A Roman Catholic priest who served under the command of church officials in Texas’s capital and Louisiana’s most famous city is tentatively scheduled to plead guilty Monday in connection to charges that he allegedly abused his position of clerical authority to pursue sex with spiritually vulnerable women whom he encountered during his work, according to criminal court records online.
However, attorneys on both sides of the case pending against Anthony Odiong – who was understood to be mulling a plea deal in recent weeks – emphasized the tentative nature of the hearing set for Monday morning.
Details about exactly what Odiong would plead guilty to if the hearing actually took place – or what his sentence may be – were unavailable on Friday.
A statement from the Waco, Texas, district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Odiong, said: “The case is pending so we cannot discuss it. Plea settings are common and may or may not result in a plea. At this point there is nothing to report.”
Multiple people were ready to deliver victim impact statements with respect to the charges against Odiong if the hearing proceeds, court officials told the Waco Tribune newspaper.
But Odiong’s attorney, Gerald Villarrial, on Friday said his client had not signed plea papers. He acknowledged the scheduling of Monday’s hearing, though he said he had no other comment.
Friday’s news about Odiong came after authorities in late November revealed in court that he had fathered at least two children with women on whom he had preyed. Authorities considered the children proof that Odiong had a pattern of pursuing women he met in his role as a priest, which in Texas is a felony.
DNA evidence shows a greater than 99.99% chance that Odiong, 55, fathered a child of one of the women, and continued a sexual relationship with her within the last year, according to testimony at that hearing from Waco police detective Bradley DeLange.
The hearing concluded with the judge presiding over Odiong’s case, Thomas West, denying the clergyman’s request to reduce his $5.5m bond.
Odiong faces five charges of sexual assault in the first degree and two more such counts in the second degree stemming from encounters with three women. DeLange testified in November that he had confirmed about 10 alleged victims of Odiong across the US and abroad.
There is no indication that any of the three women at the center of the charges against Odiong are the mothers of his children. Authorities have said one of the children lives in the US, and the Guardian understands the other lives in Odiong’s native Nigeria.
Odiong was arrested within months of the Guardian having published a report detailing prior allegations against the clergyman that ranged from sexual coercion and unwanted touching to abusive financial control. All came from women who had met him through his work.
Sworn police statements show that the Guardian reporting from February prompted a woman to walk into the Waco police department in March and allege that Odiong had sexually assaulted her in 2012.
DeLange’s ensuing investigation found evidence to suggest Odiong would position himself as a spiritual adviser to women navigating personal problems, particularly marital ones – and then exploit his closeness to them.
He allegedly coerced at least one of the women he was charged with assaulting into sexual intercourse. With respect to at least one of the other victims, Odiong allegedly convinced her to submit to anal sex with her husband despite it going against her personal faith, and allegedly made her tell him about it.
Furthermore, detectives combing through Odiong’s messages via text, email and social media have said they found digital child-abuse imagery in his possession. They say they have chosen not to file formal child-abuse imagery charges to focus on the sexual assault aspect of the case.
Texas law allowed authorities to charge Odiong without regard to how many years had passed since his alleged crimes because of the sheer number of accusers in the case, even if not all produced charges.
Police arrested Odiong at a home where he was living in the planned community of Ave Maria, Florida, on 16 July. He was unable to make the bail subsequently set for him.
Odiong was ordained into the Catholic priesthood in the diocese of Uyo, Nigeria, in 1993. In 2006, the bishop of Austin, Texas, at the time – Gregory Aymond – allowed Odiong to transfer into the clerical ranks there and work.
After a stint of apparent studying in Rome, Odiong in 2015 gained permission to work within the archdiocese of New Orleans, where Aymond had been appointed archbishop six years earlier, according to church documents obtained by the Guardian.
There, at the St Anthony of Padua church in the community of Luling, Louisiana, Odiong fostered a large following by touting a special closeness to the Virgin Mary as well as hosting special masses, after which some congregants maintained they had recovered from major medical ailments.
He raised enough money to build a healing chapel in tribute to the Virgin Mary at St Anthony. The fourth anniversary of the chapel’s opening was on Thursday, which was also a Catholic feast day commemorating a purported apparition by the Virgin Mary to a Mexican peasant in 1531.
Officials within the diocese of Austin – whose region includes Waco – said they notified Odiong in 2019 that their institution had gotten “complaints … regarding [his] behavior with adult women”. The organization claimed it then told Odiong he did not have permission “to engage in priestly ministry in the diocese of Austin, even on a temporary basis” – and “that a violation of these restrictions could necessitate making them public”.
The notification to Odiong, therefore, implied that the church chose to keep the allegations against him secret from congregants at the time.
Austin church officials reported immediately notifying their counterparts in New Orleans about the allegations against Odiong. But, after one of Odiong’s accusers had reported him to church officials in New Orleans hoping they would at least suspend him from ministry there, the archdiocese’s legal counsel issued a letter as late as November 2023 claiming “we do not have other similar allegations” against Odiong, according to copies of the correspondence obtained and reviewed by the Guardian.
Nonetheless, just one month later, the archdiocese abruptly suspended Odiong from ministry, at last announcing that allegations of misconduct with multiple women had forced the organization to remove him from his role at St Anthony in Luling.
Odiong at the time sought to falsely persuade his parishioners that his removal resulted from his opposition to efforts endorsed by Pope Francis to make the church more welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community.
The recipient of the New Orleans archdiocese’s November 2023 letter about Odiong, and her attorney, Kristi Schubert, have demanded damages from church officials as part of an unresolved bankruptcy-protection case that the organization opened in 2020 after years of grappling with litigation mostly related to clergy abuse targeting children.
Revelations spurred by that bankruptcy triggered a Louisiana state police investigation – which is continuing – into whether the church ran a child sex-trafficking ring in New Orleans that inflicted “widespread … abuse of minors dating back decades” that was illicitly covered up, according to statements sworn under oath by authorities.
If he indeed pleads as scheduled, Odiong would be the second priest to have served Luling’s St Anthony of Padua in the past to plead guilty to sexual violence in a matter of two weeks.
On 3 December, retired Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping and raping a boy in 1975 at a New Orleans church known colloquially as Little Flower.
Hecker – who served at St Anthony in 1974, according to his personnel records – is tentatively set to receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment two days after Odiong is due in court Monday.
Hecker is among three archdiocese of New Orleans clerics to plead guilty to sexually violent crimes since the organization filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020 while trying to limit its financial liability with respect to hundreds of claims of clergy abuse, mostly of the victimization of children.
In December 2022, just outside New Orleans, deacon Virgil Maxey “VM” Wheeler pleaded guilty to molesting a 12-year-old boy in the early 2000s in suburban Metairie, Louisiana, before his ordination. He died from pancreatic cancer in April 2023 while serving five years’ probation.
Meanwhile, at a courthouse in Covington, Louisiana, north of New Orelans, Patrick Wattigny pleaded guilty to molesting two minors whom he met through his work as a priest, and received a five-year prison sentence.
