SO VERY LITTLE HAS CHANGED: Church officials "did not remove (a now-arrested Louisiana priest) from working until THIS PAST DECEMBER, though his accusers had previously attempted to report him to church authorities, police or both in prior years. . ."
Quote:Texas grand jury indicts Catholic priest on three felony sexual assault charges
The charges against Odiong – who was first arrested in July – involve two women. He could receive up to life imprisonment if convicted of the first-degree charge, a stiffer penalty that stems from the fact that the alleged victim in the case was a woman whom Odiong was prohibited from “marrying or purporting to marry” under Texas law. The second-degree counts each carry up to 20 years in prison in what is one of only about a dozen states with a law that criminalizes sexual activity between clergymen and adults who emotionally depend on their spiritual advice.
Police in Waco arrested Odiong months after the Guardian published a report detailing prior allegations that ranged from sexual coercion and unwelcome touching to financial abuse, all made by women whom he met through his work as a priest.
With respect to the other woman, he allegedly managed to pressure the victim into letting her husband sodomize her despite her faith-based objections to that form of sexual intimacy – while also successfully urging her to narrate her experience to him.
Investigators also alleged that they found digital child abuse imagery in Odiong’s possession.
Aymond also guided New Orleans’ archdiocese into federal bankruptcy reorganization amid the fallout from a clergy molestation scandal that has engulfed the organization for decades. On Friday, the archdiocese offered an average of $125,000 to settle its legal differences with about 500 clergy abuse claimants. The claimants are demanding an average of $2.5m each, which would be the largest settlement in the history of US Catholic church bankruptcies.
Aymond’s archdiocese did not remove Odiong from working in Luling until this past December, though his accusers had previously attempted to report him to church authorities, police or both in prior years, according to a Guardian investigation into Odiong.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...lt-charges
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
