Catholic priest convicted of sexual assault in Texas sentenced to life in prison | Texas

A Roman Catholic priest who was convicted recently of criminal clergy sexual assault in Texas has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Anthony Odiong, 57, received the punishment from a jury at a state courthouse in Waco on Tuesday after some witnesses described his sexually inappropriate behavior going back more than a decade. Character witnesses on behalf of Odiong, meanwhile, advocated for him to get probation, saying he could follow such an arrangement’s rules – such as living near Waco and not committing additional crimes – despite feloniously breaking his priestly vows of chastity.

Odiong entered the two-day proceeding beginning on Monday knowing he faced between five and 99 years – or life – in prison after being found guilty of a first-degree sexual assault charge. He was also found guilty of two second-degree sexual assault charges – and jurors gave him 20 years’ imprisonment on each.

The three sentences are to be served simultaneously, and he will be eligible for parole after 30 years. Jurors fined Odiong $10,000 on each charge, too.

Odiong’s attorney, Gerald Villarial, told media on Tuesday that he would seek an appeal.

At the end of a four-day trial on Friday, the same jury in charge of Odiong’s sentencing determined he was guilty of first- and second-degree sexual assault by illegally exploiting his spiritual authority as a clergyman for sex with two devout female parishioners, whether directly or by proxy.

Odiong spent much of a roughly 17-year period beginning in 2006 ministering in a region including Waco and serving as the pastor of a Catholic church in the New Orleans suburb of Luling, Louisiana.

In late 2023, leaders of New Orleans’ Catholic archdiocese confirmed to the Guardian and local reporting partner WWL Louisiana that they had removed Odiong from his role as pastor of Luling’s St Anthony of Padua church over clerical misconduct with multiple women.

The Guardian later published a February 2024 investigative report on a group of women who had accused Odiong of sexual coercion, unwanted touching and abusive financial control while – in his capacity as a priest – he provided them with what is known as spiritual direction.

That article prompted a woman whom the Guardian did not interview, eventually identified in court as Mary Doe, to bring a copy of the outlet’s reporting to Waco police and tell them that Odiong in their jurisdiction had also fostered a sexual relationship with her from 2008 to 2011 while providing her with spiritual direction.

Texas considers such conduct by a religious cleric in particular to be felony sexual assault. And Mary Doe’s police complaint induced an investigation which led authorities to arrest, charge and successfully try Odiong in connection with her as well as one of the Guardian’s interviewees, who would later be identified in legal proceedings as Jane Doe.

Lead detective Bradley DeLange told Waco news outlet KCEN on Tuesday that the Guardian reporting provided a road map of sorts for the investigation into Odiong.

Accusers and defenders testify

Jane Doe maintained that the clergyman in Waco in 2010 compelled her to permit her then husband to engage in a form of intercourse she found overly painful as a desperate measure to save her marriage and to then convey details about the encounter to Odiong. Under Texas law, authorities maintained those actions, indirect though they were, qualified as assault by Odiong given his place in Jane Doe’s life as her spiritual director.

Furthermore, investigators secured corroboration from sufficient additional Odiong complainants to meet the legal standard of probable cause to charge him with assaulting Mary and Jane Doe without regard to how long ago the crimes those two women reported were.

Among those corroborating complainants was a woman who, authorities established, began receiving spiritual direction from Odiong after meeting him in Luling – and then had a child with him in the spring of 2023.

Sentencing-related testimony began on Monday with two women who were students at Waco’s Baylor University while Odiong was a priest at a ministry near its campus. Both testified that Odiong touched them inappropriately while in his capacity as a priest.

The first, a woman who spoke to the Guardian for its February 2024 report, said that after a confession Odiong touched her leg and gave her a “bear hug” where she could feel his erection. Odiong, she said, would not let her leave the office and caressed her arms and breathed sensually.

The second woman said he had nibbled her ear while giving her a hug on one occasion and lifted her from the ground by her buttocks on another. She also said that Odiong would share intimate details about other people in the community – the kind of details he only would have learned through confession or counseling.

A third woman from Odiong’s Luling congregation testified that he counseled her husband as he was dying from a long-term illness – then made sexual advances within months of her being widowed.

The woman said that after her husband died, she had traveled with Odiong and other Catholics to Medjugorje, a site in Bosnia that has attracted a million pilgrims annually since 1981, when six children and teenagers there said they had witnessed the appearance of the Virgin Mary.

She said that on one evening, she and Odiong were alone, discussing her future without her husband. She testified that she was crying when Odiong pulled her face to his and kissed her on the lips. When she pulled back, she testified, Odiong pulled her in for another kiss.

Later, in another episode just days before Odiong was arrested, the woman and a friend were staying at his home in Florida. The woman said she was startled awake in the middle of the night to find Odiong standing next to her bed. Odiong threw the covers over the woman’s body after she woke up and ran from the room, she said.

Odiong did not testify in his own defense at the trial or sentencing. His attorneys argued throughout the trial that Odiong’s actions came in the course of consensual dating relationships which may have violated Catholic priests’ promise of sexual celibacy but that he pursued in his personal time.

