NEW ORLEANS — A joint WWL Louisiana/Guardian investigation exposed secret Catholic church files that prove the New Orleans Archdiocese knew one of its priests was a serial child molester and covered it up for decades. Confronted by the news outlets, the priest confessed on camera, was quickly arrested and eventually pleaded guilty-as-charged to child rape and kidnapping charges.
In this 1-hour special report, “Losing Faith: Preying from the Pulpit,” WWL Louisiana Chief Investigative Reporter David Hammer and Guardian Editor/Reporter Ramon Antonio Vargas take viewers through their groundbreaking investigation of pedophile priest Lawrence Hecker – two years of work that culminated in Hecker’s guilty plea in December 2024 and long-elusive justice for Hecker’s many victims.
For the last six years, Hammer and Vargas have teamed up for dozens of stories on the clergy sex abuse crisis in New Orleans. They investigated allegations against priests and deacons at the US’ second oldest Catholic diocese, detailed how abuse survivors struggled to be heard, and questioned why the church repeatedly moved accused clergymen from parish to parish while failing to report their crimes to the public or law enforcement.
But the shocking extent of the crimes by clergy and the coverups by church leaders didn’t come fully into focus until June 2023, when Vargas obtained a 1999 written confession by one of the area’s most notorious serial pedophiles, Monsignor Lawrence Hecker. In the confession, Hecker admitted to sexually molesting or otherwise harassing several children whom he met through his ministry. Vargas spent years developing the sources who provided the confession despite a judicial confidentiality order aiming to keep it sealed from public view — an order that the sources defied in hopes it would bring Hecker to justice.
In August 2023, Hammer, Vargas, and photographer Thomas Pipitone went to confront the then 91-year-old Hecker at his apartment. The retired priest agreed to an interview, then admitted on camera that he’d molested or harassed at least seven underage boys in the 1960s and ‘70s. He blamed the “sexual revolution” for his actions and said church leaders trusted him to return to ministry and resist his urges, even after he received a psychiatric diagnosis of incurable pedophilia.
The interview was picked up by several national news outlets in August 2023. Two weeks later, a grand jury indicted Hecker on rape and kidnapping charges. In April 2024, the Louisiana State Police and FBI served a search warrant on the Archdiocese, seizing the church’s complete clergy personnel files on suspicion that the organization has been running a child sex-trafficking ring. And in December 2024, with prosecutors preparing to show Hecker’s WWL/Guardian interview as a key piece of evidence at his rape trial, the now 93-year-old suddenly pleaded guilty-as-charged on the morning of jury selection. Hecker’s plea resulted in an automatic sentence of life in prison, the harshest punishment in recent memory in this major Catholic stronghold.
Hecker’s victims, survivors’ advocates, and the district attorney all said the groundbreaking work by Vargas and Hammer was crucial to achieving justice and closure. What’s more, the stunning on-camera confession and leaked video deposition testimony from Hecker gave the larger community its first real look behind the curtain, into the mind of a serial child molester and the strategy of a powerful Catholic institution trying to keep the public in the dark — at all costs.
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