Priest on trial for sexual assault in Texas had child with Louisiana congregant, prosecutors say

Texas prosecutors on Thursday established that a Roman Catholic priest being tried there on charges that he illegally exploited his status as a priest to pursue sex with three spiritually vulnerable congregants had a child with a separate congregant in approximately 2023 – while working outside New Orleans . That explosive development unfolded on the third day of Anthony Odiong ’s trial at a state courthouse in Waco, Texas, where he worked before being transferred to Luling, Louisiana . While building the case being tried against Odiong, then Waco police department employee Melissa Beseda traveled to the metro New Orleans area to obtain a DNA sample from a girl whose mother investigators had probable cause to believe had been in a sexual relationship with Odiong – while he provided spiritual direction to her in his role as a clergyman in Luling. The woman, assigned the pseudonym Presley Jones, also provided a DNA sample – and one was obtained from Odiong, 57. Under direct examination from McLennan county first assistant district attorney Ryan Calvert, Beseda testified that the testing of those samples determined that Odiong was the father of Jones’s daughter, who as of Thursday was about three years old. Odiong is not charged in connection with a crime against Jones, whose existence had previously been reported in the media – but she was revealed for the first time on Thursday to have met the priest while he ministered in New Orleans in recent years. …