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

“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.

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.

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