Ft. Pierce, FL/CBS12 News — A Fort Pierce pastor entrusted with protecting vulnerable children was arrested after police uncovered a deeply disturbing house of horrors.

Gwendolyn Denise Rolle, 59, faces five felony counts of child neglect without great bodily harm.

While Rolle serves as a local pastor for a church near Avenue D and North 13th Street—leaving neighbors too terrified of her community standing to speak out sooner—police say she treated five children she had taken in, including two who are non-verbal, with unimaginable cruelty.

According to police, Rolle had taken in the five siblings, ages 4-9, when their father left town.

According to the arrest affidavit, Rolle locked the door to her master suite, which contained the only functioning toilet in the home.

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The other bathroom was left 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.

With no access to a working shower, the children had to bathe on the front porch with a garden hose and soap while their siblings held up a bedsheet to block the neighborhood view.

The systemic abuse extended to starvation and extreme favoritism; while Rolle’s own child ate fast food, the five others were called “bastards,” forced to share single packets of Ramen noodles, or sent to bed hungry.

The neglect was so severe that school staff reported one child smelled so strongly of fecal matter that they had to spray the classroom with air freshener.

Staff often gave the children perfume to mask the odor so they wouldn’t be bullied at school. Physical abuse was a daily reality, with the children detailing routine slaps to the face.

Police also noted a visible bruise on a non-verbal boy’s chest from where Rolle allegedly struck him with a shoe before keeping him home for days to hide the injury from teachers.

Even when police arrived, the terror continued; Rolle allegedly struck an adult in the home with a plastic vase right before officers walked in.

She later whispered a chilling threat to the children while they were on the porch: “Once he leaves, you’re going to get it.” Stacie Schmerling, an attorney with the Justice for Kids Law Firm, warns that the child welfare system frequently fails to prevent such horrors.

Rolle has since bonded out of jail, and when CBS12 News knocked on her door, no one answered.