Catholic priest indicted on sexual assault charges in Texas

A Catholic priest was indicted in Texas on felony sexual assault charges after several victims accused him of sexual and financial abuse, according to court documents and investigators.

The priest, the Rev. Anthony Odiong, was indicted Thursday by a grand jury in McLennan County, Texas, on two counts of second-degree sexual assault and one count of first-degree sexual assault.

He was arrested in July in Ave Maria, Florida, when investigators found him in possession of child pornography while looking into sexual assault claims reported to police, according to a Facebook post from the Waco Police Department. Odiong was charged with possession of child pornography upon arrest, but the charge was not included in Thursday’s indictment, according to court documents.

Police had been investigating Odiong for months because they had received “credible information” alleging he committed a sexual assault in 2012, according to police. During the investigation, Detective Bradley DeLange said, police found several women with similar stories of abuse as the original victim who had come forward. At least eight women have spoken with police and claimed that the priest groped, sexually assaulted or financially abused them.

Under Texas law, it is considered sexual assault if members of the clergy engage in sexual activity with individuals who depend on them emotionally as a “spiritual advisers.”

Odiong served as a priest at St. Peter Catholic Student Center in Waco, Texas, and at St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption in West, Texas, from 2007 to 2012, according to police, and he also served in Luling, Louisiana, from around 2015 to 2023.

Odiong was brought to McLennan County Jail on Aug. 6 and is being held on a $2.5 million bond, according to jail documents. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the second-degree sexual assault charges and could get life in prison for his first-degree felony charge, according to Christopher King, a lawyer representing several people in a separate civil case against the priest.

It was not immediately clear if Odoing had legal representation to reach for comment.

The Guardian reported in February on the allegations, which Odiong denied in April in a Facebook post that called them a “false, salacious and one-sided smear campaign.”

Archbishop Gregory Aymond led the Diocese of Austin, Texas, during the beginning of Odiong’s time as a priest at that diocese, and he now leads the Archdiocese of New Orleans, where Odiong served in recent years. Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, current leader of the Diocese of Austin, Texas, said in a statement in July that the diocese would fully cooperate with law enforcement.

Sarah McDonald, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, said Sunday that Odiong had served there at the request of the Diocese of Uyo in Nigeria.

“When the archdiocese became aware of allegations of criminal activity we reported him to law enforcement and removed him from ministry,” McDonald said in a text.

In 2020, the Archdiocese of New Orleans joined over a dozen Catholic organizations in filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid sexual abuse claims against its priests and church employees.

Fifteen Catholic organizations were seeking bankruptcy protection as of June, according to a Penn State Law database.

This summer a grand jury in Williamson County, Tennessee, indicted a priest, Juan Carlos Garcia-Mendoza, on several counts of sexual battery, child abuse and other related crimes, according to an Instagram post from the city of Franklin, Tennessee. Last year, a Louisiana grand jury indicted a retired priest, Lawrence Hecker, who was charged in relation to claims that he sexually assaulted a teenage boy in the 1970s.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.