Explosive testimony filled a Texas courtroom on Wednesday in the trial of a disgraced Catholic priest accused of serial sexual abuse against multiple victims.
Some of the evidence given on Wednesday could bear on public understanding of how several different bishops and dioceses handled complaints against the priest over more than a dozen years before the priest was finally arrested and brought to trial.
Most significantly, it emerged through testimony given Wednesday that the Diocese of Austin had at least one complaint against Odiong in 2011.
That was roughly eight years before diocesan officials are known to have sent reports of complaints received to the priest’s home diocese and to the Archdiocese of New Orleans, where Odiong had gone to serve in 2015.
Prosecutors began laying out their case against 57-year-old Anthony Odiong, a priest of the Diocese of Uyo, Nigeria, who served for years in the Diocese of Austin and later in New Orleans.
RELATED: Jury empaneled in Texas sex crimes case against disgraced priest
Odiong faces five counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of sexual assault in the second degree.
The priest has denied wrongdoing and entered a plea of Not Guilty.
As many as ten women came forward after Odiong’s arrest in July 2024, alleging he used his position as a priest and spiritual adviser to manipulate and sexually assault them.
It is a felony in Texas for clergy or others with roles of pastoral, spiritual, or other similar or analogous counseling authority to exploit their position in obtaining another person’s participation in a sex act.
Many of the allegations against Odiong date back several years and some of them come from women in Louisiana, but the statute of limitations does not apply or may be waived in Texas if prosecutors can show a pattern of behavior suggesting the accused is a serial offender.
The prosecution’s case is based on the allegations of three women, one of whom is a mother of seven children.
The woman had been receiving spiritual counsel from Odiong in the wake of a divorce.
One of the woman’s children – now a 29-year-old man – testified to catching Odiong in flagrante in 2011 as the priest was engaged in coitus with his mother.
A younger sibling who is now a 25-year-old woman also testified to the events.
The jury heard that Odiong had been meeting with her in the wake of the divorce and was a frequent guest of the house, where the woman was hosting a Mardi Gras party on the evening in question.
The son testified that Odiong had been in his mother’s bedroom with his mother, behind shutter-doors that were closed and secured. The then-teenager heard noises coming from the room and burst in to find Odiong atop his mother. Odiong and the mother were on the floor, in a state of undress, and the son testified that he saw Odiong’s genitals.
The son testified to fleeing the scene and going to a neighbor’s house, where he recounted the episode in something of a panic.
The neighbor to whom the then-14-year-old gave the account, Todd Still, was then a professor at the Truett Theological Seminary – a Baptist institution connected with Baylor University – and recounted the story to Baylor’s then-chaplain, Burt Burleson, who took the matter to the Austin diocese.
While in Austin, Odiong served as chaplain at the St. Peter Catholic Student Center on the Baylor University campus.
Burleson confronted the priest. In his testimony on Wednesday, Burleson recalled his shock at Odiong’s response when confronted with the allegation.
“All he said was, ‘We are but men’,” Burleson told jurors. “It was almost poetic,” Burleson said. “It wasn’t, ‘Gosh, I can’t believe this happened’,” Burleson testified, “it was, ‘We are but men’.”
Burleson also testified that he brought the matter to the Diocese of Austin.
The son also testified to having discussed the incident with an official of the diocese, though the son recalled telling the diocese he had been drinking that evening and what he had seen may have contained some ambiguity.
The son said he was concerned at the time about causing trouble for Odiong – whose Masses the then-14-year-old sometimes served – and for his mother, who was herself working at Baylor and could have faced termination for moral turpitude if discovered.
In any case, the priest continued to serve for another full year in Austin, before traveling to Rome for study at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas – the Angelicum – and then going to New Orleans in 2015.
Odiong had arrived in Austin in 2006, at the invitation of then-Bishop Gregory Aymond, who left Austin in 2009 to become the Archbishop of New Orleans.
It was Aymond who invited Odiong to serve as pastor of the New Orleans archdiocesan parish of St. Anthony of Padua in Luling.
In 2019, the Austin diocese sent complaints it had received regarding Odiong to New Orleans and to the priest’s home diocese of Uyo, but did not at that time inform the faithful of Austin.
In 2019, the Bishop of Austin was Joe S. Vasquez, who is now Archbishop of Galveston-Houston.
Earlier this month, Crux Now asked Vasquez why the Austin diocese did not warn the faithful about Odiong in 2019, but Vasquez did not respond to requests for comment.
It now appears that Austin had complaints against Odiong no later than 2011, some eight years before the diocese sent complaints to Uyo and New Orleans.
Crux Now sent queries regarding the Odiong case to Austin via email earlier this month, but the diocese declined to answer, citing the criminal trial pending against the priest.
Crux Now sent fresh queries to the Diocese of Austin late Wednesday in the wake of the day’s testimony, and is awaiting reply.
RELATED: Questions abound as sex crimes trial looms for priest in Texas
The Archdiocese of New Orleans had complaints against Odiong no later than 2019, when Austin sent them, but allowed Odiong to remain in ministry until December of 2023 – another four full years – when The Guardian began publishing a series of investigative pieces leading to the priest’s arrest in July of 2024 for possession of child pornography.
Prosecutors did not pursue the child pornography charge, which was based, according to sworn police statements, on images discovered during their investigation into criminal sexual assault complaints already lodged by several different women against the priest.
“A review of the Archdiocese of New Orleans’s records regarding Anthony Odiong shows that the misconduct reported from Austin involved adults,” the New Orleans archdiocese said in a statement to Crux Now earlier this month.
“At that time,” the New Orleans statement continued, “archdiocesan officials chose to address the report directly with Odiong.”
If convicted on any of the first-degree charges he is facing, Odiong could be sentenced to life in prison.
The second-degree felony charges could carry a two-to-twenty-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine.
The evidence given by witnesses on what was only the first day of testimony in the trial has already begun to paint a stark picture, and has raised new questions about what Church leaders had heard about the disgraced cleric, when they heard it, and what they did – or did not do – about what they had heard.
Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri