A Nigerian-born Catholic priest serving in the United States has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of sexually assaulting women under his spiritual care, with prosecutors now revealing that he fathered a daughter with a parishioner and left the woman to raise the child largely without his support.
Anthony Odiong, originally from Akwa Ibom State in southern Nigeria, was ordained a Catholic priest in Nigeria in 1993 before moving to the United States, where he served in Catholic parishes in Texas and Louisiana.
A Texas jury convicted Odiong of three counts of sexual assault in May. He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment on one count and 20 years on each of two other counts, with the sentences to run concurrently. He has appealed the conviction.
The disturbing details surrounding his daughter were revealed in an account published by prosecutors in the Texas Prosecutor journal.
According to prosecutors Ryan Calvert and Liz Buice, Odiong developed a secret sexual relationship with a Louisiana parishioner identified as Presley Jones. The relationship began after Odiong kissed Jones during confession and later developed into a sexual relationship.
Jones became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter in 2023.
Investigators later established through DNA testing that Odiong was the child’s biological father. They also discovered photographs showing the priest wearing his clerical vestments while baptising the child, with Jones and members of her family present.
Despite fathering the child, prosecutors said Jones was effectively raising their daughter as a single mother. Investigators were particularly struck when they discovered that the child did not have a proper car seat.
Waco police detectives Bradley DeLange and Zach Koenig, together with victim assistance coordinator Melissa Beseda, bought one for the child with their own money. Prosecutors said the episode illustrated the lack of practical support available to the mother and child.
The investigation uncovered a wider pattern of sexual misconduct involving women who had sought spiritual guidance from Odiong. Prosecutors said he exploited the trust placed in him as a Catholic priest, using confession and spiritual counselling as avenues through which he developed inappropriate relationships with parishioners.
A separate investigation by The Guardian found that Catholic officials in Texas and Louisiana had received complaints about Odiong’s behaviour years before his eventual conviction.
His case began attracting wider attention after he made offensive comments about LGBTQ people during a Mass in Louisiana in 2023. The New Orleans Archdiocese subsequently removed him from ministry.
Odiong is now being held in a maximum security prison in Texas while his appeal proceeds.
