'We were encouraged to be with younger boys': breaking down a child molester priest's secret testimony

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/09/new-orleans-catholic-church-abuse-takeaways

No paywall link
https://archive.li/L1eJm

The Guardian and CBS affiliate WWL Louisiana have obtained a long suppressed, eight-and-a-half-hour deposition of a 92-year-old Catholic priest charged with physically overpowering and raping a boy in a New Orleans church in 1975.

Taken in 2020 as part of a civil lawsuit demanding damages from him and the church, clergyman Lawrence Hecker provides in the deposition the most complete account yet of how the US’s second-oldest archdiocese spent much of its recent history taking extreme measures to keep the public from finding out about his abusive past. The questioning – which the church has fought in court for years to keep hidden – also reveals steps the city’s last four archbishops took to help him avoid accountability for decades.

Eventually, law enforcement officials were able to obtain an indictment charging Hecker with rape, kidnapping and other crimes in connection with an accusation that he strangled a teenaged student – at a school for boys interested in becoming priests – unconscious and sodomized him. A team of psychiatrists recently determined that Hecker was mentally incompetent to stand trial, at least for now. But a judge has not yet ruled on whether he intends to adopt that finding, which would probably delay the case months, if not longer – something that could be decisive in a case involving a defendant in his 90s.

Meanwhile, the case has since given rise to an inquiry to determine whether the archdiocese of New Orleans presided over “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported to law enforcement”. That is the way Louisiana state police troopers described the investigation in a recent search warrant that court records show was served on the church as part of an investigation into alleged child sex-trafficking.

*snip*

[RockRaven]

1. 4 indelible words: "WE WERE ENCOURAGED TO"

[Hekate]

2. Hecker is a monster -- and his superiors that shielded him are no better

[Enter stage left]

3. STILL NOT a drag queen!

[I_UndergroundPanther]

4. When I was in the hospital

I was in an adolescent unit ,sitting in the hallway beside the cafeteria waiting for the rest of our group to gather to go back on the unit. I was the first person in the hall since I wasn’t hungry. I was listening to my cd player. A guy starts talking to me from the adult unit. To be polite I put my headphones down to hear him. He told me he was a priest. We talked about that for a few minutes. Then he came to my side of the hallway started telling me how good I looked. I got really uneasy .Then he said some twisted stuff that triggered me bad. I lost it blacked out and beat the tar out of him. He was semi conscious on the floor when the staff got me to stop raging. Later I found out they “treated” priests with pedophilia at that facility. Glad I beat that pedo fuckers ass.

[brewens]

5. If someone asked me to join an organization with their history, I'd call the fucking cops! n/t