NEW ORLEANS — As he sought to unseal secret church records on a living priest accused of child sexual abuse, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams said his office received "voluminous documents" from the Archdiocese of New Orleans on Wednesday afternoon.
An archdiocesan spokesman said Thursday the church "turned over everything in their possession" regarding retired priest Lawrence Hecker to the DA.
Attorneys for Hecker's alleged victims want the records unsealed for the public, including sworn deposition testimony by Hecker in 2020, when he was 89. They contend the records include details about Hecker's actions and when the archdiocese learned about them.
Attorney Richard Trahant argued the church knew about the allegations in the 1980s and did nothing until letting Hecker retire in 2002, receive a pension and live in archdiocesan housing and didn't disclose the allegations publicly until 2018.
U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo heard arguments Thursday about whether to unseal Hecker's testimony and related church documents.
It’s the first time that local law enforcement has made moves to expose secret records the Archdiocese has fought to protect for decades.
Even after the local church placed Hecker on its list of priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse in 2018, the Archdiocese argued its 2020 bankruptcy prevented Hecker's confidential employment records from being released.
Archdiocese attorney Dirk Wegmann argued against unsealing confidential documents. He and Milazzo both portrayed Hecker’s deposition as rambling and difficult to follow and questioned Trahant’s real intent in taking Hecker’s sworn testimony.
“This is an attack against the Archdiocese. This is an attack on a debtor in bankruptcy. Their real intent in taking the deposition was not to make a claim against Father Hecker. It was to make a claim against the Archdiocese,” Wegmann said.
“I think that was a pretext to disclose this information to damage the Archdiocese, which can’t defend itself because it’s in bankruptcy,” Wegmann added.
Wegmann also made a point of saying in court that Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who has been in office since 2008, has done everything in his power to protect children.
Trahant shot back that the sealed records contradict that claim, but said the secrecy order prevented him from explaining how.
Milazzo initially said she wanted to seal the courtroom for the entire hearing, but The Associated Press and the Guardian, a British news organization with a New Orleans office, objected. Milazzo only sealed the courtroom briefly when Trahant said he needed to speak about something specific in the sealed record.
Trahant represents scores of sexual abuse victims against the Archdiocese and other Catholic institutions. His client in the case before Milazzo sued Hecker and the Archdiocese under the pseudonym JW Doe, but Trahant said Thursday he wanted to use his real name, Aaron Hebert.
Hebert was out of town during the hearing, but told WWL-TV in an interview that he’s angered by the church’s use of bankruptcy protection to keep details of the alleged abuse secret.
“We are not ‘liabilities’ like the Archdiocese says in the bankruptcy,” he said. “It’s become time for them to atone for their sins of sexual abuse, deceit, corruption and non-transparency.”
“It's not about the Archdiocese, it's not about Monsignor Lawrence Hecker,” Trahant said outside the courthouse. “It's about Aaron Hebert and every adult who walks around with these horrific memories of being sexually abused by people they thought were the messengers of Christ.”
Trahant repeatedly argued there is evidence of crimes in the documents the church disclosed through the bankruptcy, and “we’ve known about these crimes for 3.5 years now and we haven’t been able to let the public know.”
Trahant knows what kind of punishment awaits anyone who dares to disclose the contents of the sealed records. When he informed his cousin, the principal of Brother Martin High School, that the school’s chaplain, the Rev. Paul Hart, had admitted in some of those sealed records to sexual contact with a 16-year-old, Bankruptcy Court Judge Meredith Grabill fined Trahant $400,000.
“Let's stop hiding this stuff,” said Trahant, who is appealing Grabill’s order. “Let's stop concealing. Let it out there. And if it causes embarrassment to certain people… I mean, you want to look at somebody who's been embarrassed? Look at me.”
Hart died shortly after Trahant’s disclosure to Brother Martin was reported last year by The Times-Picayune. The writer, Ramon Antonio Vargas, who is now at The Guardian, reported that sources other than Trahant disclosed that the sealed records showed Hart had admitted to sexual contact with a 16-year-old girl but the Archdiocese didn’t consider it child sexual abuse because church law at the time considered 16 the age of consent.
The age of sexual consent is 17 under Louisiana law and, now, also under church law.
Milazzo said she would take the arguments for and against unsealing the records under advisement but didn’t say when she would rule. At one point in the hearing, Milazzo called Williams up to the bench for a sidebar conference, but Williams never addressed the court on the record.
At the end of the sidebar, Milazzo could be heard telling Williams twice: "You know what to do."
Milazzo began the hearing by noting she went to Catholic school, and she and her husband attend church and give donations. She asked if anyone had a problem with that, and nobody asked her to recuse herself.
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