Texas prosecutors on Thursday dropped a bombshell in the trial of Anthony Odiong, a Roman Catholic priest accused of using his clerical status to pursue sex with spiritually vulnerable congregants: he fathered a child with a separate congregant in approximately 2023 while working outside New Orleans.
This revelation unfolded on day three of Odiong's trial in Waco, Texas, where he worked before being transferred to Luling, Louisiana. Melissa Beseda, a former Waco police employee, testified that DNA testing confirmed Odiong, 57, is the father of a three-year-old girl born to a woman using the pseudonym Presley Jones. Jones had been under Odiong's spiritual direction in Luling. The court even saw a photo of Odiong, Jones, and the child standing together in a church in Metairie, Louisiana, all dressed in matching white - a family portrait that screams "spiritual guidance."
Meanwhile, the woman who sparked the criminal case, using the pseudonym Mary Doe, finally told her story. She met Odiong around 2008 at Baylor University while going through a tumultuous divorce and crying on campus. Odiong hugged her, invited her into his office, and suggested spiritual direction. Within weeks, she testified, he kissed her, fondled her, and they began a sexual relationship that lasted years. He assuaged her guilt by calling their connection "spiritual" and once joked, "Oh baby - if you don't slow things down, we're going to fuck." Their relationship ended in 2011 when her 14-year-old son caught them in the act. The son reported it to a Baylor administrator, but after threats to her custody and job, he lied to church officials about what he saw.
Mary Doe only came forward after reading a Guardian investigation in February 2024 about women accusing Odiong of sexual coercion. She initially thought the article was about her, then realized it was about others and, with her husband's encouragement, went to Waco police. Her report led to charges involving two more women. One of them, Jane Doe, testified Wednesday that Odiong kissed her against her will and compelled her to allow her then-husband to engage in painful intercourse as a last-ditch effort to save her marriage.
On Thursday, a third woman from the New Orleans area described how Odiong approached her while she grieved at her father's grave, complimented her beauty, and kissed and groped her. They never had intercourse, she said, due to her medical issues. A fourth woman, expected to testify, fled her home in an "extremely emotional and fragile" state and remains missing.
Odiong has pleaded not guilty to multiple first- and second-degree sexual assault charges, which could carry life imprisonment. He argues the charges are past the statute of limitations, but prosecutors cite a law eliminating such deadlines if there is probable cause of at least five victims - and they claim to have identified at least four others. Odiong was ordained in Nigeria in 1993, transferred to Waco in 2006, and later to Luling. Church officials in Austin suspended him in 2019 over misconduct allegations but didn't announce it; New Orleans' Archbishop Gregory Aymond waited until at least 2023 to do the same. Aymond retired in February, just months after the archdiocese agreed to pay $305 million to abuse survivors.