WACO (TX)
KWTX-10 [Waco, TX]
May 21, 2026
By Tommy Witherspoon
Disgraced former Central Texas Catholic priest Anthony Odiong is set to stand trial next week after a judge denied defense motions to postpone the trial for a second time and to suppress evidence of alleged child pornography found on Odiong’s phone before his arrest two years ago in Florida.
Odiong, 57, who remains jailed in lieu of bonds totaling $5.5 million, is set to stand trial beginning Tuesday in Waco’s 19th State District Court on seven counts of sexual assault involving three of his alleged nine victims.
One of his alleged victims has told authorities Odiong, a Nigerian native, is the father of her child, an allegation confirmed through DNA testing, officials have said.
Odiong, a former priest in West, Louisiana and Florida, is charged with “exploiting his parishioners’ emotional dependency upon him as a spiritual adviser and engaging in sexual conduct with them,” according to court documents.
Sexual assault normally is a second-degree felony. However, it bumps up to first-degree status if a defendant is prohibited under the bigamy statute from marrying the victim. Some of Odiong’s alleged victims are married.
Odiong is alleged to have engaged in unlawful sexual activity with the women from 2010 to 2012. McLennan County First Assistant District Attorney Ryan Calvert argued at Thursday’s hearing that Odiong is exempt from the normal 10-year statute of limitations because he is alleged to have committed the same or similar sex offense against five or more victims.
Judge Thomas West granted a defense request last month to postpone a May 4 trial date until next week so defense attorneys Gerald Villarrial, Hunter Slocum and Carolina Truesdale could review the voluminous amount of discovery in what Calvert said Thursday has been a “very large, multi-state, multi-victim, sexual assault investigation.”
Slocum argued at Thursday’s hearing that the judge should suppress evidence of alleged child pornography found on Odiong’s phone. He charged that Waco police Detective Brad DeLange showed a “reckless disregard for the truth” and lacked probable cause when he used two images found on Odiong’s phone to obtain an arrest warrant for possession of child pornography.
The defense team alleged in motions that DeLange merely used the questionably “lude” images to further enhance the sexual assault case against him and to give him an excuse to arrest Odiong because he feared he might flee to his native Nigeria.
The defense filed a partial transcript of a phone conversation between DeLange and the daughter of one of Odiong’s alleged victims in which DeLange told her that the child porn charge “was a tool to get to sexual assault” and might be useful later in plea negotiations.
The state has not indicted Odiong on the child pornography charge.
“Detective DeLange’s conversation with E.M. demonstrates that the statements in his affidavit regarding defendant’s alleged possession of child pornography are nothing more than a Trojan horse for the sexual assault charges and evidence related to the same,” the defense motion to suppress states.Slocum and Villarrial argued the images found were of a young girl’s breast and vagina and were sent to Odiong by the girl’s mother, who saw Odiong as “a healer” and asked him to pray for her daughter.
Calvert argued that the motion should be denied because the defense failed to prove that DeLange deliberately lied in the arrest warrant affidavit and the burden for probable cause is relatively low.
DeLange, testifying via teleconference, said he found the two images, determined Odiong is not a medical doctor or the parent of the child in the photos and thought he would be derelict in his duties if he didn’t investigate the images.
West denied the motion.