The New Orleans Archdiocese dodged a major bullet last week when retired priest Lawrence Hecker unexpectedly entered a guilty plea to charges of child rape and kidnapping just as the case against him was set to go to trial.

The guilty plea, which carries a mandatory life sentence for the 93-year-old former priest, saves the Catholic Church the embarrassment of a lengthy – and well-publicized – criminal trial that was almost certain to expose a long-standing practice by the archdiocese of protecting predatory priests – and the church – from prosecution for sexually assaulting minor children.

A jury would have heard, for instance, and the public would have learned, that when the then-16-year-old victim reported the rape at the hands of Hecker to his principal, it was not Hecker, but the boy who received the brunt of the church’s punishment.

It was in 1975 and Hecker had hired the teen to help set up masses at the St. Theresa the Little Flower church in New Orleans. One day, when the boy was working out in a gym, Hecker purported to teach him some wrestling moves. The priest subsequently stood behind the boy and put him in a chokehold.

The victim said he felt Hecker rape him before he lost consciousness. Upon awakening, he noticed that the back of his shorts were wet. He later told his mother about the rape. He also told his school principal, Paul Calamari, and that’s when his troubles were taken to another level.

Instead of punishing Hecker, Calamari admonished the boy and told his mother that the teen needed to seek therapy because of his “anger issues and fantasy stories” or face expulsion. He chose therapy which he thinks was paid for by the church. But he also learned that he was not alone.

Another boy told of taking a walk with Hecker in a wooded area outside New Orleans. He said the priest put him in a wrestling hold and began trying to rape him. Only when another child suddenly approached did Hecker abandon his efforts and stroll away as if nothing had happened.

Ironically, years later when that same boy married, it was Hecker who performed the ceremony because Hecker was close to the bride’s family.

Nearly a quarter-century later, in 1999, Hecker admitted in writing to church leaders that he had molested or sexually harassed several other boys he had met through his ministry and as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts. The archdiocese’s response? He was allowed to return to work until he retired several years later – with full benefits.

The courts attempted to do their part in protecting the church by sealing all documents but the ever-resourceful GUARDIAN, a United Kingdom publication, and the publication’s New Orleans writer, Ramon Vargas, in June 2023 managed to obtain a copy of that 1999 admission by Hecker and all hell broke loose.

So now, the public won’t hear the story of what four New Orleans archbishops knew about child sex abuse or how long had they known it and attempted to cover up the scandal. Some of those answers were contained in leaked testimony from a 2020 DEPOSITION given by Hecker.

The indisputable truth that has emerged in all of this is that the New Orleans Archdiocese would rather continue to pay legal and professional fees, now totaling more than $41 million and counting, in its attempts to PROTECT more than a billion dollars in property, buildings and jewels than to see that some measure of justice is accorded some 550 claimed victims of brutality at the hands of God’s servants.

Below are some of the archdiocese’s property. Scroll down to page 182 for the itemized listings.

So, now with the Hecker criminal matter disposed of, the lawyers can direct their full attention to crunching the numbers to see who pays what to whom.

It’s literally taken years to get to this point when the church could have opened itself to transparency long ago and expedited the cleansing process.

But then again, it may not be that easy. The New Orleans Archdiocese may not be stalling the process to protect the New Orleans Archdiocese.

After all, the one-time archbishop of Buenos Aires (1992-2013), JORGE MARIO BERGOGLIO, who also once served as president of the Argentine Bishops’ Conference, once boasted that he never encountered any abusive priests when in fact, more than 100 Buenos Aires archdiocesan priests sexually abused children from 1950 to 2013.

The former Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now known to the world as Pope Francis.

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After delay after interminable delay and court decisions designed only to protect the New Orleans Roman Catholic Diocese instead of the victims of abuse at the hands of representatives of the diocese, if finally appears as if things are about to get serious.

