Child Labor Made These Jackets

Locking Away Evil – Finally

On this Thanksgiving weekend I want to tell you about a group of young people who are giving thanks for the first time in their lives. This year they are extremely thankful that their tormentor, the self proclaimed preacher Tony Alamo, has finally been brought to justice.

In U.S. District Court in Texarkana, Arkansas the 75 year old Alamo was recently sentenced to 175 years in prison on charges of engaging in sex with minor members of his so-called “church.” One of the five brides identified was just 8 years old. My sources, escapees of the church, tell me there were many more Alamo brides.

Alamo’s real name is Bernie LaZar Hoffman. He was a phony from the get-go. Back in the early 70’s he and his wife, Susan, dreamed up the “Alamo Christian Ministries” to rescue drugged out homeless people from the streets of Hollywood. They gave the unfortunates a cot to sleep on, food to eat, a rousing sermon and an odd job or two to perform as payback. City fathers donated money to show appreciation for the more tourist friendly streets. Those first Alamo followers settled in, coupled up and gave birth to a second generation. The poor kids never had a chance.

The Alamos had up to three dozen money making enterprises – from restaurants to hog farms –and their loyal disciples were their workforce. Instead of a salary the workers got meager living arrangements, irregular meals (many consisted of whatever food had been donated to the ministry) and all the preachin’ about Jesus the Alamos could muster.

The Alamos got rich. When Susan began to suffer from cancer they moved their headquarters to a hilltop near tiny Fouke, Arkansas – far away from the prying eyes of outsiders.

A big source of income was the uber-expensive, handmade rhinestone and sequined studded denim jackets the disciples churned out. In the day it seemed all of Hollywood was wearing one! Dolly Parton, Brooke Shields, Mr. T, among others, wore the flashy fashion statements and sales sky-rocketed.

In 1994, Alamo went to prison for failure to pay taxes on the jacket earnings. At the time of the trial there was evidence that children at the compound were being brutally beaten, held aloft by four burly church men while Alamo beat them bloody, “baseball style” with a wooden paddle. However, that testimony was never allowed at the tax trial. Once in prison Alamo still ruled his flock with an iron fist.

In a series of exclusive interviews with those born into the Alamo cult I’ve heard unforgettable horror stories.

The children were schooled but now realize, as adults, that on orders from Alamo their education was sorely lacking. If they asked an inappropriate question about the day’s lesson they were beaten. If they were tardy, laughed too loud or wore the wrong clothing they were beaten. After classes they were ordered into hours of mandatory prayer. One young man named Jared remembers after Susan died of cancer in 1982 all followers were ordered by “Papa Tony” to keep up a round-the-clock kneeling prayer circle for her “certain resurrection.” Alamo kept Susan’s corpse for 16 years until a court finally ordered him to return it to her family.

These Alamo captives now reveal it was them – the exhausted, terrorized children of the group who often worked until midnight laboriously turning out those denim jackets. A young mother named Becca tells me that growing up in the ministry brought no joy – ever. She worked in the communal kitchen cutting away the rotten parts of donated food. She fantasized about Papa Tony’s promise to get her a “jar of pickles for my birthday.” There was no real medical care, not even for one poor epileptic child. Jared remembers watching the girl beaten every time she had a seizure. Several other former Alamo Ministry children who wish to remain anonymous told me how underage girls were routinely married off to much older male church members. After Alamo got out of prison in 1998, they say, Papa Tony chose multiple underage brides for himself.

Finally in September 2008, at a roadside stop in Arizona, Alamo was arrested with 6 girls in his vehicle and charged with transporting them across state lines for sexual purposes.

I tell you this story because society needs to learn from it. Our justice system took way too long to stop this monster, knowing since the early 90’s that children were suffering at his hand. The doctrine of separation of church and state caused authorities to shy away.

We need to do better. While the second Alamo generation is now thankful he’s locked away authorities admit there are other religious based predators out there. No one wants to curtail freedom of religious practice but allowing charlatans to victimize the innocent and enslave people isn’t acceptable either.

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Alamo dispatches are poor window dressing

It would be reasonable to assume with the conviction of Tony Alamo to 175 years in prison that the activities of his supporters would quickly cease. After all he was larger than life to his followers, and beyond challenge. Without his active participation, what would hold his band together? Wouldn’t they scatter to the four winds?

But there is nothing reasonable about Alamo or his remaining followers.

Even today his supporters are wailing about what they consider a travesty of justice. They seem as invisible as ever, but just as effective at getting his message out.

They are still papering parking lots in Texarkana with propaganda on windshields. And they still use the Internet to muddy the water of what happened with conspiracy theories.

