal pass at a colleague of the prosecutor – and the judge reportedly ejected her from the courtroom, saying she was a distraction.
On Tuesday, McGowan said it was “vindictive” for Willard to recuse himself from Hecker’s trial shortly before it was scheduled to start with jury selection. But Willard stood firm, and the case was transferred to New Orleans state criminal court judge Nandi Campbell.
McGowan’s boss, New Orleans district attorney Jason Williams, said on Tuesday he was hopeful Campbell would schedule a trial relatively quickly after a court-appointed psychiatrist found Hecker competent to stand trial on 5 September despite what the doctor described as mild dementia.
But even if Willard hadn’t recused himself, Hecker never arrived at the courthouse on Tuesday because he was hospitalized in the morning.
Multiple people on all sides of the case indicated that they were told Hecker was grappling with a UTI, at least his second since January. The earlier one had left him hospitalized for a time and contributed to some of the seven prior delays that resulted from Hecker undergoing repeated medical evaluations to gauge whether he met the constitutional definition of being mentally fit to stand trial.
Williams seemed as exasperated with Hecker’s sudden hospitalization on Tuesday as he was with Willard wiggling out of the case. The DA accused Hecker’s defense team of “dilatory tactics” and appeared to be fighting back tears as he talked about having to call and share news of the delay with nearly a dozen people who allege child molestation at the hands of the clergyman and have been ready to testify against him.
“I can’t begin to explain the level of frustration I have right now,” Williams said. “I don’t believe Lawrence Hecker ever wants to go to trial because the evidence against him is overwhelming.”
Hecker’s defense attorney Eugene Redmann said that’s not the case.
“Trust me, we feel for the victims,” he said. “They deserve their day in court, too. And it would have been in the interest of everybody, or the interest of justice specifically, that he’d been brought to trial a very, very long time ago.”
Later on Tuesday, another attorney who represented Hecker previously but had withdrawn in May said he would be re-enrolling in the case on Wednesday morning. “I will be lead counsel going forward,” said a statement from Robert Hjortsberg, a former law partner of Williams before he became DA.
Trahant, who practices in civil court rather than in the criminal justice system, said he was befuddled at how he learned his client would have to fly back home without having taken the witness stand as planned. He said a bailiff suddenly approached him, told him to go up to Willard, and the judge – whom Trahant had never personally met – handed him a document showing Hecker had just been admitted to the hospital.
“Sorry, man,” Trahant recalled Willard saying. Willard soon informed the courtroom of the judge’s recusal as well as Hecker’s hospitalization, which Trahant characterized as “all hell [breaking] loose”.
Trahant’s client pressed charges against Hecker in 2022. He maintains that he was underage and studying at a Catholic high school to which Hecker had ties when the priest choked him unconscious and raped him in the 1970s. The accuser has said he reported his being raped by Hecker to the school, but officials never alerted police.
Though Hecker has pleaded not guilty to that charge, 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 nonetheless let Hecker retire in 2002 and collect lucrative retirement benefits, and did not notify the New Orleans community that he – along with dozens of his fellow clerics – were faced with substantial child sexual abuse allegations until 2018.
The case against Hecker was stalled until the Guardian obtained a copy of his 1999 admission and publicly exposed it in June 2023.
The Guardian shared that confession with the New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana, and both outlets confronted Hecker on camera in late August 2023. In that interview, Hecker admitted overtly sexual acts with at least three teenage boys, but denied having ever raped Trahant’s client or engaging in sex with anyone who was “unwilling”. Williams’ office charged Hecker with child rape, kidnapping and other crimes about two weeks later.
Tuesday’s episode called to mind other tumultuous prosecutions brought against allegedly abusive Catholic clergymen in New Orleans, one of the church’s US strongholds.
After becoming infamous for recording himself having sex with young men in a local church rectory and amassing a prodigious collection of child abuse imagery, Dino Cinel was acquitted of criminal charges in 1995 after his defense established that he acquired the illicit images before they were outlawed. An 18-year-old man with whom he had a romantic relationship then stabbed Cinel, 76, to death in March 2018, eight months before the archdiocese of New Orleans named him in its list of clergymen who had been subjected to substantial allegations of child molestation.
Another clergyman on that list was George Brignac, who died in 2020 at age 85 while awaiting trial on child rape charges. The indictment pending against Brignac at the time of his death was the last of four unsuccessful attempts to criminally prosecute him in connection with child molestation allegations. He had previously been arrested three times between 1977 and 1988.
A judge famous for his Catholic piety acquitted Brignac at trial once. Prosecutors dropped charges against Brignac on two other occasions, including once after a victim in one of the cases arrived on the morning of trial, saw 50 priests packing the courtroom gallery and indicated he was too intimidated to testify.
