NEW ORLEANS — Three state troopers walked into the Archdiocese of New Orleans offices this Thursday morning shortly before 10 a.m. and served church officials with a search warrant.
The group of troopers included one who is the lead investigator on the rape and kidnapping case pending against retired New Orleans priest Lawrence Hecker. The troopers met with archdiocesan officials at the local church's New Orleans headquarters for about 45 minutes.
The troopers left without comment and, so far, without any records.
The State Police are seeking decades of secret church files about child sexual abuse by clergy.
WWL Investigator David Hammer and our reporting partner Ramon Vargas of The Guardian broke the story yesterday that Criminal Magistrate Judge Juana Lombard signed a search warrant for church records about all clergy abuse cases.
An archdiocesan spokesperson said the church did not immediately turn over any documents, with troopers treating the warrant in a manner more like a subpoena, which gives the targets of investigation a chance to gather and return targeted material.
In a sworn statement that they provided to the judge who signed the warrant, state troopers said their investigation into a retired local priest faced with charges of child rape and kidnapping had led them to suspect high-ranking archdiocesan officials knew of widespread abuse within the church but failed to properly report it to law enforcement.
State police issued a statement assuring the public that the archdiocese was cooperating with the search warrant.
The warrant seeks files that would identify every priest and deacon accused of abusing children while working in the US’ second-oldest archdiocese – not just those whom the church itself has deemed credibly accused, which has been its practice. The warrant also seeks files that would determine when those complaints were first made and whether the church turned those cases over to police.
The warrant also demands copies of all communications among New Orleans’ current archbishop, Gregory Aymond, his aides and their superiors at the Vatican.
It is believed to be the first time that authorities investigating the New Orleans archdiocese’s role in the long and ongoing worldwide Catholic clerical child molestation scandal have sought the full set of abuse-related documents held by the church.
A small handful of New Orleans-area clergymen have been prosecuted – and even convicted – of child molestation or rape. But investigators in those cases have mostly narrowed their focus on the individual defendants and the mid-level church bureaucrats directly in charge of them.
The wide scope of the warrant could reveal what leaders at the Vatican knew of the breadth of abuse, potentially dating as far back as the mid-20th century, in and around a metropolitan area that is home to about a half-million Catholics.
The warrant avoided singling out any individual church officials who may be part of this criminal investigation for covering up child rape and other abuse by rank-and-file clergymen within an archdiocese now under the command of Aymond, who has been its archbishop since 2009.
However, in the summer of 2023, the Guardian obtained a 48-page memorandum summarizing secret internal archdiocesan records that were handed over after the church filed for bankruptcy to shield itself from a steadily growing collection of abuse-related litigation.
That memo established that Aymond repeatedly ignored his own advisers who suggested he publicly reveal the identities of priests and deacons facing substantial, credible accusations of abuse. Managing those clergymen in that manner ensured that the public – and law enforcement – largely did not learn of the accusations until they were reported by the media many years later.
Attorneys for victims of clerical sexual abuse gained access to the documents mentioned in that memo because their clients’ cases became part of the church’s bankruptcy proceedings. They handed the resulting memo to law enforcement in 2022.
State police troopers secured rape and kidnapping charges against Hecker, who admitted on camera with WWL and the Guardian that he was a serial child molester. In a case that remains open, he has pleaded not guilty to strangling a teenaged boy unconscious and then sodomizing him in one instance in a church in 1975.
That same state police unit applied for the sweeping warrant that Lombard signed and was then seen going in and out of the archdiocese’s headquarters in plainclothes and sunglasses on Thursday.
On Wednesday, about a dozen clergy abuse survivors reached out to WWL and the Guardian to say they had been waiting for most of their lives for this day. James Adams, a former member of a committee representing the interests of clergy molestation victims in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy, praised the troopers’ efforts.
“The state is doing what our own Catholic leaders have refused to do,” Adams said. “Sadly, our bishops have repeatedly chosen to protect their predatory brother priests rather than the most vulnerable of their flock.
“Today we are one step closer to justice. Praise God.”
Vatican officials including Pope Francis have not commented on the metastasizing scandal of clerical sexual abusers in New Orleans.
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