New Orleans archdiocese is target of
child sex-trafficking inquiry
Louisiana state police recently served sweeping and unprecedented search warrant
The Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans is the target of an active child sex-trafficking investigation, according to a sweeping and unprecedented search warrant Louisiana state police recently served on an organization that for decades has been submerged in the global church’s clergy molestation scandal.
The clerk at the state criminal courthouse where the warrant was signed released the 11-page document on Tuesday. It makes clear that troopers involved in a pending rape prosecution against one priest came to suspect that particular case was part of a broader pattern of “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported to law enforcement”.
In a stunning assertion made under oath, troopers said they had already recovered documents that “back” the notion that “previous archbishops, the highest-ranking official in the archdiocese, not only knew of the sexual abuse and failed to report all the claims to law enforcement, but spent archdiocese funding to support the accused”.
Please continue reading on the Guardian at: The warrant requests
US priest accused of raping teen in 1975
not fit to stand trial, psychiatrists say
Retired Lawrence Hecker, 92, charged in New Orleans, has memory loss and should be re-evaluated at later date, report finds
A 92-year-old retired Catholic priest charged with strangling a teenager and raping him in a New Orleans church in 1975 has short-term memory loss that prevents him from assisting in his defense, according to a team of forensic psychiatrists whose findings could influence whether one of Louisiana’s most prominent cases of clergy abuse is ever tried.
In a report which has not been publicly released but was reviewed on Tuesday by WWL Louisiana and the Guardian, the psychiatrists said the priest – Lawrence Hecker – should not be tried for now on rape, kidnapping, crimes against nature and theft charges until he is re-evaluated later.
However, the report found Hecker’s mental health was good enough that he could recover his competence to stand trial after a relatively short time. It called for him to be re-evaluated in a matter of months, after he is given a chance to recover from various physical ailments and to be given treatment by the state’s mental health hospital.
The mixed conclusions about Hecker’s legal competence come as his accuser – along with several of the clergyman’s prior acknowledged victims – await a 23 May court hearing in which Dr Sarah Deland and her team are scheduled to testify about the contents of their report. The judge presiding over Hecker’s case ordered the evaluation after questions over the priest’s advanced age as well as his hospitalization in January.
Whether or not the New Orleans criminal court judge Ben Willard adopts the report’s findings and recommendations could dictate whether Hecker has his day in court this summer or much later. Additionally, whether Hecker can survive much longer is a significant question given that he turns 93 in September.
But, fear not! He will stand before the Ultimate Judge as someone who afflicted children and presented himself as a man of God. Will God's grace be sufficient to keep him out of Hell? Remember how Jesus spoke to the scribes and Pharisees, calling them hippocrites.
Judges frequently adopt findings and recommendations such as those issued by Deland and colleagues Janet Johnson and Shelby Buckley. But they are not bound by them.
A civil lawyer for the accuser in the case said his client was “frustrated and disgusted” by the psychiatric report on Hecker, arguing that the priest had repeatedly demonstrated “a lack of cognitive impairment”. For instance, Hecker granted an 18-minute interview with the Guardian and WWL Louisiana in stifling heat in August 2023 and acknowledged engaging in sex acts with multiple underage boys in the 1960s and 1970s, something he attributed to the era’s “sexual revolution”.
“Let’s hope this isn’t the final word,” attorney Richard Trahant said in a statement on Tuesday. “Because it would be the tragic result of a serial child rapist being coddled and enabled by the archdiocese of New Orleans for many decades.”
Archbishops also have to stand before Jesus Christ in Judgment.
After a recent hearing in the case, district attorney Jason Williams told reporters that Hecker was “malingering” – or feigning to be mentally ill to avoid going to trial. Neither his office, Hecker’s lawyers nor Willard commented when asked on Tuesday.
In the report, Deland and her team described how Hecker spoke at a normal rate and maintained good eye contact during their 40-minute evaluation of him on 4 April. He replied with Joe Biden’s first name when asked who the president was; knew Baton Rouge and Washington DC were the capitals of Louisiana and the US respectively; and correctly identified the current archbishop of New Orleans.
Hecker also said he understood that rape – one of the charges pending against him – was “sexual activity against someone’s will”. The report said Hecker had a good factual, rational understanding of his legal situation, one of two determining factors for establishing mental competency.
Yet Hecker performed poorly in a portion of the evaluation designed to test his word recall, forgetting all three terms he was given to remember after three minutes, the report said. Doctors concluded that such short-term memory loss compromised Hecker’s ability to help his lawyers defend him, the other factor for establishing mental competency for trial.
Hecker’s cognitive status could improve with time and treatment, the doctors wrote. And they recommended that he be placed on a list for transfer to the state’s forensic psychiatry hospital before being re-evaluated in a few months.
Hecker was rushed to the hospital with delirium in January, three months after he was arrested and jailed. A urinary tract infection as well as a bout with Covid brought on the delirium, the doctors said, citing records generated by a month-long hospital stay from 9 January to 9 February.
Trahant, the lawyer for the alleged victim at the center of the prosecution against Hecker, said his client reported the priest immediately to the principal of the high school at the time, Paul Calamari. The local church later disclosed that Calamari, now a retired priest, also faced credible child molestation allegations himself.
Trahant has said Calamari failed to report Hecker’s alleged crime, though the school provided psychiatric care to the accuser.
Hecker has denied raping Trahant’s client. But in 1999, he admitted to church leaders in a written statement that he had molested or sexually harassed several children whom he met through his work as a priest. The church nonetheless allowed Hecker to remain in ministry until he retired in 2002 and let him collect full benefits until after the New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020.
