1/13/09 – THV VIDEO: Alamo Followers Once Avoided The Media, Now Embracing It?
Today’s THV
January 13, 2009
Posted By: Ashley Blackstone
Update: Alamo Followers Once Avoided The Media, Now Embracing It?
Tony Alamo and his followers have always refused to talk to the media; citing news organizations are un-trusting and evil. However, recent actions by the religious group show they may be changing their minds towards the media.
The Tony Alamo controversy continues to make headlines in Arkansas. And for what may be the first time, followers are reaching out to the media after years of calling it evil and the mouth of Satan.
This month, parents of a teenaged Alamo follower leaked a video of their daughter to the Internet. It shows a state investigator interviewing the girl less than 24 hours after she was taken from the compound in September.
The teen says, “There is nothing that I am trying to hide. Sometimes I think if only everybody lived the way we lived in our ministry, the world would be perfect. They wouldn’t have any crimes, you know crime scenes, nobody would ever be hurt.”
For nearly two hours, the teen tells the child welfare official that Alamo never touched her or had sex with underage girls. And that those acts are only those of a “backslider.”
“If anything happened to anybody, you know if anybody was ever molested in the church, Tony would put them out immediately. He doesn’t tolerate that.”
After that initial posting, five others were later leaked online.
Then last week, Julie Munsell with the Department of Health and Human Services says someone from Alamo’s ministry mailed a video copy to the Democrat Gazette.
Sunday, the newspaper printed interview excerpts on the front page of the local section.
Munsell explains, “They see it as a vehicle to get out there, to try and shape the public perception of their organization and they are well with in their rights to speak out on their behalf. Our concern is when it crosses into the line, the privacy of their children.”
Munsell is worried about the children’s process of healing, along with emotional concerns and the embarrassment.
“It is a very difficult process, a very challenging process that once it has been out for public consumption than it can just continue to feed off of itself. We might be seeing this same information in different forms for months to come, unfortunately,” Munsell says.
Its information disclosed by those inside the ministry, Alamo followers, now possibly with a different perception of the “so called” evil media.
Since the original interviews by child welfare officials with the 36 kids taken from the compound, DHS says many of the children have changed their stories saying physical and sexual abuse did go on at the ministry.