Sex-trial testimony: Evangelist ruled over us

updated 5:41 p.m. ET July 18, 2009

TEXARKANA, Ark. - In the years after evangelist Tony Alamo took the 14-year-old girl as a bride, she said, she caught glimpses of her father on the surveillance cameras that fed into the minister's office.

As her father walked by outside, monitors provided views from every angle. But even though only a few walls and doors separated them, leaving Alamo's home without permission was unthinkable.

Alamo was a prophet, she'd been taught. He was "God's chosen one." And she was scared.

"I felt uncomfortable asking Tony to see my dad," the woman, now 20, testified at his federal trial on charges that he took underage girls across state lines for sex.

"So you had to ask Tony's permission before you could go outside and see your father?" a prosecutor asked.

"Yes."

The woman, who left Alamo's compound in Arkansas three years ago, was one of many witnesses whose testimony offered a rare glimpse inside the evangelist's secretive ministry. They said Alamo made the decisions: who got married, what children were taught in school, who got clothes, who was allowed to eat. He also chose which of his followers to "marry," witnesses said — including one girl who was 8 years old.

"He had control over everything," testified a 30-year-old woman who said she was another child bride.

Alamo approved curriculums
Families moved state to state at Alamo's command, living in apartments, trailers or houses owned by the ministry. The church had a language of its own: Alamo as "Papa Tony," new members as "baby Christians" and those suspect few living outside as "visiting Christians."

At his compounds in Arkansas, students learned Alamo-approved curriculums, with ninth-grade biology tossed aside because the course material discussed sex, one witness said. Alamo began separating the sexes in the 1990s, and by the time he was released from prison following his 1994 tax evasion conviction, brothers and sisters often lived separate lives, another woman said.

In the 1980s, Alamo's ministry sold elaborately designed denim jackets made by members to celebrities. At the compound more recently, followers filled out request forms for everything, whether clothing or toiletries. Alamo himself approved all expenditures, witnesses said.

Alamo's house, meanwhile, had television, a swimming pool and ponies in the backyard — unbelievable luxuries for a life one described as floating just above the poverty line. Those amenities led at least one mother to push her underage daughter to become an Alamo wife, testimony showed.

Some of the mothers and fathers drove big-rig trucks hauling goods from Alamo's side industries. While the federal government seized much of the ministry's property when Alamo was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion, the 30-year-old woman remembered followers being required to roll candy for the ministry's distribution company.

No food allowed in homes
Families were prohibited from keeping food at their homes, the 20-year-old woman said. Alamo also banned his followers from eating meat or dairy products. At one point, on a layover at a Las Vegas airport, the woman said she and another Alamo "wife" committed a sin — they ate a cheese pizza.

Sometimes, Alamo put requests from his followers on hold in order to have money to print the church's apocalyptic tracts.

Those fliers, outlining everything from Alamo's feared "one-world government," his belief in flying saucers and his hatred of the Vatican, served as a backbone of the ministry after he stopped preaching in the wake of his 1994 tax conviction. Each person had a distribution quota, the 30-year-old woman said.

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