Last Friday (Dec. 6), two insurance companies have submitted requests for documents to the New Orleans Archdiocese and to the Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the federal bankruptcy case that is part of the sex-abuse case against the diocese on behalf of more than 500 plaintiffs who claim they were sexually abused by Catholic clergy in the archdiocese.

U.S. Fire Insurance Company and International Insurance Company filed their requests in which they asked for:

• All Documents that the debtor (archdiocese) and committee have exchanged concerning the sexual abuse survivor claims that are the subject of a plan of reorganization in this bankruptcy case, including the claims model and/or matrices prepared by archdiocese’s counsel, Blank Rome, and given to the committee;
• The claims valuation model employed by the committee to generate the demands to insurers propounded in the committee plan of reorganization;
• All proofs of claim that assert Indirect abuse survivor claims against the debtor;
• The contracts and/or other agreements entered into between the debtor and the entities filing proofs of claim asserting Indirect abuse claims against the archdiocese that provide or are alleged to provide rights of indemnification, contribution or defense for sexual abuse survivor claims;
• The contracts and/or other agreements entered into between the debtor and the Catholic religious orders that operated within the geographic domain of the archdiocese;
• The document retention and destruction policy of the diocese in place over the time period for which coverage is sought from U.S. Fire and International as well as two other insurers, Sparta and Travelers;
• All insurance, certificates of insurance, subscription agreements and other agreements between the Archdiocese of New Orleans Indemnity Company and/or National Case 20-10846 Doc 3568 filed 12/06/24 entered 12/06/24 23:21:09 main document Page 5 of 20 2 Catholic Rusk Retention Group, on the one hand, and the archdiocese and/or any of its apostolates, on the other hand.
• All Documents concerning the sexual abuse survivor claims asserted against the archdiocese and/or any of its apostolates, including requests for coverage for such claims, and any responses.

While the requests might seem routine steps in civil litigation, there could be an undercurrent of resistance building among the archdiocese’s insurers. For one, the committee is proposing that the insurers cough up $777 million as its share of any billion-dollar settlement.

That promises to be a hard sell – for several reasons. First, do any of the policies cover intentional acts? Most cover unintended incidents but in many cases, deliberate acts or acts done in the commission of a crime, coverage is denied as are “known prior acts.”

And “known prior acts” brings up another consideration. How many more claims are still out there? The insurance companies are not likely to relish shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars only to turn around and get hit with more claims next week, next month or next year. The so-called “lookback window” has been pushed up to June 14, 2027, which opens the door for more claims until that date.

Moreover, the insurers may take a dim view to the propensity of the archdiocese to shield offending priests from prosecution or from being sued by transferring them to other locations where they continued to have contact with children as opposed to ridding the church of pedophiles.

In case after case, the Catholic Church in general and the New Orleans Archdiocese in particular have made it a practice to SHUFFLE OFFENDING PRIESTS around like so many dominos.

Another case illustrates not only how the church protects its own, but also how the courts can be counted on to punish the messenger when a predator is discovered to be in a Catholic school and outed.

New Orleans attorney Richard Trahant indicated to reporter Ramon Antonio Vargas that he might wish to keep an eye on Father Paul Hart and he alerted his cousin

That was it. Trahant gave a heads-up to his cousin, who was principal of Brother Martin High School, that a known predator, Paul Hart, was assigned to the school as its chaplain. He also indicated to Vargas, who was then working for the New Orleans Advocate but since has moved over to The Guardian, that he should keep Hart on his radar.

“I have never provided, disclosed or disseminated any sealed or confidential documents produced by the debtor (archdiocese) or any infomration included in those documents to any person other than members of the committee, their counsel or the committee’s bankruptcy professionals,” he said in a prepared statement.

That was the extent of his comment because the entire record was under seal by court order.

After a complaint by attorneys for the archdiocese, Judge Meredith Grabill ruled that Trahant had violated the confidentiality rules despite Trahant’s insistence that additional information about Hart that Vargas subsequently published had come from other sources.

