Two of the most inveterate abusers in the history of the US Roman Catholic church’s clergy molestation scandal once converged on the same victim – before each was brought to justice years later for other crimes.
An altar server and former Boy Scouts member who grew up in New Orleans endured a wide range of abusive acts by Lawrence Hecker and his fellow priest Gilbert Gauthe in the early 1970s, according to legal documents summarizing the victim’s experience which were obtained by the Guardian.
Hecker abused the boy after taking him to swim nude at a local health club, during trips to catch crawfish that involved overnight stays in motels and at a since closed New Orleans church colloquially known as Little Flower, among other instances, between 1970 and 1973.
Little Flower would host meetings of the Boy Scouts, with which both Hecker and Gauthe were involved. The altar server recalled encountering Gauthe at those meetings, getting rides home from him and going on camping trips that the priest would take as well.
Gauthe molested the victim during those rides home, camping trips and at least during a detour to a department store parking lot from about 1971 to 1972, he wrote in the legal documents reviewed by the Guardian.
The victim explained how both predators kept him quiet. Hecker “always said I was his favorite and best altar boy”, the victim wrote. “He made sure everything looked like innocent fun and games.”
Meanwhile, the victim recounted, Gauthe “said I couldn’t tell any one because I would get in a lot of trouble and my parents would be really mad”.
Gauthe eventually ignited the US church’s reckoning with clergy abuse after pleading guilty in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1985 to molesting several boys. He served 10 years in prison, now lives in Texas, and is still being named in lawsuits from victims who are seeking damages over their abuse at his hands.
As part of the ongoing fallout from that reckoning caused by Gauthe, the Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans in 2018 published a list of dozens of priests and deacons faced with substantial allegations of child molestation. That roster was the first time the public learned Hecker – who had retired 16 years earlier – was an abuser.
During the following year, the former Little Flower altar server and Boy Scout whom Hecker, 93, and Gauthe, 79, molested decided to participate in mediation talks with the archdiocese over his abuse. The talks produced a $275,000 settlement to the victim for the abuse he described being subjected to Gauthe, Hecker and a third priest: James Kilgour, who was on the New Orleans archdiocese’s list, too, and died in 2021.
That agreement was among more than $11.6m in clergy abuse settlements that the New Orleans archdiocese paid between 2010 and 2020, when the church filed for bankruptcy protection – a process that has remained unresolved.
In 2022, a former student of a now-closed high school that was adjacent to Little Flower went to law enforcement authorities and accused Hecker of raping him in the church’s belltower in 1975, when he was about 16.
That victim recalled reporting the rape to his principal at the time, Paul Calamari. However, Calamari, later named in the New Orleans archdiocese’s 2018 list of clergy molesters, failed to report Hecker to police. Calamari instead threatened to expel the boy unless he went to the therapy for “anger issues and fantasy stories”, as the victim put it.
That case – which had no filing deadline because of its nature – progressed slowly until the Guardian uncovered a statement which Hecker provided to his superiors in 1999 that showed him confessing to either sexually abusing or harassing several children he met through his ministry, though it was a fraction of the victims he had preyed on.
The Guardian later provided the confession to New Orleans’s CBS affiliate, WWL Louisiana, and both outlets confronted Hecker on camera in August 2023. Hecker acknowledged the confession was authentic, and New Orleans state prosecutors indicted him in September 2023 in connection with the belltower rape.
Hecker pleaded guilty on the morning of 3 December, when his trial was supposed to start, to child rape and other crimes, ending a chain of events that WWL Louisiana is exploring in an hour-long special airing Wednesday at 9pm local time. It was the first time in recent memory that a clergyman was convicted of clerical molestation within the city limits of New Orleans, one of the US’s Catholic strongholds.
He is tentatively scheduled to receive a mandatory life sentence on 18 December.
It remains to be seen whether any of Hecker’s enablers are at risk of criminal charges, though his prosecution did spur a broader, ongoing Louisiana state police inquiry into 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, as investigators have alleged in a statement sworn under oath.
The attorney of the Hecker and Gauthe victim who was paid $275,000 for his abuse said his client’s experience lends credence to investigators’ allegations.
“What it tells me is that … pedophiles hang together,” said the lawyer, Roger Stetter.
Alluding to how the Boy Scouts have also been plagued with a history of child abuse, Stetter added: “They have networks, and they pass children on to one another. They know who is going after children, and they assist each other.”
• In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
