Ex-priest dies days after receiving life sentence in 1970s child rape case

A 93-year-old retired priest who pleaded guilty to raping and kidnapping a teen boy in the 1970s died less than two weeks after he began serving a life sentence in prison.

Lawrence Hecker pleaded guilty earlier this month to state charges in Louisiana and was sentenced on Dec. 18. Hecker was sent to a Louisiana prison known as Elayn Hunt where he died early Thursday of natural causes, officials told The Guardian.

A child rape survivor who pursued charges against Hecker told The Guardian on Friday he felt “vindicated and free” that Hecker had died.

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“I can’t find any words of kindness for his passing,” the survivor said. “The words ‘may he rest in peace’ are so hollow."

Hecker's case garnered national headlines after a report in The Guardian that he told superiors in 1999 that he had molested or otherwise engaged in sexual misconduct with teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s. Hecker told the news outlet that he committed “overtly sexual acts” with at least three boys.

The Guardian also obtained a decades-old statement that Hecker gave church leaders.

"Asked if he did the specific sexual acts he laid out in the statement, Hecker twice said, 'Yes,' while being recorded on video. He also claimed that society was more permissive of such behavior at the time, even though Louisiana’s age of consent to have sex in the 1960s and 70s was the same as it is now: 17," the report said.

When asked if he should be charged, Hecker replied at the time that he “really can’t answer."

“I just don’t know,” he said, before adding: “Not one chance in a million anything like this would ever happen again. Obviously, I’m truly repentant.”

The New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy four years ago facing a deluge of abuse claims.