Anthony Odiong, a 58-year-old Roman Catholic priest and naturalized US citizen, was sentenced to life imprisonment in June after a McLennan County, Texas jury convicted him of criminal clergy sexual assault against two women. Prosecutors Ryan Calvert and Liz Buice have now published a detailed postscript in the Texas Prosecutor journal revealing the full scope of his conduct — including fathering a daughter with a Louisiana parishioner who was left to raise the child alone, without even a proper car seat. The mechanics of Odiong's exploitation followed the standard clerical playbook: leverage spiritual authority over vulnerable congregants, use confession and counseling as access points, then rely on institutional silence. He first kissed the woman identified as Presley Jones during confession at St Anthony of Padua church in Luling, Louisiana, where he had been pastor since 2015. Their daughter was born in 2023. Investigators later found photos on his phone of Odiong in priestly vestments baptizing his own child. DNA testing confirmed paternity. While Jones struggled as a single mother — police detectives and a victim assistance coordinator bought the child's car seat with their own money — Odiong spent more than $20,000 on telephone calls from jail over roughly two years awaiting trial. The financial asymmetry is a precise miniature of the broader extraction: institutional resources and spiritual capital converted into personal benefit, with all costs externalized to the women and children involved. Odiong's path to prosecution began almost accidentally. His anti-LGBTQ+ remarks comparing gay people to "monkeys and chimpanzees" during a November 2023 mass triggered his suspension by the New Orleans archdiocese — which then acknowledged it had known about misconduct complaints involving multiple women for five years. Guardian reporting and its partner WWL Louisiana subsequently surfaced additional accusers, including a woman Odiong had persuaded to have a form of intercourse with another man to which she did not legally consent, using his clerical authority. Under Texas law, that persuasion by a religious cleric constitutes sexual assault. The institutional failure is documented and specific. A Guardian investigation after conviction determined that Catholic church officials in both New Orleans and Austin possessed internal documents showing several women had accused Odiong of sexual misconduct or unwanted advances years before his removal. The archdiocese's response was not criminal referral but an attempt to have him recalled to Nigeria. He is at least the fifth New Orleans archdiocese clergyman convicted of or pleading guilty to sexually violent crimes since the organization filed for federal bankruptcy in 2020. The New Orleans archdiocese and its insurers agreed in December to pay $305 million to hundreds of abuse survivors, though individual payouts had not been completed as of this week. Neither the New Orleans archdiocese nor the diocese of Austin responded to requests for comment. Odiong's attorney, Gerald Villarial, declined substantive comment while the case is on appeal. The structural question is unchanged from every prior iteration of this scandal: an institution with internal knowledge of predatory behavior chose administrative management over criminal accountability, and that choice had a measurable cost in additional victims. The Texas criminal clergy abuse law that ultimately enabled prosecution exists precisely because voluntary institutional reporting failed.