They said they were going to come en masse to both his trial and his sentencing, but never did. It makes you wonder just how many people still buy into his church and way of life. But the ones that do are still capable of making plenty of noise.

When he went to jail in the mid-’90s for tax evasion, he was still able to maintain control of his operations. However, he (and they) knew he would be out at some point. There was a reason to hang on.

And last year and this year while he was being housed in Texarkana waiting trial for sex crimes with minors, he still had the clout to intimidate any disenchanted followers and keep them under his thumb. But again, there was a chance he would be acquitted and be free again.

Now, failing appeals, there is no chance he will ever leave prison. What is the incentive to continue to do his bidding? It serves no purpose.

The problem with these zealous followers is their whole life is built around his controlling, antiestablishment ministry. It is all most of them know. While most reasonable people would see his conviction as a reason to abandon the cause, it is not so easy for them.

To believe in something, even wrongly, and then to find out it is not what you thought it was leaves a terrible void. (Remember, some of these folks were rescued from the streets. They had no hope and no structure when they threw in their lot with him.)

It is often easier to cling blindly to what you know, to find some strange validation in it, than to acknowledge that much of what you believe in is a lie and you are left adrift with no anchor.

Alamo, as a leader, in the context of his church was seen as infallible by his followers. If God commanded him to take a child bride, then parents of the child risked both Alamo’s wrath and, in their minds, God’s wrath if they dared defy him.

People who gave up so much to belong to this fellowship did not wish to be separated from it either. They complied.

Alamo’s greatest gift was his ability to create and sustain an us-against-them mentality. The attacks from the mainstream only brought his followers closer to him and each other.

In the past, the charismatic cult leader managed his fiefdom from prison by phone. While Alamo will be afforded phone privileges, he now lacks the leverage that a future release date once provided.

This suggests that Alamo’s organization might peter out at some point. It just hasn’t done so yet.

The Gazette was faithful in its coverage of the Alamo trial, and other media outlets provided the same reports, basically collaborating the primary reporting. So there is no reason not to believe what you read in the newspaper or to believe the nonsense that gets hawked on the Internet or pinned under windshield wipers.

The latest press release, as he calls them, is not a rerelease. It is new material. But it is still the same strange mixture of piety and politics, prayer and prickliness, protest and posturing.

One of Alamo’s strengths has always been his ability to persuade weak minds and to find unique ways of disseminating his message. Alamo newsletters, forums for his rants against the U.S. government and the Vatican, were windshield dressing long before he was let out of prison the first time. Over the years, the same message, old as it was, was churned out again and again. It didn’t matter that some of the material had dates more than a decade old.

The newest Alamo propaganda does not claim a different conclusion than the mainstream media, only that key prosecutorial witnesses lied. The Alamo newsletter gives the backstory of why they lied, and the motives behind those lies. To believe this you would have to believe the media is also involved in the same conspiracy as a corrupt Vatican and U.S. government.

It is unlikely that the Internet will ever be free of the shadow of Tony Alamo, his outlandish claims, his theological manifestos, his supporters crying foul, his willingness to play the martyr. The Internet is ripe for this kind of abuse.

But it would be nice if we could just get his trash—his newsletter—off the streets. There is enough litter tossing around Texarkana parking lots without adding these unsolicited fliers to the top of the heap.

Remember the Alamo — Tony Alamo

The story of Tony Alamo is bound, someday, to be made into a movie. It’s so bizarre, so improbable, so full of incident and crime and sin that it makes some soap operas look clean! The horrifyingly saddest part of this story is that Alamo was viewed and viewed himself as a conservative Christian minister. In the eyes of the world, it gives all such persons a bad name. And on top of everything else it plays on and plays right into the ultra right wing paranoia in America about a “NEW WORLD ORDER’ secretly masterminded by the Pope, as an attempt to turn America into a Fascist state. One can only imagine Alamo’s reaction to the revelation last week that Catholic bishops aided in getting the health care legislation changed so that abortions wouldn’t be funded with federal money. Dan Brown couldn’t have thought up a conspiracy story this good, or a nefarious character as amazing as Tony Alamo.
Tony Alamo makes ‘Malakh’ in The Lost Symbol look like a regular guy.

Perhaps however you have been vacationing on the planet Xenon, and have not followed the story of Tony Alamo from the 70s until last week when he was sentenced to 175 years in jail. Since he is now 74, that’s a wrap folks. He will not be ‘ministering’ (and I use the term loosely) again outside of a prison.