The archdiocese did not notify the public that Hecker was a suspected abuser until it released a list of more than 50 credibly accused clergy in 2018 and did not mention that he by then had already admitted to being a molester.
Trahant’s client then reported Hecker to police in June 2022. And in September last year, shortly after his lengthy interview with WWL and the Guardian, Williams’s office obtained a grand jury indictment charging Hecker in the case.
Hecker would receive a sentence of mandatory life in prison if convicted.
Which, of course, wouldn't be very long. His real sentence would follow immediately thereafter. If he was a genuine believer in Jesus, I would have liked to have seen some concern for his victims, but that rarely happens in the Catholic world of paedophile priests and enabling Bishops.
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Church ‘did nothing’ to keep teens safe from
pastor’s sexual abuse, Texas lawsuit says
Kate Linderman
Wed, May 1, 2024 at 11:57 a.m. PDT·5 min read
Three woman say their childhoods were “stolen” and their faith “shattered” because of sexual abuse from a youth pastor as teens, according to a Texas lawsuit.
They say Champion Forest Baptist Church, a Houston-based megachurch, “enabled” the former youth pastor who later pleaded guilty to child sex crimes. The three women are seeking $1 million in damages from the church, former youth pastor Timothy Jeltema and the Southern Baptist Convention.
Attorneys for the church and pastor did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.
The women were abused by Jeltema, the youth pastor at the time, when they were 14, 15 and 16 years old, according to the lawsuit.
Jeltema “used his position to become inappropriately close to the girls he mentored,” according to the lawsuit, and the church encouraged him to do so.
Who was Timothy Jeltema?
In 2009, 18-year-old Jeltema was first hired by the church as an intern, and then later full-time as a youth pastor, mostly working with young girls in middle and high school, according to the lawsuit.
He often called and texted the teens he was mentoring, even messaging them on Snapchat, the lawsuit said, while the church “encouraged and condoned” these methods of communication.
As Jeltema got closer to the young girls, his “counsel, love and emotional support devolved into flirtation, which quickly spiraled into sexually charged communications and images” to at least 25 women, the lawsuit said.
He sent sexually explicit photos to young girls, sexually assaulted them and attempted rape, according to court documents.
Jeltema was charged with online solicitation of a minor and other child sex crimes in 2018 and 2021 after multiple victims came forward, according to the lawsuit and Jeltema’s criminal court records. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison in 2022.
What happened to the teens?
Victim 1 was 15 years old when Jeltema first sent her sexually explicit photos over Snapchat, according to the lawsuit, which said the abuse began after the youth pastor carried her back to her cabin at church camp when she hurt her ankle.
In 2018, Jeltema sexually assaulted the then 16-year-old and tried to rape her, but the teen was able to break free and drive off, according to court documents.
After the attempt, the youth pastor threatened the teen, saying he would “harm both her and her family” if she told anyone what happened, the lawsuit said.
She later testified at his 2022 sentencing hearing, saying she had known him since she was 9 years old.
“He watched me grow up into a beautiful young woman as well as these other woman and he took advantage of his church position and he preyed on us and he made us feel like we were alone, scared, pathetic, useless, and that we had no purpose in life because of what he did to us,” she said, according to the lawsuit.
Victim 2 said she had known the youth pastor since she was 7 years old.
By the time she was 15, the two had a “close relationship” and the pastor had knowledge of her insecurities, according to the lawsuit.
Jeltema connected with the teen on Snapchat while pretending to be someone younger, saying “all of the things he knew she was longing to her(sic) from a boy her age,” according to the lawsuit.
Jeltema later sent her unsolicited sexual photos, according to the lawsuit.
This had a damaging effect on the teen, now an adult, who said during his sentencing that, along with constant anxiety, “I feel like my religion was ripped from me.”
”I feel like my trust in people was ripped from me,” she reportedly said.
The third victim in the lawsuit, then 14, also received sexually explicit images from Jeltema under a fake identity, however she eventually recognized the youth pastor, according to the lawsuit.
Jeltema denied it when she confronted him and the teen took her concerns to church leadership in 2018.
How did the church respond?
When victim 3 shared her concerns in 2018, church leadership was “initially doubtful,” according to the lawsuit. The teen asked to speak with her parents since she was away at a camp, but she was “isolated” after leadership refused to allow her, the lawsuit said.
“Despite being a child, they degraded her and made her feel as if she was the one who had something wrong,” according to court documents.
Leadership eventually looked through her cellphone and allowed her to talk to her parents. Throughout this, they frequently questioned and “degraded her,” according to court documents.
Once the 14-year-old told her parents what had happened, they contacted the police, according to the lawsuit. Church leaders told Jeltema that police were notified, which allowed him to destroy evidence, the lawsuit alleges.
Jeltema was fired that same year, though the lawsuit says church members were kept in the dark about his actions. Victims 1 and 3 were never offered formal counseling, according to court documents.
“(Church leaders) turned a blind-eye to the inappropriate sexual abuse by Pastor Timmy Jeltema, which involved minors and was occurring right underneath their noses,” according to court documents.
Apparently, there was no effort to monitor Jeltema's ministry even though it involved a young pastor and younger teen girls. That's astonishingly irresponsible. It also reveals a complete lack of discernment being practiced in that mega-church. Was no-one listening to God?
If you have experienced sexual assault and need someone to talk to, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline for support at 1-800-656-4673 or visit the hotline's online chatroom.
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