Woman is charged in abuse case

SANDPOINT — The wife of a Coeur d’Alene man charged with multiple child sex abuse charges has been arrested for allegedly permitting the misconduct.

Heidi Julia Johnson is charged with felony injury to a child.

Johnson, 29, was arrested Thursday and made an initial appearance in Bonner County Magistrate Court on Friday.

Judge Don Swanstrom sustained Johnson’s $25,000 bail and appointed a public defender to represent her, court documents indicate.

Charging documents allege that Johnson willfully caused or permitted the child to be placed in a situation that would endanger the girl and cause her great bodily harm. The criminal complaint alleges that Johnson allowed her husband to repeatedly rape the girl in Bonner County from 2008 to 2010, when she was between the ages of eight and 11.

The complaint further states that Johnson took pornographic pictures of the alleged victim and another child in Bonner County in the summer of 2009.

Judge Barbara Buchanan issued a $25,000 arrest warrant on July 20, after the girl testified during a probable cause hearing about the sexual abuse she endured, according to court documents.

The warrant was filed about six weeks after Ernest Ray Johnson III was arrested for lewd conduct with a child and sexual abuse of a child.

Ernest Johnson, 32, waived his right to a preliminary hearing earlier this month. The waiver amounts to tacit agreement that the state possessed enough evidence to justify a trial in 1st District Court.

Ernest Johnson is scheduled to be arraigned in district court on Aug. 6. He remains jailed in lieu of $75,000 bail.