Grabill, in a classic gesture of punishing the messenger, removed Trahant along with two other attorneys and a number of clients from the clergy abuse claimants committee. Then she hit Trahant with a $400,000 fine, claiming that the amount was derived from the cost of the leak investigation.

Somehow, Grabill managed to justify imposing the cost of that “investigation” on Trahant while looking the other way as the archdiocese did and continues to do everything in its power to drag out the proceedings as the legal bill continue to pile up, some at rates of $800 per hour.

It shouldn’t be that difficult. After all, Blank Rome, the “special insurance counsel” to the archdiocese, has already performed legal work on 13 separate Catholic church bankruptcies even as they have managed to bill the New Orleans Archdiocese more than a million dollars. One would have to wonder how much of the work for New Orleans might be a tad redundant to some of those other 13 cases. In all, the archdiocese has spent some $41 million already on legal and professional fees to defend its pedophile priests.

All of which begs the question of just whom is the court trying to protect – the 550 victims of predatory priests or the officials (monsignors, bishops and archbishops) that kept moving them around from parish to parish so as not to bring any embarrassment to the church?

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This is in no way to be interpreted as an endorsement of violence but if the incoming Trump administration does attempt to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, yesterday’s killing of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson could well be a precursor of things to come for this country.

Yes, it’s calloused to make such an observation, especially when Thompson’s killer is still at large and we don’t know for certain the motive behind his assassination though the message “delay, deny, defend” found on the shell casings at the scene would appear to refer to the insurance industry’s method of handling claims: delay addressing claims, then deny them and if necessary, defend the denials in court. It’s a proven tactic whereby the insurance industry depends on claimants eventually just giving up out of frustration. It’s always a win for the insurance companies.

HUFFPOST had a slightly different version of the message on the shell casings: “deny, defend, depose.”

You think those folks in South Korea got upset when martial law was declared there this week? You haven’t seen anything until you rip away or reduce benefits that our seniors have paid for all their working lives. We’re gonna have hordes of blue-hairs who are going to say in unison, “What the hell, we got nothing to lose now” and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Why am I attempting to draw a line from the murder of an individual in Manhattan to the possible imposition of benefit cuts to America’s poor and elderly – and perhaps tens of thousands of Louisiana policyholders?

Because United Health Care has been systematically doing the same thing with its policyholders with no signs of the abating of that practice any time soon.

One local physician told LouisianaVoice today that his group no longer accepts United Healthcare because of problems getting the company to (a) approve needed procedures for patients and (b) delays in payments for those it does approve.

In fact, UHC is facing a potential class-action lawsuit over allegations that it used an algorithm to deny claims for post-acute care services in Medicare Advantage, resulting in a “90 percent error rate.”

A 90 percent error rate is pretty drastic in any field of endeavor. A baseball player who fails 90 percent of the time at-bat hits only .100. A .100 batting average won’t even get you a ticket to watch a professional baseball game, much less participate in one. A quarterback who completes only one of nine passes won’t even be issued a pair of cleats, let alone be allowed to play.

And here’s the kicker for 63,000 Louisianians (myself included) who are members of Peoples Health. It was announced in June that UHC had PURCHASED Peoples Health, headquartered in Metairie. The acquisition will make the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UHC the largest health insurer in the U.S.

If UHC follows the trend of corporate takeovers, it will swallow the smaller company, gut it of its assets and pass the hit on to the latter’s customers. Such is the nature, sadly, of corporate TAKEOVERS.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has SUED to block UHC’s acquisition of another company, Amedisys, a home health and hospice provider.

It was almost two years ago that PROPUBLICA, an online news service, exposed the methods employed by UHC in denying claims. The narrative was eerily reminiscent of the plot of the John Grisham book and movie THE RAINMAKER.

Thompson, meanwhile, along with two other UHC executives, was accused of insider trading in May of this year in a class-action LAWSUIT filed by the firefighters’ pension fund for the City of Hollywood, Florida. The lawsuit accuses the three of dumping more than $120 million of stock while the company was the subject of a federal antitrust investigation.