Let me summarize for you the story of Tony Alamo. Again, you can’t make this stuff up. Truth is always stranger than fiction. Let’s start with his real name— Bernie Lazar Hoffman, born in 1934 to Jewish Romanian parents in Joplin Missouri. We don’t know as much as we would like about his childhood and youth except that at some point his family moved to Montana and Bernie was a newspaper boy for the Helena Independent Record. Where the story really surfaces is in the 1960s when Bernie turns up in L.A. Initially Bernie decided to pursue a career in music under the names Mark Abad or Mark Hoffman. He was briefly put in jail on a weapons charge during this period in his life. It was in 1961 that the man married his first wife Helen Hagan, whom he remained married to until 1966 when they got a divorce. Bernie’s actually met his second wife, Susan Lipowitz, a Jewish convert to Evangelical Christianity when he was still married. Susan was in L.A. trying to become an actress. She was married to a hoodlum in L.A. and was nine years the senior of Bernie Hoffman. After she managed to get a divorce, Susan and Bernie got married in Las Vegas and legally changed their names to Tony and Susan Alamo. Who knows why they picked Alamo, but at least it was a memorable name. Susan and Tony remained married until her death due to cancer in 1982.

Together the couple set up in 1966 the Tony and Susam Alamo Christian Foundation in dear ole Hollywood, a place known to look the other way at the wild and wacky. It has been called the place where the odd get even, or at least they get recognized and can pass for normal. So far the story is exotic and eccentric but not yet bizzare, or was it? As a sideline, the two set up a business venture selling sequined suits, ala Elvis, only Elvis had left the business and the building. If you look at the pictures of Tony during this period of his life it is clear he was trying hard to channel Elvis. In fact this went on for a long time. Below find a picture of Tony in 1986 a sort of combo of Elvis and Don Johnson from Miami Vice—-

The suit sideline however got Tony a visit from the suits, and Tony landed in prison for tax evasion in connection to this business. This would be the first of some six times he would be tried and convicted for tax evasion of some sort. You would have thought he would have learned after a time or two. Instead, he decided that this justified his demonizing the American government, something he would be increasingly prone to do. It is indeed amazing how many fundamentalists use the psychological technique called projection– namely projecting their own faults on some other person or some external institution they feel they have an adversarial relatrionship with.

This problem of course is not confined to fundamentalist Christians of a more cultist ilk, it can be found in any and all sorts of fundamentalism, whether connected with a recognized religion or not. Fundamentalism is not really a point of view on the religious spectrum as much as it is an inflexible and unchangeable mindset. I have not infrequently met fundamentalist liberals, utterly convinced that their views are unassailble, immune to critical scrutiny or dispute. But if you thought the Alamo story was a little far out, thus far, you ain’t heard nothing yet.

Susan Alamo, as it turns out was the better preacher of the two (they viewed themselves as some kind of Pentecostals), and throughout the 70s she was doing the preaching whilst her husband channeled Elvis the Gospel singer. This was also a practical move since she managed to stay out of jail, but Tony went back and forth to the slammer on various charges. By this point the Alamos had a syndicated TV show, and then something drastic happened— Susan died right about Easter time, on April 8th 1982. Unwilling to accept this outcome, Tony claimed that his wife would very soon rise from the dead, and so they kept her body on display whilst their loyal followers prayed for her resurrection. But resurrection did not happen and the saddest part of this part of the story is that Susan’s body was not returned to her family for another 16 years!! Tony was to go on and marry twice more, and the pattern of tax evasion continued as well. When he was convicted in 1994 he stayed in jail until 1998. Tony however was not idle. His Alamo tracts became famous or infamous and continued to be distributed by his followers both in Arkansas to which his ministry had migrated, and elsewhere. The essence of his preaching was a mishmash of things political and apocalyptic. In this respect he sounded rather like Rev. Hagee of San Antonio. Here is the pith of what you might find in one of his tracts according to Wikipedia–

The tracts predict impending doom and Armagedddon and invite the reader to accept Jesus as their savior. The tracts condemn Catholicism, the Pope and the American government as a Satanic conspiracy behind events such as 9/11, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the John F. Kennedy assassination. Tracts currently being distributed include a picture of Alamo circa 1986. In a tract distributed shortly before the seige of the Branch Davidian establishment in Waco,Texas, Alamo protested the media’s use of the word “compound” to describe the campus of his seminary and the word ‘cult’ to describe his ministry. As it turns out, there were more similarities between David Koresh and Tony Alamo than one might have realized at that point in time.

