FORT PIERCE – A Fort Pierce pastor faces felony charges of child neglect without great bodily harm after Fort Pierce Police discovered five children living in deplorable conditions at the woman’s home, according to an arrest affidavit.
Gwendolyn Denise Rolle, 59, was released from St. Lucie County Jail on $26,000 bond on June 3 for five felony counts of child neglect without great bodily harm and one battery charge, according to jail records.
Police went to the Fort Pierce home – the address redacted on the police report – on June 2, following an anonymous tip that the children living at the home were being abused, according to the arrest affidavit.
Living at the home were five children – Rolle’s daughter and four foster children, two of whom are non-verbal and attend special needs schools, according to the arrest affidavit.
According to the arrest affidavit, Rolle — pastor at New Hope International Church near Avenue D and North 13th Street — routinely locked the door to her master suite, which contained the only functioning toilet in the home.
A second bathroom was out of order and filled with feces, forcing four of the children to routinely urinate and defecate in a blue-green bucket, which neighbors witnessed them dumping outside, according to the arrest affidavit.
Rolle showed the officer around the home and told him that the second bathroom was out of order and needed to be repaired, according to the arrest affidavit.
Neighbors – who were aware of the ongoing abuse but said they were too scared to take action – told police that the children were seen bathing on the front porch with a garden hose and soap while siblings would hold a bedsheet to block them from view, according to the arrest affidavit.
Rolle’s daughter told police that while she was allowed to eat food from fast-food restaurants or food that Rolle would bring home from the school where she works, the remaining children were forced to share individual packets of Ramen noodles or sent to bed without food, according to the arrest affidavit.
In addition, one of the children was hit in the chest with a shoe by Rolle, causing a bruise, according to the arrest affidavit. A neighbor told police that several of the children told her that Rolle hit them, that they didn’t have food or clean clothes and that they were often bullied by other children at school because they smelled bad, according to the arrest affidavit.
The children would sometimes go to school without having eaten anything and a staff member at one of the schools told police that one of the children smelled so bad that she needed to use an air-freshener.
Upon Rolle’s arrest, all the children were taken from the home by the state Department of Children and Families, police said.