Between the time DOJ told UHC to turn over their financial records and when that news became public, Thompson cashed out more than $15 million of his Healthcare stock.  Then he sold all his stock in pension funds like those of the Hollywood Florida Firefighters union, which the lawsuit claims cost the firefighters’ pension fund $25 billion virtually overnight.

So, for those of you who are Peoples Health policyholders, be forewarned. Angela Hill is very probably a nice person. The former New Orleans TV news anchor certainly seems to be a great spokesperson for Peoples Health. As of this writing, it’s a great company and I, as one policyholder, have absolutely no complaints or misgivings. But with the takeover by a troubled company, you should be ever-vigilant to any changes in benefit coverages offered as UHC more and more becomes the face of the company that it has purchased.

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The Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) has chosen to terminate what was supposed to be a two-year contract to house up to 30 adjudicated juveniles in the spanking new facility in Jackson Parish a tad early.

The termination of the state’s contract, which took effect last Saturday (Nov. 30), while not exactly killing the golden goose, nevertheless wounded it rather severely.

And even though Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown entered into contracts with a handful of other parishes throughout the state to house youth from their parishes, he is certain to miss the couple of million dollars he has been billing the state to reserve a number of beds for OJJ – even when those beds are unoccupied, according to THE LENS, a New Orleans non-profit news service.

The Lens said that the Jackson Parish jail has “flouted state-licensing law for juvenile detention facilities” and has been “consistently accused” of abuse and neglect of kids in its care – but LouisianaVoice has learned that may be only a part of the problems currently plaguing the high sheriff of Jackson Parish.

Besides rumors from a couple of sources as to the existence of an ongoing FBI investigation (the FBI itself neither confirms nor denies investigations), there is considerably more bad press – that is, if there was any press to report any miscreant-like behavior.

For openers, he reportedly put a gaggle of campaign supporters on his payroll in the lead-up to his 2023 reelection campaign (it’s illegal, according to state law, to pad a payroll within six months of an election). The word is he put a couple dozen on the payroll during that period under the pretense of opening that new juvenile facility. But then, shortly after the election, the layoffs began, attributed to budgetary constraints.

Then, there are the two private corporations he operates out of the same address in the Jackson Parish town of Quitman.

Six Point Consultants, LLC, and Shultz & Brown Associates, LLC each has the same names on its corporate filings with the Louisiana Secretary of State: Andy Brown, Suzanne Brown, Donovan Shultz and Jessica Shultz. Brown, who is listed as the agent for both corporate entities, is also the Chief of Investigations and is the number-three person in rank in the sheriff’s office, behind Brown and Chief Deputy Brent Barnett. Both corporations give their address of domicile as 855 North Antioch Road in Quitman, which is also given as the residential address of Shultz.

The two officials, Brown and Shultz, also operate a towing service which has reportedly performed some towing services for the sheriff’s department with Brown’s son, Andrew Brown, performing some of the actual driving of the tow truck.

Six Point Consultants, as it turned out, had Covid testing equipment that it kept at a clinic called Mercy Medical in the early days of the pandemic – and the Jackson Parish Hospital, by the way, also had testing equipment for Covid.

As it happens, Sheriff Brown’s attorney Chris Bowman is also a member of the hospital board, And, oh, he is also a member of the board of Mercy Medical.

Coincidentally, the hospital decided to outsource some of its Covid testing to Mercy Medical and when some hospital employees, who were supposed to have received testing at no cost, began receiving bills from Mercy Medical, well, naturally, there were questions.

As a result of the outcry from billed hospital employees, many of the Mercy Medical invoices simply disappeared.

Oh, did we mention that Mercy Medical is located at 244 Bond Street, the same address as the former Jackson Parish Health Unit which Sheriff Brown had acquired for the sheriff’s office, ostensibly to convert to a women’s prison, before transferring ownership of the building to Kimberly Brunson, who runs Mercy Medical.