The rapidly accelerating downward spiral is chronicled adequately and basically correctly by Wikipedia (entry accessed Nov. 15, 2009)—

“On September 20, 2008, federal and state investigative agents raided the Arkansas headquarters of the ministry, which is a 15-acre (6.1 ha) compound near Texarkana, Arkansas, as part of a child pornography investigation. This investigation involved allegations of physical and sexual abuse and allegations of polygamy and underage marriage. According to Terry Purvis, mayor of Fouke, Arkansas, his office has received complaints from former ministry members about allegations of child abuse, sexual abuse and polygamy since the ministry established itself in the area. In turn, Purvis turned over information about the allegations to the FBI. Alamo denied the child abuse allegations.

“On September 25, 2008, Alamo was arrested by Arizona police and FBI agents in Flagstaff Arizona, on a federal warrant out of Texarkana, Arkansas, federal court (case number 08-40020) on charges that he transported minors (as early as 1994)over state lines for sexual activity in violation of the Mann Act. On October 17, 2008, he pleaded not guilty, and his case was set for trial.

On October 22, 2008, Alamo’s former followers testified in court during a preliminary hearing that Alamo had practiced polygamy and had taken a nine-year-old girl as a wife.

On December 2, 2008, a judge in Arkansas unsealed a federal indictment that included eight new charges against Alamo. The 74-year-old Alamo, who remained jailed while awaiting trial, originally faced two charges of taking minor girls across state lines for sex. The eight new counts were similar and involved four new alleged victims. His trial began on July 13, 2009, and on July 24, 2009, Alamo was found guilty on all ten federal counts.

On July 28, 2009, shortly after his conviction, Tony Alamo again made headlines by calling himself ‘just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel.’
He was sentenced to 175 years in prison on November 13, 2009. Alamo must return to court on January 13, 2010, for a hearing to determine whether five women who testified about sexual abuse will be paid up to US$2.7 million in restitution.”
——

What lessons can be learned from sad tales like this, and that of David Koresh, and in a milder vein, that of Ted Haggard (see my old blog post in the archives under the heading ‘Looking Haggard….”). Firstly there is the not incidental matter of accountability. Low church Protestants have difficulties with this issue, and isolated cults who sequester themselves in compounds have an even worse time with this issue.

When you have a church structure where there is little or no accountability for the minister, no ministerial supervision of the minister, no district superintendent or bishop or elder or board of deacons or accountability partners to call ministers to account, we have seedbed for sin in the making from the top down. Tony Alamo is simply one more example of this classic problem when you do not have some sort of hierarchial ministerial accountability structure whether it is based in the local church or in the parish or in the diocese or in the conference or in the synod.

Secondly there are the sexual issues. When ministers are placed on an unassailable pedestal, the potential for abuse of power is considerable, and it often manifests itself in sexual aberrations. If you study the issue of power relationships you quickly learn that people in the subordinant power position who look up to the minister find it difficult if not impossible to say no to the person they look up to and admire. This is all the more the case if we are talking about a man much older than a woman, and in Alamo’s case it involves young girls. Unfortunately in Alamo’s case the whistle blowing transpired far too late to prevent polygamy and other sorts of sexual abuse.

Thirdly there is the issue and problem of the cult of personality, which is so much a part of American culture, and especially Hollywood culture. Of course at bottom this is a form of idolatry, and no church should be promoting idolatry. Obviously the bright lights of TV and the context of mega-churches with super-sized pastors are breeding grounds for problems which further the cult of personality. This word just in— its the Lord’s ministry. It does not belong to this or that minister, and we can all be replaced, indeed we shall all be replaced.

My advice to those reading this is as follows—- support no TV ministries by sending them money!! You are too far removed from the pastors in question to help with the accountability process, and in fact all the body of Christ in a particular locale has an obligation to help with the accountability process. Just as all politics is local, so all church is local when it comes to this matter of accountability. If you are not part of the worshipping community in that place you are not really fulfilling your role in relationship to this or that ministry.

I would also urge you to not attend a church which furthers the isolation of the minister from his people. I am referring to the mega-church. Of course there are some responsible mega-churches who have devised some ways to avoid doing the accountability thing poorly, and avoid the depersonalizing tendencies of church services where you can become a nameless face in a crowd. But it is an ongoing struggle, and it would be better if the mega-church stopped super-sizing itself and went into the church planting business full scale. Some do, some don’t, but when it comes to worship it ought to be personal– a place where you are known and know others and you, like the minister are accountable to this expression of the body of Christ.

