A grand jury in Texas has handed up more felony sexual assault charges against a Roman Catholic priest accused of preying on women whom he met while ministering to them in that state as well as in south-east Louisiana, officials said.
Anthony Odiong is now facing a total of five charges of sexual assault in the first degree and two more such counts in the second degree – all in connection with three separate women – after a new indictment was handed up against him on Thursday in the McLennan county, Texas, state courthouse.
An earlier indictment against Odiong, 55, secured by the McLennan county district attorney’s office on 12 September had initially charged him in the cases of two women: with one count of first-degree sexual assault and two of second-degree sexual assault. Put another way, the newer indictment added one victim and four more first-degree sexual assault charges.
Odiong, who was first arrested in July, could receive up to life imprisonment if convicted on any of the first-degree charges. The second-degree counts each carry up to 20 years in prison in Texas, which is one of only about a dozen states with laws criminalizing sexual activity between clergymen and adults who emotionally depend on their spiritual counsel.
Because the case remained pending on Thursday, Odiong is presumed to have pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Thursday’s grand jury produced its indictment almost immediately after it finishing reviewing Odiong’s case, taking hardly any time to deliberate.
A police investigation in Waco headed by detective Bradley DeLange led to Odiong’s arrest within months of the Guardian having published a report detailing prior allegations against the priest that ranged from sexual coercion and unwelcome touching to financial abuse, all coming from women whom the Nigerian national met through his work as a Catholic clergyman.
Sworn police statements show that the Guardian investigation prompted a woman to walk into the Waco police department and denounce Odiong as having sexually assaulted her in 2012.
DeLange’s ensuing investigation found evidence suggesting that Odiong would position himself as a spiritual adviser to women grappling with difficulties in their personal lives – and then exploit his proximity to seek sexual contact with them.
He allegedly had sexual intercourse with at least one of the women at the center of the first indictment against him. With at least one of the other victims, he allegedly managed to pressure the woman into engaging in anal sex with her husband despite faith-based objections to that kind of encounter – and he also purportedly convinced her to disclose details of her experience to him for his gratification.
Furthermore, detectives said they found digital child abuse imagery in Odiong’s possession. Those allegations have not been included in either of Odiong’s indictments, though that does not prevent authorities from eventually obtaining a formal charge with respect to that allegation if they deem it necessary.
Collectively, more than eight women have come forward to police with generally similar allegations against Odiong, even if not all have resulted in charges. That number of accusers removed statutes of limitations – or time limits to file criminal charges – as a consideration in Odiong’s case thanks to technicalities embedded in Texas law.
Police arrested Odiong near a home where he was living within the planned Catholic community of Ave Maria, Florida, on 16 July. Officials later transferred him to the jail in McLennan, which includes Waco, and he has been ordered held on a relatively high $5.5m bail that – as of Thursday – he had not been able to make.
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 – invited Odiong to work there.
After a stop in Rome, Odiong in 2015 gained permission to work within the archdiocese of New Orleans – Aymond by then had been appointed the archbishop of that city. The archdiocese provided a statement to the New York Times recently that said Odiong was only in New Orleans at the request of his superiors in Uyo.
Odiong was ministering within Aymond’s archdiocese until this past December, though some of his accusers had previously reported him to church authorities in New Orleans and Austin, police or both, according to the Guardian’s investigative reporting.
At least one claim demanding damages from Odiong and church officials is pending in an unresolved bankruptcy protection filing that the New Orleans archdiocese made in 2020 after years of grappling with clergy abuse-related litigation.
As a Penn State law school database notes, the New Orleans archdiocese stands among more than a dozen Catholic institutions who have sought bankruptcy protection, mostly to dispense with lawsuits stemming from the worldwide church’s clergy abuse scandal.
Revelations spurred by the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy case have triggered a Louisiana state police investigation into whether the organization ran a child sex-trafficking ring that inflicted “widespread … abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported” to law enforcement, according to statements sworn under oath by authorities.
None of the archdiocese’s highest-ranking members – past or present – had been charged in that investigation as of Thursday.