A Texas courtroom began selecting jurors Tuesday in a high-stakes criminal case against Anthony Odiong, a 57-year-old Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting three women he met through his ministry in Waco.
Odiong faces multiple counts of second-degree sexual assault. If convicted, he could spend two to 20 years in prison on each charge, plus face fines up to $10,000. The trial is expected to run a week or longer.
Prosecutors allege that Odiong exploited his position as a spiritual adviser to gain emotional leverage over the women, then engaged in sexual conduct with them. The case represents a rare criminal prosecution grounded in Texas law that treats such clerical manipulation as a felony when a spiritual authority preys on congregants.
The charges stem partly from a February 2024 investigation that prompted one accuser to contact Waco police and report a 2012 assault. Investigators subsequently identified roughly 10 women who suspected Odiong of sexually exploiting them over years of ministry in Texas and the New Orleans archdiocese. However, only three cases generated formal charges.
Prosecutors say the existence of multiple accusers allows them to bring charges regardless of how long ago the alleged assaults occurred. Odiong's attorney, Gerald Villarial, challenged that legal approach, arguing the state had waited too long and should not be allowed to introduce hearsay testimony about the broader pattern of accusations. The judge rejected that motion.
Evidence presented at trial will include testimony from some of the accusers. Prosecutors also plan to present proof that Odiong fathered at least one child with a former congregant, violating his celibacy vow. Though that woman is not one of the three he was formally charged with assaulting, authorities contend the child demonstrates a pattern of targeting parishioners.
Odiong was initially arrested in July 2024 on separate charges involving digital images of a child. His attorney claimed a concerned parishioner had sent photos of her sick daughter's skin condition to ask for prayers. Prosecutors never formally charged Odiong on those images, but the judge allowed evidence from that arrest to be introduced at trial.
Odiong has maintained his innocence. He remains in custody, held without bail since his July arrest, though he had posted a $5.5 million bond at one point.
The priest's career had spanned multiple states and countries. After his ordination in Nigeria in 1993, Odiong transferred to Texas in 2006, where he worked in campus ministry at Baylor University and served as pastor of a church in West, Texas. In 2015, he moved to the New Orleans archdiocese, where he led St. Anthony of Padua church in Luling, Louisiana, and built a healing chapel called Our Lady of Guadalupe after raising $600,000.
Church officials suspended Odiong from ministry in the Austin diocese no later than 2019 over misconduct allegations, though they did not make that action public. The New Orleans archdiocese followed suit in December 2023, citing misconduct with multiple women but not revealing that Austin officials had alerted them to concerns years prior.
The case arrives amid an internal Catholic Church debate over whether to expand the legal definition of vulnerable adults in clergy abuse cases to include anyone under a priest's spiritual authority who becomes a target for sexual contact. Current church policy only classifies someone as a vulnerable adult if they are over 18 with intellectual, developmental, or severe psychological disabilities.
Author James Rodriguez: "This trial tests whether civil law can hold the line where church discipline has repeatedly failed."
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