One of the major problems we have in American society is the misreading of the whole notion of the separation of church and state. The church-state divide should never protect those in the church from prosecution when they commit crimes of whatever sort, especially not ministers who should be held to a higher standard of ethical rectitude. Ministers must work hard to be above reproach in their personal lives. And this word just in, something maybe deeply personal and not private at all. If you commit a crime in your home, you have no right to privacy. If you commit a sin in the church which is also a crime, you have no right to claim the protection of the separation of church and state. All human beings have a strong capacity for self-justification, even Christian human beings. This is why we all need accountability. This is why Jesus’ brother James says to his audience- “confession your sins to one another, not merely to your priest or counselor or spouse or friend in confidence.

Tony Alamo’s story should be seen as a cautionary tale. My word to all ministers who thing they are bullet proof and above the law, including perhaps even the law of God is—– Remember the Alamo.

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TOP STORY: Vicious killer, child rapist face revenge

The young thug who killed a popular TV personality, and the old evangelist who assaulted girls as young as 8 and 10 were both sentenced last week and will stay behind bars for the rest of their lives.

The only way murderer Curtis Lavelle Vance and the child molester Tony Alamo will ever leave prison will be in the back of a hearse stretched out in pine coffins.

Vance, 29, escaped the death penalty and received a life sentence, almost all of it to be served in solitary confinement for his own protection. Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley had sought the death penalty for the vicious beating death of Anne Pressly. But he says putting Vance in a small cell 23 hours a day is close enough to the death penalty, maybe even worse.

Jegley told us that people who complain that the death penalty is cruel-and-unusual punishment are wrong.

“What’s cruel and unusual is the toll a crime like this exacts on the victims’ families,” the prosecutor said.

Alamo, 75, was sentenced to 175 years in federal prison for molesting child brides. That sentence was well received among former members of Alamo’s church. One of them told us, “I think it’s fabulous that justice finally got served. Shame on the
Arkansas police for taking about 15 years too long, though. I wrote a letter to the Fort Smith Police Department in 1999 about all this.”

Both defendants were defiant after the verdicts, which were announced a day apart. Vance shouted after the verdict, “It’s a corrupt system.”

Alamo has compared himself to Jesus, who was also wrongly convicted, he said, after a jury found Alamo guilty of five counts of taking underage girls across state lines.

Vance beat his young victim with a piece of lumber as she struggled with her attacker in her bed in the middle of the night after he barged into her Little Rock home last fall.

Pressly, 26, the KATV anchor whose face he disfigured almost beyond recognition, was clinging to life when her mother came to check on her around 4 a.m.

Patti Cannady, her mother, tried to put a towel on Anne’s face, and she moaned in pain.

Jegley said, “She was in agony for three hours” after Vance had left her for dead.

A doctor testified that she couldn’t tell if Pressly was a man or a woman when the victim arrived in the emergency room.

Jegley said he has received letters from white supremacists vowing revenge against Vance. But the prosecutor said that’s out of his hands now that the murderer is in the state prison system.

Jegley thinks Vance probably raped several women before he assaulted Pressly, but Vance will be tried for raping just one woman in his native Marianna, which could get him another life sentence. It was that assault that connected Vance to the Pressly murder.

Alamo, 75, could become one of the oldest prisoners in the federal system. But he looks gaunt and defeated, despite his occasional outbursts of bravado, and he will likely die before he becomes an expensive burden on the prison system. (It could cost the taxpayers more than $1 million if Vance lives into old age.)

Alamo served a prison sentence in the 1990s and restarted his ministry at Fouke in southwest Arkansas, where he had a fancy home and entertained children, just like Michael Jackson did in Neverland, except the late singer liked little boys, while the preacher molested little girls.

The self-styled evangelist probably became obsessed with young girls after the death of his wife Susan, whose body he displayed for months in hopes of seeing her resurrected.

Alamo is as crazy as Vance, whose mother, Jacqueline Vance Burnett, saved her son from the death chamber when she testified she was an abusive mother and a former prostitute and drug addict who bought drugs with welfare checks meant for her fatherless children.

She spent time in prison for burglary, forgery and theft. She had slammed her son against a brick wall when she was high on crack, probably causing him brain damage, she claimed.

Jegley doesn’t believe Vance is retarded or brain damaged. “He tried to blame it on his mother, but a lot of people had difficult childhoods, and some of them grew up to be presidents.”

Prison will be no picnic for Vance or Alamo. For the few hours a week he’ll leave his cage, Vance could find himself approached by a couple of white thugs with a blunt instrument or two. And Alamo must have heard what often happens to child molesters in prison.

Fox News reports today that former preacher Tony Alamo has been sentenced to 175 years in prison for the sexual abuse of children. In this case he preyed on the daughters of the people who followed him, taking child brides as young as 8 years of age.

The trial of Alamo is already over; it was followed by a sentencing hearing in which some of his “brides” expressed their opinions now that they are adults and out of his reach. Those who testified against him also alleged that he threatened these children with loss of their salvation if they or their families refused his advances.

