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Louisiana grand jury charges 91-year-old disgraced priest with sexual assault of teenage boy in 1975

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Published 3:25 PM

By JIM MUSTIAN
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana grand jury has charged a now-91-year-old disgraced priest with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 1975. The extraordinary indictment Thursday could shed new light on what Roman Catholic Church leaders knew about a child sex abuse crisis that persisted for decades. The priest, Lawrence Hecker, has been at the center of state and federal investigations and a deepening scandal over why church leaders failed to report his admissions to law enforcement even as they permitted him to work around children until he quietly left the ministry in 2002. Hecker declined comment on the charges.

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