{"id":316436,"date":"2026-05-31T11:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T11:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/316436\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T11:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T11:21:09","slug":"priest-accuser-hopes-texas-conviction-will-keep-him-from-victimizing-others-new-orleans-clergy-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/316436\/","title":{"rendered":"Priest accuser hopes Texas conviction will keep him from victimizing others | New Orleans clergy abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first woman to publicly accuse a Roman Catholic priest who was convicted<\/a> by a Texas jury on Friday of repeated adult, criminal clergy sexual abuse has said she \u201ccan only hope he is kept from continuing to use faith as his net, his snare and a tool to manipulate current and future victims\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m grateful to the jury for listening to the evidence and seeing the truth\u201d about the convicted clergyman, Anthony Odiong, said the woman in a statement on Saturday, referred to in court proceedings by the pseudonym Hadassah Doe.<\/p>\n

The woman added that it was \u201cheartbreaking\u201d to learn of the testimony that led to Odiong\u2019s conviction after a four-day trial on first- and second-degree sexual assault charges in Waco, Texas, in connection with two women given the pseudonyms Mary Doe and Jane Doe. She alluded to how church officials, including in south-east Louisiana<\/a> \u2013 where the clergyman most recently ministered \u2013 \u201ccould have prevented a lot of suffering and pain\u201d if they \u201cwould have listened\u201d to her attempts to report him years earlier.<\/p>\n

As Hadassah Doe eventually recounted<\/a> to the Guardian and reporting partner WWL Louisiana, she met Odiong in the spring of 2007 while he studied for a theological master\u2019s degree from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. She described how he positioned himself as her spiritual counselor and initiated a years-long physical relationship during which he persuaded her to perform sexual acts on him during the sacrament of confession, at private masses in her home and in at least one motel room \u2013 claiming she could ensure salvation by doing so.<\/p>\n

She also accused him of stealing money from her, and if she ever refused him, he would disparage her as crazy.<\/p>\n

Doe said she mostly cut Odiong off in late 2018, when he had transferred from clerical roles in and around Waco, Texas, to serving as pastor of the St Anthony of Padua<\/a> church in the New Orleans suburb of Luling, Louisiana.<\/p>\n

In 2019, according to call logs and audio recordings, Doe contacted the New Orleans<\/a> archdiocese\u2019s telephone number for abuse claimants to report Odiong. The sheriff\u2019s office that patrols Luling said that the woman also spoke with one of its detectives about Odiong.<\/p>\n

The investigator concluded that Doe was reporting what sounded like a personal relationship not outlawed in Louisiana. Neither the authorities nor the church in that state took action against Odiong.<\/p>\n

Hadassah Doe and her civil attorney, Kristi Schubert, shared those events with the public through the Guardian and WWL in December 2023, after the New Orleans archdiocese announced \u2013 without elaborating \u2013 that it had suspended Odiong over clerical misconduct with multiple women.<\/p>\n

An attorney who represented Odiong at the time met Doe\u2019s story with a statement aggressively dismissing it as \u201ccategorically \u2026 false\u201d. The statement also called the accusations \u201coutlandish \u2026 and unworthy of belief\u201d.<\/p>\n

Odiong himself published a social media post calling Doe \u201ca mentally unstable woman\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, another woman who met Odiong in Waco in 2010 and would eventually be referred to as Jane Doe in court proceedings subsequently noticed Hadassah\u2019s account. Jane Doe contacted the Guardian and vouched for Hadassah\u2019s story as credible, saying she also had an abusive experience while Odiong ostensibly counseled her over marital problems she was enduring.<\/p>\n

She told the outlet that Odiong \u2013 among other behaviors \u2013 successfully directed her to submit to a form of intercourse, which she found painfully uncomfortable, to save her marriage, which ultimately failed.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, she revealed that Catholic church officials in charge of Waco-area clergymen had informed her that they banned Odiong no later than 2019 from ministering in and around there over misconduct allegations. Those officials said to her that they simultaneously and privately notified their New Orleans counterparts to that decision.<\/p>\n

Jane Doe\u2019s story<\/a> then was seen by another woman whom authorities would come to refer to by the pseudonym of Mary Doe. Mary Doe brought a copy of the Guardian\u2019s reporting on Jane and Hadassah Doe to Waco police and told them Odiong had fostered a years-long sexual relationship with her.<\/p>\n

Mary Doe told then detective Bradley DeLange that the relationship started in 2008 after he began providing her with spiritual direction amid the fallout of a tumultuous divorce that left her with primary custody of seven children. It effectively didn\u2019t end until after a family party in 2011, when her son walked in<\/a> on them having sex and told a neighbor what he had seen. The neighbor, it would later emerge in court, reported Odiong to local church officials \u2013 but his career continued virtually unimpeded.<\/p>\n

Texas law considers what Mary Doe reported to be felony sexual assault. The ensuing investigation led authorities to Jane Doe. They also secured cooperation from enough Odiong accusers meeting the legal standard of probable cause that they could charge him in connection with first- and second-degree sexual assault of Mary and Joe Doe.<\/p>\n

They each testified at a four-day trial beginning on Tuesday at a courthouse in downtown Waco. Prosecutors Ryan Calvert and Liz Buice also established<\/a> that Odiong had fathered a child in 2023 with a congregant to whom he provided religious counseling after meeting her in Luling.<\/p>\n

Calvert at one point seemingly addressed insinuations that his accusers may have unduly conspired to take him down, by asking Mary Doe whether she knew Hadassah Doe and others who had spoken to authorities about him. She said she did not know them.<\/p>\n

The eight women and four men on the jury took only about two hours to find Odiong guilty of the charges against him. That left Odiong facing up to life imprisonment during a sentencing phase scheduled to begin on Monday.<\/p>\n

Provided to the Guardian by Schubert a day after the verdict, Hadassah Doe\u2019s statement said the prosecution was respectively \u201csuperb\u201d and \u201csuccinct\u201d in its strategy and case presentation. She said she would spend the coming days waiting to learn Odiong\u2019s sentence.<\/p>\n

Hadassah Doe separately awaited the outcome of a pending claim for Odiong-related damages that she filed as part of a bankruptcy protection case that the New Orleans archdiocese filed in 2020 as it grappled with the ongoing aftermath of the worldwide Catholic church\u2019s decades-old clergy molestation scandal.<\/p>\n

The archdiocese and its insurers in December agreed to pay $305m to hundreds of abuse survivors to settle the bankruptcy, though payouts as of Saturday were not expected to begin until the fall.<\/p>\n

In her bankruptcy claim, made under oath, Hadassah Doe summarized what her life had been like since Odiong entered and then departed it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe abuse has completely ruined my life and self-confidence,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI have repeated nightmares [of] Fr Odiong abusing me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first woman to publicly accuse a Roman Catholic priest who was convicted by a Texas jury on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-316436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}