One of his victims responded to his plea for clemency (based on his age of 75) this way: “You have the audacity to ask for mercy. What mercy did you show us?” A moment later she asked, “What kind of man of God does what you have done?”

Another victim said, “Maybe the real God, not the God you made up, will have mercy on your soul.”

So we see what the bottom line is. By abusing these little girls, the only thing that Alamo really did–besides have sex with children–was to destroy their faith. Do you think that these young women have a lot of confidence in the church that stood aside just like their intimidated parents, and failed to protect them from a dirty old man? I don’t think they are going to be pushing the crowds aside to get into a church this coming Sunday, although I pray that they do seek out some sane religion as time goes by.

Think about this in regard stricly to yourself. Ask yourself: what would you say to one of these women? Would you have a really good reason for her to go to church? Can you explain the abuse that she suffered in such a way that she could understand and relate to? If you learned that a friend of yours had been abused, do you have words to comfort them and tell them that they can find support in the Church?

If you feel inadequate, you aren’t alone. But we all need to be ready for the walking wounded who might turn to us if they perceive that we care and we can be trusted. Think about this and be ready, for the time to draw upon your resources of compassion could be nearer than you think.

Tony Alamo, the disgraced preacher, has been sentenced to 175 years in prison as a result of his abuse of young girls, crucifying Jesus again in their flesh by sexual degradation and humiliation. He shamed them in private, violating their bodies, and in public, where they were paraded before the congregation as his “brides.”

One of them asked him, “What kind of a man of God does what you have done?” That is the question we are hoping to answer today. To do that we must consider the theological issue called the Nature of God.

Alamo’s victim has passed from one level of understanding to another. She now realizes that when Alamo demanded her body, he was wrong to do so. When he invoked the power of God’s name and salvation given or withheld, he was wrong.

Why did he get away with it, then? I believe that he had his followers convinced of a false premise. There are two ways to look at God. One of them is, whatever God says is right because God said it.

The other way, which I believe, is that God never does (or asks for) anything but good. We must make up our minds about what we believe about God. Who is God–what does he want? What does God want with each of us?

We don’t have to ask someone else to show us what is right and wrong. We have the capacity to make that decision ourselves. Because of that, parents protect their children and prepare them for adulthood in a sensible and nurturing way. So why did the parents of these girls give them up to Alamo’s depraved appetite?

The answer is simple: Alamo told them that it was God’s will that he rape their children. Remember, outside this cult, we have civil codes that say a little boy or girl cannot be violated sexually without penalty of law (which is what Alamo is facing now). Alamo found a way to get around the laws, at least temporarily, by persuading the parents of these little girls that it was OK because God said it was OK.

This leads us back to the nature of God. I can tell you that if some dirty old guy told me that I should surrender my daughter to him, it wouldn’t happen. My belief about God does not permit me to agree with that proposition–in other words, I disagree with his premise that God would approve.

The minute that you acquire the power to say no to a preacher–or a church–or a Pope–or the Bible–because they do not reflect an adequate concept of the nature of God, you have broken the power of the false Church to abuse you. So the idea that “anything is OK if God says it is” simply is not true.

God never does anything but good. God does not will anything but good. God wants us to do good and we fear that we will be punished if we do evil, even in God’s name–because it is impossible to do evil with God’s consent.

As the trial judge Henry F. Barnes said to Alamo, “Mr. Alamo, one day you will face a higher, a greater judge than me; may he have mercy on your soul.”

Justice sometimes takes time. And often, we are convinced, it is not done in chronological time, one of our human measuring sticks.

But Friday, justice caught up to evangelist Tony Alamo in a federal courthouse in Texarkana in a frame of reference we can identify with and support. He was sentenced to 175 years on numerous counts of having sex with underage girls.

The sentence—the maximum U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes could assess—is what all but the most delusional of Alamo’s followers believe he deserves for despoiling young lives in the name of God.

For a 75-year-old man, it may seem excessive and intended to add extreme emphasis on the seriousness of the crimes. The sentence of 175 years will amount to several lifetimes for Alamo. Given his age and his health, it is beyond unlikely he will walk out of federal custody.

It is not too much—especially if we consider the time recompense for the damage done to his victims.

They will spend their lifetimes reckoning with the damage Alamo has done to them physically, mentally and spiritually. It took a long time for our systems of laws and public welfare to rescue these young people. It will take even longer for them to heal. Some may not, even if they have all the resources available to them.

In the sense that Alamo is doing life—several times over—for his trespasses against the innocent, with the complicity of their gullible parents, it’s too bad more years could not be piled up against him.

