WEST PALM BEACH (FL)
Palm Beach Post [Palm Beach, FL]
October 15, 2024
By Hannah Phillips
A Riviera Beach pastor accused of sexual assault emerged from the criminal justice system relatively unscathed. Deputies continue to investigate him.
When the pastor knocked, his parishioner answered. She welcomed Pheguel Pierre Louis into her home, unsettled by the disturbing dream he said he had about her the night before.
She was in trouble, Pierre Louis said, and he needed to pray over her.
The pastor, 40, and the woman, 23, gave the same accounting to Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies during separate interviews later. Their stories differed once they described what happened next, inside the house.
Pierre Louis said he “laid hands” on the woman’s forehead, something he told deputies he does often when praying over his congregants at New Jerusalem Church in Riviera Beach. The woman told investigators he ordered her to take off her dress, then rubbed oil on her body and sexually assaulted her with his fingers.
From the archives:Palm Beach Diocese denies retaliating against priest who reported fellow priest’s sex crime
Deputies arrested Pierre Louis in August 2023 and charged him with one count of sexual battery. He bonded out of jail eight days later and, one year later, made a deal with prosecutors that let him plead guilty to felony battery without becoming a convicted felon.
In accordance with the deal, Circuit Judge Daliah Weiss entered a withhold of adjudication and sentenced Pierre Louis to five years of probation. The resolution spared the pastor from prison and the lifelong brand of a registered sex offender, leaving him instead with an order to complete 150 hours of community service, a psychosexual evaluation and any recommended treatment.
The church, identified in business records as Eglise Evangelique De La Nouvelle Jerusalem, listed Pierre Louis as its vice president as recently as March. Posts to the pastor’s public social media page indicate he still leads services there.