BATON ROUGE - Pastor Tony Spell appeared in court Tuesday for a bond review and defended his actions that led to his arrest in June. 

"When you come to church, you come to worship God. It's a sanctuary. It's a sanctified, safe place where you shouldn't be called racial slurs, threatened and intimidated with bodily harm, people exposing their genitalia to you," Spell said. "All that's happened over the past seven years."

Spell, the pastor at Life Tabernacle Church in Central, was booked for second-degree battery. Security cameras from a home across the street from the church caught Spell crossing Hooper Road and attacking his neighbor's son. 

After he bonded out of jail, Spell told WBRZ that the victim in the beating had previously antagonized congregation members and told the pastor that he would rape his family members. 

"I have a duty and obligation to do what I did," Spell said in June. 

Spell's neighbors, the Sherwins, previously told WBRZ that the pastor is lying and that the violent outburst was a reaction to a recent legal loss tied to Spell's insistence on holding church services during COVID-era stay-at-home orders. 

"This pastor is a bully who gets mad when he does not get his way," the Sherwins said.

Spell was released on a $25,000 bond, with an order to stay at least 50 yards from the neighboring property at all times. He has not been formally charged in the case.