Furthermore, the prosecutions ought not to stop with him. His associates should be hauled into court and off to prison. The parents or guardians of the victims should be brought to the bar of justice also. At a minimum they should lose their parental rights.

It is one thing for adults to give up all claims to their own free will to follow a religious charlatan. It is another to sacrifice their children to him. No God worth worshipping would require such an offering.

Alamo Case Reaches its Fine Verdict

“Bye, bye, Bernie.”

That’s what the crowd that was gathered outside the federal courthouse in Texarkana shouted after hearing that Bernie Lazar Hoffman, aka Tony Alamo, had been convicted on all counts of taking girls across state lines for sex.

As Alamo was taken to a waiting U.S. marshal’s vehicle, he hollered to reporters and said: “I’m just another of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel,” according to an Associated Press story.

Alamo can spare us the agony of listening to his I’m-such-a-martyr speeches. Very simply, he is a power-hungry child abuser. And even if he was the supreme ruler within his compound, some of his supporters on the outside must be wondering after Friday’s verdict if their blind devotion to him was well placed.

Included in the 10-count indictment was a girl who Alamo “married” when she was 8 years old and “soon molested.” Another girl was 11 when Alamo “married” her. And another was 14.

During the trial, the women, now between the ages of 17 and 33, testified that Alamo had “married” them in private ceremonies when they were minors and that he had taken them across state lines and had sex with them. Such a fine prophet he is.

By taking them across state lines, he violated the Mann Act, a morality law that’s almost a century old. In all, Alamo took five underage girls across state lines between 1994 and 2005. Alamo blamed the government and the Vatican for his legal problems. Please!

An Associated Press story leading up to Alamo’s federal trial said he “presides over a multi-million-dollar empire held in his follower’s names. Trucking companies, residential property and a number of questionable ventures fund the work of his 100 to 200 acolytes.”

He gathered all that wealth at the expense of his followers, some of whom worked for $5 a day for 20 hours of work. The Labor Department put a stop to that, forcing him in the late 1980s to pay his employees at least minimum wage.

Then in the 1990s, he served four years in prison for tax evasion, as the IRS took millions of dollars from him for unpaid taxes. At the end of his sentence, he paid $250,000 to cover his fine and penalties.

“How in the world could Mr. Alamo come up with a quarter of a million dollars … when the entire time he hasn’t been able to work, he hasn’t held a job other than what he may have been employed in inside a federal penitentiary?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyra Jenner asked during a bond hearing for Alamo in October.

That would be because, as Alamo told one of the girls in his compound who questioned his authority, he was still in control of his empire — even from within his prison confines.

His latest and most serious run-in with authorities started in September when state and federal agents raided his compounded near Texarkana because of repeated reports of abuse.

The prosecution showed that Alamo ran his compound with a tight fist — every aspect of a person’s life was dictated by him — even to the point that men were sent away from the facility so that Alamo could have sex with their wives. They believed him to be a prophet who had a direct line to God, and they feared him because he could withhold food from them and beat them and otherwise make their lives miserable.

That was before Friday. After Friday, it may be a little harder for him to control anything of consequence in the outside world because Alamo may not be able to utter the words: “When I get out… .” When he is sentenced in a couple of months or so, Alamo could get 175 years on the 10 charges, and violations of the Mann Act amount to $250,000 each. As federal attorney Jenner said: “We believe he will face the rest of his natural life in prison.”

That is a fine thing to contemplate. Alamo is a menace, and prison is exactly where he deserves to be — make that rot.

We haven’t heard the last of Alamo

It is ever so tempting to believe we have heard the last of Tony Alamo—or nearly the last.

We have not, and I’m not referring to the sentencing the evangelist will face in a few weeks. It will be a media event.

Alamo may be taken off to a federal lockup, but he won’t be off the radar. Not for a long time.

In this sense, he has made just the kind of impact a cult leader fancies. He will be burned into the public consciousness for quite a long time.

Among things left unresolved with Alamo’s conviction Friday on 10 counts of violating the Mann Act—which makes it a crime to take someone across state lines for immoral purposes—is what will happen to his victims, especially those who are underage or were underage when Alamo “took them as wives.”

Alamo, at 74, likely is looking at a life sentence, given the penalty range on his convictions. The odds favor his dying in prison.

But others are facing a life sentence too. The girls Alamo abused will live out their lives with his crimes at least in the recesses of their minds. They may undergo counseling about what was done to them. No amount of counseling will erase entirely the memories of what was done to them in the name of religion.

Others, including young and adult males, also will be haunted by the beatings they took, as well as the emotional and verbal emasculation they endured while living in the Alamo Christian Ministries compounds.

