Catholic priest accused of sexual assault fathered children of victims, court hears

Revelation emerges at hearing for Anthony Odiong, 55, charged with several counts and held in Texas on $5.5m bail

Anthony Odiong after his arrest in Florida in July. Photograph: Waco police

The Guardian

November 26, 2024

By Charlie Scudder and Ramon Antonio Vargas

A Roman Catholic priest with links to Texas and Louisiana who is facing criminal charges for allegedly abusing his position of authority within the church to pursue sex with vulnerable women fathered at least two children with them, authorities have alleged.

The stunning information about Anthony Odiong surfaced at a bail hearing on Tuesday in Waco, Texas, where prosecutors have charged him with several counts of sexually assaulting women to whom he ministered.

Odiong requested a reduction of the $5.5m bail on which he is being held in custody. But a judge denied that request after prosecutors established Odiong had communicated plans to flee to his native Nigeria if he were released – while simultaneously airing the most complete account yet about the alleged double life he had built.

Authorities are not interested in Odiong’s status as a father in the biological sense because Catholic clergymen are required to abstain from sexual activity. Instead, they perceive the children as proof that Odiong had a pattern of pursuing women he met in his role as a priest, which is a felony in Texas.

DNA evidence presented at the hearing concluded there was a more than 99.99% chance that Odiong was the “father of offspring who was created as a direct result of [a] sexual assault … committed against a known survivor” in the US. Prosecutors on Tuesday asked Waco police detective Bradley DeLange – who has been investigating Odiong for months – at the hearing whether the clergyman and the alleged victim who birthed one of his children had engaged in sexual intercourse within the last calendar year.

“Yes,” DeLange said. “They shared a pregnancy scare in June.”

Officials also made reference to a second child fathered by Odiong – a minor the Guardian has reason to believe is living in Nigeria. Both children, younger than 18, were born during Odiong’s career in the priesthood, which began in the 1990s and saw lengthy stretches under the command of Catholic church officials in Texas’s capital, Austin, and adjacent Louisiana’s best-known city, New Orleans.

Odiong, 55, is facing a total of five charges of sexual assault in the first degree and two more such counts in the second degree in connection with three separate women. DeLange testified that he had confirmed nine alleged victims of Odiong’s across the US and abroad – and had two others that he had identified as recently as Tuesday morning. There is no indication that any of the three women at the center of the charges against Odiong are the mothers of his children.

Yet prosecutors and police believe Odiong’s progeny was relevant because the mother of at least one of the children gave birth during the period of time that he allegedly committed his charged crimes.

He could face life imprisonment if convicted of any of the first-degree charges.

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