Preacher with "child brides" sentenced - and defends his actions!

Unrepentant child molester and Christian evangelist Tony Alamo will be spending the rest of his life behind bars, a mild fate considering the loathsome crimes he committed.  A federal judge in Texarkana has sentenced the founder of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries to 175 years in prison for transporting young girls he referred to as his "brides" across state lines for sex.  Judge Harry F. Barnes of Arkansas' Federal District Court said Mr. Alamo abused his status as a pastor and father figure and threatened the girls with "the loss of their salvation" in order to bend them to his will. 

And just how unremorseful is this upstanding example of religious fundamentalism?  Prior to sentencing, the 75-year-old "man of God" declared:  "I’m glad I am me and not the deceived people in the world!"

From SPLC:  The anti-Catholic, pro-polygamy, gay-bashing evangelist - whose birth name is Bernie LaZar Hoffman - was convicted in July on 10 counts of taking girls across state lines for sex over a period of 14 years.  His stepdaughter, Christhiaon Coie, wasn’t among them but, in an earlier interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, said she was raped by Alamo when she was in her teens...  One teenager told the FBI that Alamo “married” and had intercourse with her when she was 9.  An informant told agents that she saw Alamo sometimes take more than one girl at a time to his bedroom, where he kept candy bars and a Barbie doll collection.  From the Dallas Examiner:  One of the women who Alamo took as a “bride” at age eight spoke to him from the witness stand during the sentencing hearing. “You preyed on innocent children. You have the audacity to ask for mercy.  What mercy did you show us?” she said.  From CanadaNow:  Alamo was fined $250,000 as well.  He is due in court in January 2010 for a judge to determine if he must pay the victims any restitution.  Alamo claims he is innocent, and the charges are made up.  He claims to love children, and that he would never do anything to hurt any child.  His lawyer has filed an appeal.

Incredibly, Alamo defends his depravity on the ministry's website.  First there's a long rant where the preacher blames his "persecution" on the U.S. government: 

My trial is Government vs. the Bible.  The five young women who are falsely testifying against me have all been convinced to do so by the FBI.  The FBI paid all of their tuition to go to a place called Wellspring, which is a deprogramming center.  Deprogramming is a nice word for hypnosis, brainwashing, mind-control. Their testimony is not to be believed because it is not true, and they are not in their right mind.

Then Alamo disingenuously attempts to justify his actions:  

The legal age of marriage is puberty.  Webster’s Dictionary states childhood is the “state or time of being a child; state or time from birth or infancy to puberty or maturity.”  Webster’s definition of puberty is “the age when one becomes capable to bear children, which is marked by maturing of the reproductive organs, with the onset of menstruation in the female; the period at which sexual maturity is reached.”  The Bible says this as well.  God’s Word, the Bible, never condemns a man for having more than one wife.

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says:  He is always convinced that it says what he means."   George Bernard Shaw

Comments

[Trent]

People can twist the bible to say whatever they want it to say. That's why it makes such a shitty moral guide.

[Carol]

Numbers 31:17-18 (New Intl Version) 'Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.' (That would be sll those prepubescent virgins the Israelites took as their wives and sex slaves.) Point being, this man CAN use scripture to justify his crimes. Of course most people only dwell on the "pretty" parts of the bible...

[Suze]

There's no crazy stronger than religious crazy.