And what about those who continue to follow, or perhaps I should say be misled, by Alamo.

They may not remain on ministries properties here or elsewhere in the United States. But we would be naive to believe that no one will try to follow their leader near where he will be doing his time. Alamo himself concedes he can lead from jail.

Also, quite a few children remain in state custody pending resolution of abuse and neglect cases filed against their parents associated with those living in the compounds. These cases will be in the courts for awhile.

So, no, Alamo’s name will not disappear from the headlines just yet—and maybe not for years to come.

Alamo could use a prison consultant

Tony Alamo, the self-anointed preacher and serial child molester, looked nervous outside the federal courthouse in Texarkana on Friday.

The former hotshot leader of the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation, who was once just a smalltime hoodlum and a washed-up crooner before he became rich robbing people of their dignity and freedom, was looking at serious prison time.

He realized he would die behind bars.

Alamo had exploited vulnerable people and broken the law for 40 years, and he’d bought off local officials wherever he set up his so-called ministry and flouted the law.

He smoked big cigars and drank cognac whenever he went out of town, while his followers slaved at his many businesses.

They worked without pay. He took their children and raped them.

He thought he could get away with kidnapping, brainwashing, child abuse, tax evasion and even threatening a federal judge.

After all, authorities in western Arkansas, where Tony and Susan Alamo set up their Christian ministry back in the 1970s, welcomed the couple as solid members of the community who contributed to the local economy when they opened scores of businesses in and around Fort Smith.

These officials were showered with gifts and took generous payoffs. Alamo probably supplied them with booze, drugs and underage girls.

I saw how he and his wife abused their followers and first wrote about them almost 30 years ago, while the Fort Smith newspaper praised the Alamos for taking hippies off the streets and putting them to work.

Sure, the feds put him behind bars for four years in 1991 for tax evasion, but Alamo, by then a widower, was right back in business.

He’d rip off his followers and “marry” their children, and not one Arkansas law-enforcement agency was curious about what was going on in those compounds in Dyer in Crawford County.

He distributed millions of subliterate fliers around the country. He attacked the Catholic Church, the new world order and the federal government for persecuting him.

But then Tony Alamo pushed his luck too far.

Last week, a federal jury convicted him on 10 counts of transporting underage girls across state lines for sex. Suddenly, Tony wasn’t his old arrogant self but look scared.

The 74-year-old Alamo knew he was facing up to 175 years in prison. Tony is kind of dumb — why take girls, even if they’re his “wives,” from Arkansas to Arizona when the feds are watching you? — but even he understood that the jury’s decision was a death sentence.

U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes will sentence Alamo in about two months. Even if the judge takes pity on him and sentences him to half the maximum allowed, Tony’s looking at 80 years — or about a year for every girl he molested.

But remember, there’s no parole in federal prisons. He’ll get credit for good behavior, so he might get out when he’s 150 or so.
If Tony were a white-collar criminal, he could hire a jail consultant to help him pick out the right penitentiary. He might try www.ready4prison.com.

But he won’t get to choose his own prison, which will be his tomb.

It’s a steep decline from the 1970s and 1980s, when Tony and Susan moved to Alma so she could be closer to Dyer, where she grew up the daughter of pig farmers during the Depression.

The Alamos bought a lot of land and opened a huge restaurant on Hwy. 71 in Alma. Country stars performed there. The Alamos sold fancy rhinestone-studded denim jackets made by captive labor.

They never paid their workers. No wonder their businesses made millions.

But then Susan Alamo died in 1982 from lung cancer — meeting her the year before, I could tell she was a heavy smoker — even though she told her followers she didn’t smoke and promised her followers she would be cured.

Tony wouldn’t bury her. Perhaps cruelly, people said Tony just kept playing the Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up, Little Susie,” but it didn’t help.

Nothing seemed to go right after that. The phony preacher smoked and drank and fornicated, but he was losing control of himself and his businesses.

His bizarre obsession with young girls led to his eventual ruin. The feds would first get Alamo on taxes, like Al Capone.
Less than a decade after his wife died, Tony found himself in federal prison.

When he came out, he set up shop in Fouke, near Texarkana. It was said he’d bought off the city council, but his empire was just about gone.

The word was out that he was a degenerate. When he was exposed in court as a child molester, the self-styled minister said out loud in court, “Bull—-.’’

The jury must have thought: What a dork.

Alamo didn’t testify in his own behalf, even though he’d bragged that he would.

The jury believed his victims. The judge should throw away the key.

The Tony Alamo jail ministry should keep him occupied for quite a while.