During the sentencing portion of the trial, Odiong’s lawyers called a few former parishioners who said they did not witness any wrongdoing by the priest. They described Odiong as a caring and compassionate faith leader. Yet on cross-examination, many agreed that the crimes he was convicted of on Friday did not befit a man of the cloth.

For instance, one man testified that he met Odiong in the Luling church while he was struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. That man, now a resident of Nashville, Tennessee, testified that he was possessed by demons – and that Odiong performed an exorcism on him. He said Odiong saved his life, and that he had been a devout follower ever since.

When questioned by lead prosecutor Ryan Calvert, the man admitted that he did not doubt that Odiong had sex with his parishioners, including to the point of fathering a daughter with one.

“I think that it’s very understandable if he has had intimate relationships with women because he is a human being,” said the man, who also pledged to financially support Odiong’s child and her mother. He then alluded to a past public remark of the late conservative political activist Charlie Kirk: “You play certain games, you win certain prizes – if you’re gonna go have sex.”

A therapist who evaluated Odiong testified on his behalf on Tuesday and said that the clergyman would be worthy of probation. Then, on cross-examination, the therapist revealed Odiong had lied about having any child. Odiong also acknowledged having sex with a congregant in 2008, when he met Mary Doe, and that the details of Jane Doe’s complaint against him were true.

Calvert concluded on Tuesday by telling jurors he hoped they imposed a punishment on Odiong that caught the attention of the Catholic church’s global leaders at the Vatican. He also said he hoped they eliminated the possibility that Odiong could ever get out of prison to reach new victims – or his old ones.

‘Soul murder’

In a victim impact statement that she read in court, Mary Doe said Odiong’s sexual crimes “were violent … unsolicited … non-consensual … rape”.

“They were soul murder,” she said.

Mary Doe thanked her family, Waco prosecutors, police – including DeLange – and the Guardian, among others, for believing her.

“I pray that you never weary in the sad pursuit of guardians who abuse those whom they have a responsibility to guard,” her statement said.

In a news release issued by her personal attorney, Paul Manigrasso, after Tuesday’s sentencing, Mary Doe and her lawyer expressed relief that “Odiong will never be in a position to use … the confessional as his personal deer stand again”.

Prosecutor Liz Buice then read a victim impact statement from Jane Doe which said, “I am not looking for vengeance. I am not here because I want Odiong to suffer. I am here because what he did has a name – and that name needs to be spoken: soul stealing. What was stolen cannot be given back.”

She continued: “Here, what he did cannot be buried, softened or reframed as a private matter.

“What he did was a crime against personhood.”

$24,000 worth of jail calls

Details of the case have prompted questions about how Odiong was handled by the Catholic hierarchy, including within New Orleans, whose archdiocese in December agreed to pay $305m to hundreds of survivors of the worldwide church’s decades-old clergy abuse scandal.

Church officials who were in charge of Odiong while he was in Texas have previously said they suspended him from ministering in and around Waco no later than 2019 because of the clerical misconduct complaints he accumulated. And those officials have said they timely, if privately, informed their New Orleans counterparts of that decision.

But on Monday, there was evidence suggesting Odiong may have been banned from ministering within the Waco area earlier than Catholic church officials have previously acknowledged. Notably, Buice asked a secretary of a church near Waco who was called as one of Odiong’s character witnesses whether she knew that the priest had actually been suspended from ministering locally in 2018.

The secretary said she indeed did know that. Nonetheless, other testimony elicited by Calvert and Buice established that Odiong was performing masses as a priest in and around Waco beyond 2018.

Also, one of the former Baylor students on Monday testified that she had alerted the local diocese twice beforehand. The first time, she contacted the bishop’s office directly but heard little in response. She reported the incident a second time in 2019 through a reporting system built for accusations of clerical molestation involving children because there was no such option online for adult clergy abuse.

New Orleans church officials in the meantime waited at least four more years before similarly suspending Odiong. His superiors had also put him under scrutiny because of his making homophobic comments from his pulpit around that time.

The statement from Manigrasso and Mary Doe cautioned that “the power structures that allowed a worm like Odiong to flourish for so long … still exist … insulated from the ramifications of both their actions and inaction.

“Their victims – past, present and future – still cry to heaven for vengeance and justice.”

Odiong is a naturalized US citizen who gained ordination into the Catholic priesthood in his native Nigeria in 1993. He developed a following in part by holding prayer services after which some attenders reported healing from significant ailments.

In late 2024, DeLange testified at a bond hearing for Odiong that supporters of the priest were helping him build a luxurious home in Nigeria.

And other supporters testified that they were willing and able to contribute up to $25,000 to cover their priest’s bond, which was ultimately set at more than $5m, keeping him in custody for the duration of the court proceedings against him.

At Monday’s portion of Odiong’s sentencing phase, an auditor at the jail in Waco testified that the clergyman had spent more than $24,000 just on telephone calls at the facility since his July 2024 arrest.

The sentence handed to Odiong on Tuesday came after he rejected at least one offer to plead guilty in exchange for 20 years’ imprisonment.