Former New Orleans priest, 93, is sentenced to life in prison for raping boy decades ago

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A judge sentenced a 93-year-old former Catholic priest Wednesday to spend the rest of his life behind bars for raping a teenage boy decades ago.

Lawrence Hecker had pleaded guilty to charges including first-degree rape and aggravated kidnapping moments before jury selection was scheduled to begin in his trial this month.

Hecker's sentence comes as the Archdiocese of New Orleans deals with fallout from a wave of sexual abuse lawsuits and allegations that church leaders had long ignored predatory priests, leading to a long-running bankruptcy proceeding.

The survivor of the assault to which Hecker pleaded guilty said that Hecker had offered to instruct him in wrestling moves ahead of tryouts in the mid-1970s for a school team and that he recalled the training “started innocently enough," The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported. Then Hecker raped him.

“I tried to get up. I pulled up,” the survivor said. “I realized his left arm was over my neck. I don’t remember much after that.”

After the survivor told his parents and church authorities, he was threatened with expulsion and forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, the newspaper reported.

Witnesses had been prepared to testify that Hecker had abused them, as well, and provided impact statements during his sentencing.

Hecker was ordained as an archdiocesan priest in 1958 and left a trail of red flags, including his own admission and an undisputed complaint of child molestation leveled against him in the late 1980s, court records indicate. Hecker left the ministry in 2002.

Legal proceedings had been delayed for months amid questions of Hecker's mental competence.

Another survivor, Aaron Hebert, has said Hecker abused him in the late 1960s when he was an eighth grader at a Catholic elementary school outside New Orleans. Hecker groped Hebert and several classmates while he claimed to demonstrate what a hernia examination entailed, Hebert has said.

The Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they have been sexually assaulted, but Hebert has long been open about his story.

“In my opinion, the Archdiocese of New Orleans is morally bankrupt, not financially bankrupt," Hebert wrote in a letter to a federal judge.

New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who has rebuffed calls from survivors of clergy sexual assaults to step down, said in an emailed statement that he hoped survivors of Hecker's abuse would find “some closure and some sense of peace in his sentencing.”

“On behalf of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, we offer our sincere and heartfelt apologies to the survivors for the pain Hecker has caused them to endure for decades," Aymond said.

Richard Trahant, an attorney for a victim of Hecker's abuse, said in an emailed statement that Aymond had not supported survivors.

“Aymond’s words are hollow and false,” Trahant said. “Aymond should have been sitting right there next to Hecker.”

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96

FILE - This Dec. 1, 2012 file photo shows a silhouette of a crucifix and a stained glass window inside a Catholic Church in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani authorities on Wednesday postponed a polio vaccination campaign in the country's restive southern Balochistan province after health workers boycotted it to oppose a proposed privatization of hospitals.

Authorities on Monday launched the final nationwide polio vaccination campaign for the year, aiming to protect 45 million children. According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the potentially fatal, paralyzing virus has not been eradicated.

Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication said the polio vaccination campaign in Balochistan was delayed until Dec. 30 for “better preparedness." He provided no further details.

However, other health and government officials said the campaign in Balochistan was postponed after health workers refused to join it and demanded that the government stop plans to privatize state-run hospitals where they work.

Representatives of health workers have also urged the government not to employ unqualified workers to carry out the campaign.

Restive Balochistan has reported the highest number of polio cases, with 26 out of the nationwide 63 confirmed cases since January. The campaign continues until Dec. 22 in other areas in Pakistan.

Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.

More than 200 polio workers and police assigned for their protection have been killed since the 1990s, according to health officials and authorities.

On another front, Pakistan is currently also fighting militants across the country.

On Wednesday, security forces in three different operations in the restive northwest killed eleven insurgents, the military said in a statement. It provided no further details and described the slain men as “khwarij” — a term the government uses for Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. While the TTP is an ally of the Afghan Taliban who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, it’s a separate group.

A police officer stands guard as a health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)

A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child at a slum area in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)