CORONA, CA -- An officer from
the Corona Police Department is facing a charge of failing to report suspected
child abuse of a 13-year-old boy by three men affiliated with a local church.
Tuesday the Riverside County
District Attorney’s Office filed the single misdemeanor count against Corona
police corporal Margaret Bell.
Bell surrendered herself and
appeared at the Hall of Justice in Riverside today and was arraigned on the
charge. She entered a plea of not guilty and now has a trial readiness
conference scheduled for Aug. 7, 2012.
“The Corona Police Department
requested that the DA’s office investigate any possible criminal culpability by
Bell after the department was told that she had been advised of suspected child
abuse of a 13-year-old boy by three men affiliated with a church in Corona,
including its pastor, Lonny Lee Remmers,” the DA’s office reported today.
Bell allegedly had been told
of the suspected abuse prior to Corona police being advised on March 29, 2012.
“The investigation determined
that Bell was told by at least one church member of the suspected child abuse
but she failed to report it to law enforcement authorities as she is required
to do under the law,” the DA’s office reported today.
Remmers and the two other men
affiliated with the Heart of Worship Community Church, Nicholas James Craig and
Darryll Duane Jeter Jr., were arrested by Corona police and have been charged
in case. All three have pleaded not guilty. The trio had a felony settlement
conference today and now have a preliminary hearing scheduled for Sept. 7,
2012.
Craig and Jeter drove
the boy to the desert on March 18 and “forced him to dig a grave, threw dirt on
him and beat him with a belt.”
Remmers later used a pair of
pliers to inflict pain on the boy, according to the Press-Enterprise report.
The boy’s mother turned her
son over to the three Heart of Worship Community Church members “for
intervention" because she believed her boy had been involved in
"sexual misconduct,” The Press-Enterprise reported.
Remmers, who served federal
prison time prior to his arrest this year, had applied to be a Corona police
chaplain last year and was involved in the city’s mayor’s task force on youth
safety, The Press-Enterprise reported.