Waco Police Investigate Former Priest Anthony Odiong for Sexual Abuse and Child Pornography
Rev. Anthony Odiong, the priest who was fired from St. Anthony of Padua Church in Luling last year, was arrested in Florida on Tuesday morning on a Texas warrant accusing him of having child pornography on him.
The Waco Police Department is also looking into claims that the Catholic priest sexually abused many other people.
“Many women have come forward to say similar things to the sexual assault survivor who made the first report in 2012,” Waco Detective Bradley DeLange said in a statement released Tuesday.
“Survivors’ experiences ranged from sexual assault, indecent assault — more commonly known as groping, and financial abuse, with some survivors experiencing every element of Anthony Odiong’s manipulation,” said DeLange.
I tried to get Odiong to respond on Tuesday but couldn’t. A lawyer who used to work for him also could not be reached for comment.
In March, an unnamed victim told Waco police that Odiong had sexually abused them in 2012. This is when the investigation began as reported by Nola News.
Odiong was with St. Anthony until 2015. Before that, from 2007 to 2012, he was in charge of campus service at St. Peter’s Catholic Student Center at Baylor University in Waco.
The Guardian reports that while police were looking into the complaint, they got a search warrant for Odiong’s iCloud account and found pictures of a child being sexually abused.