And then there’s the question of those shipping containers Brown was going to use to house all those juvenile offenders, a proposed move opposed in an ADVOCACY PAPER issued last May by the Louisiana United Methodist Children and Family Services.

But wait. It seems, according to one report, that the containers that Brown has already brought in were purchased from…(wait for it)…Donovan Shultz’s father.

LouisianaVoice has learned of other activities and out-of-state travel in sheriff’s department vehicles for personal business as well as reports of additional insider dealing in the construction of the new jail. There are also reports that a parish inmate was transported by deputies to his girlfriend’s home in Chatham on weekends until deputies had to be called to her house in a domestic dispute.

Just another parish where LouisianaVoice is probably not welcome.

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An LSU computer instructor has sued the university for breach of contract after he received a notice of non-reappointment to work on several federally-funded grants last March.

Fernando Alegre had been employed since August 2015 as a research associate where he says he spent 100 percent of his time working on the grants.

He and the university entered into a new agreement on May 22 of this year whereby Alegre agreed to perform specific duties. LSU, however, insisted that he also perform duties outside the scope of his contract, according to his petition filed in 19^th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge.

Among the duties he was asked to perform that were not included in his contract were the installation, restoration and/or maintenance of the school’s Web pages. He claims in his lawsuit that in the past he “occasionally” volunteered to help with some IT work outside his regular working hours (per the grant), but with his new duties, he said he simply did not have the time to devote to those tasks.

Retribution by LSU was quick and severe, he says. He said the university not only breached the employment agreement with him, but at the same time, deemed that Alegre was ineligible for any employment within the LSU (statewide) system.

Even more heavy-handed, Alegre claims, LSU took its actions against him “in and effort to gain a strategic bargaining advantage over him as part of an ongoing dispute between LSU and (Alegre’s) wife, who is also employed by LSU “and whose compensation is linked to or funded by the same grant” referenced earlier.

LSU is essentially seeking to blackball Alegre from employment “without any rational or lawful basis for so doing,” his petition says, and is “seeking to prevent (Alegre) from participating in a broad range of academic and other lawful and legitimate career opportunities and paths within the LSU system in an effort to gain a strategic bargaining advantage.

Alegre’s attorney, J. Arthur Smith, III, accuses LSU of failing and refusing to comply with its contractual commitment in good faith and that the school’s actions “constitute an unfair trade practice” in violation of state law.

Alegre is not seeking any specific monetary damages other than for LSU to pay him “in accordance with his employment agreement” with the university and for the school to pay his attorney fees and court costs.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that LSU has cut an employee loose when it fit the school’s agenda. STEVEN HATFIELD was terminated with no questions asked when he was erroneously linked by the FBI to anthrax mailings. LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert said at the time that the decision to terminate Hatfield “was not reached quickly or easily.” At the same time, he gave no reason for the move. Hatfield eventually settled with the U.S. Justice Department for $2.8 million.

Dr. RANDALL SCHAFFER, who toiled in the LSU School of Dentistry, warned of the faulty design of dental implants developed by the school. LSU rewarded him by having his dental license revoked and his career ruined.

And then there are Drs. ROXANNE TOWNSEND AND FRED CERISE who were deemed expendable by the school when they offended the wonderful Bobby Jindal. But the LSU Board of Supervisors apparently saw no problem in allowing board member Dr. John F. George, Jr., to become president and CEO of Biomedical Research Foundation which was to take over the operation of two LSU hospitals or that Biomedical Research Foundation leased research labs to the LSU system for millions of dollars.

And who could forget the debacle over IVOR van HEERDEN who claimed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ha not driven pilings deep enough which allowed levees to fail during Hurricane Katrina. He was fired mostly because LSU feared the loss of grant money from the corps. Turns out Van Heerden was 100 percent correct and it ended up costing LSU $435,000 to settle with its former coastal researcher – but only after it spent another $1 million defending his lawsuit.

Of course, none of the cases cited should be taken as indicative of employment policy at LSU.

But it is a pretty good primer for anyone who is interested in what might be anticipated over the next four years or so..

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