Former Gardena Minister Guilty of Sex Charges

A former Lutheran minister from Gardena accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old parishioner was convicted Thursday of 12 criminal charges, including forcible rape.

Arleigh Eugene Cox, 60, faces up to 37 years in state prison when he appears for sentencing Dec. 3. Cox, who had been free on bond pending the outcome of his trial, was taken into custody Thursday.

Torrance Superior Court jurors deliberated a little more than three days before convicting Cox of 12 of the 14 charges filed against him, including unlawful sexual intercourse and oral copulation with a minor. Jurors said afterward that the victim’s ambiguity about the date of one of the sexual encounters led them to find Cox innocent of two counts.

“I’m very pleased with the verdict,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Geltz said. “But it’s always sad when somebody in this kind of profession abuses their power to this extent.”

Defense attorney Dean Hall, who could not be reached for comment after the verdict, told jurors during his closing arguments that the girl imagined her encounters with Cox.

Cox resigned earlier this year from his 13-year post as minister at St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Gardena. At the time, he said he was leaving his job because of an affair he had had with a woman from the congregation.

During his trial, Cox acknowledged that the nine-year affair had been with the mother of the victim in this case.

Geltz said the affair allowed Cox access to the woman’s daughter, who is developmentally disabled.

The girl testified that she began finding notes in 1989 inside a cookie tin in her bedroom that told her God did not want her to have boyfriends and that God wanted her to have sex with “P.C.,” Pastor Cox’s nickname at the church.

In 1990, the notes became more threatening, she testified, with one saying that she would have an accident if she did not “obey God’s will and love the pastor.” The girl said she threw away all the notes because she did not want her mother to know about them.

Shortly after receiving the note warning she could have an accident, the girl was hurt slightly in a car crash. She became terrified and went to Cox’s church office, where she said he ordered her to disrobe and pose for photographs. She said Cox then took her to his camper, had sex with her and photographed her again.

The encounters continued at least once a month until January, the girl said, when she found a photograph in the cookie tin that showed nine different nude shots of her. At that point, she decided to tell her mother what was going on.

Evidence at the trial included the girl’s personal diaries, describing the series of notes, and a photograph that the prosecution said showed her posing naked.