A Texas jury on Tuesday began deliberating the sentence of Anthony Odiong, a Roman Catholic priest convicted of first- and second-degree sexual assault for exploiting his spiritual authority as a clergyman to coerce two devout female parishioners into sex. Odiong, 57, faces between five years and life in prison on the first-degree charge and between two and 20 years on the second-degree charge.
The sentencing phase opened Monday with testimony from a series of witnesses who described sexual misconduct by Odiong going back more than a decade. The same jury that will decide his sentence found him guilty Friday at the end of a four-day trial, determining that he illegally used his role as a spiritual director to procure sex from the two women, identified in court as Mary Doe and Jane Doe.
Under Texas law, sexual conduct by a religious cleric with a person receiving spiritual direction from that cleric constitutes felony sexual assault. Prosecutors argued that Odiong’s actions met that legal standard even when the assaults were indirect: in Jane Doe’s case, authorities maintained that Odiong compelled her in 2010 to permit her husband to engage in a form of intercourse she found overly painful, then to report details of the encounter back to him.
Testimony began Monday with two women who were students at Baylor University in Waco while Odiong ministered near campus. One said Odiong touched her leg after a confession and gave her a “bear hug” in which she could feel his erection, then would not let her leave the office, caressing her arms and breathing “sensually.” The second said Odiong nibbled her ear during a hug and lifted her from the ground by her buttocks on another occasion, and that he shared intimate details about other community members that he could only have learned through confession or counseling.
A third woman from Odiong’s congregation in Luling, Louisiana, testified that Odiong counseled her husband as he was dying from a long-term illness, then made sexual advances within months of her being widowed. She said that during a trip to Medjugorje, a pilgrimage site in Bosnia, Odiong pulled her face to his and kissed her on the lips while she was crying about her future without her husband. Days before Odiong’s arrest in July 2024, the woman testified, she was staying at his home in Florida and was startled awake in the middle of the night to find him standing next to her bed.
Odiong did not testify at trial. His attorneys argued throughout that his actions occurred in the context of consensual dating relationships that may have violated his priestly vow of celibacy but did not constitute assault. During the sentencing phase, his lawyers called former parishioners who described him as a caring and compassionate faith leader, though several acknowledged on cross-examination that the crimes he was convicted of did not befit a man of the cloth.
One man, who said Odiong performed an exorcism on him during a struggle with addiction, testified that he did not doubt Odiong had sex with parishioners, including 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,” the man said, alluding to a remark by conservative activist Charlie Kirk: “You play certain games, you win certain prizes – if you’re gonna go have sex.”
The case has drawn attention to how the Catholic hierarchy handled Odiong over more than a decade. Church officials in Texas have said they suspended Odiong from ministering in and around Waco by 2019 due to complaints, and that they informed their counterparts in New Orleans of that decision. But evidence presented Monday suggested Odiong may have been suspended as early as 2018 — a church secretary testified she knew of a 2018 suspension — yet he continued performing masses in the area.
One of the former Baylor students testified that she had reported Odiong to the local diocese twice, including once directly to the bishop’s office, with little response. The second time she filed a report through a system designed for accusations of child molestation because no online option existed for adult clergy abuse.
The New Orleans archdiocese waited at least four more years before similarly suspending Odiong. The archdiocese agreed in December to pay $305 million to hundreds of survivors of the wider clergy abuse scandal.
Odiong, a naturalized U.S. citizen ordained in his native Nigeria in 1993, developed a following partly through prayer services where some attenders reported healing from significant ailments. His bond was set at more than $5 million, keeping him in custody since his arrest. An auditor at the Waco jail testified that Odiong had spent more than $24,000 on telephone calls from the facility.