Prosecutor says evangelist's calls forced girls to 'marry'

TEXARKANA, Ark. — The young girls in evangelist Tony Alamo's ministry came to fear every time the telephone rang.

Each call offered a new chance that the 74-year-old minister wanted them to come to his large home to hear God's message. Their loyal parents pushed them out the doors, saying Alamo's home offered comforts such as television and a swimming pool, luxuries unimaginable in the strictly controlled lives of his followers.

But prosecutors say the girls knew that Alamo carried only one message — for those as young as 8 to "marry" him and subject themselves to his sexual assaults.

Prosecutors offered a stark portrayal of life in Alamo's ministry Tuesday after U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes swore in a jury of nine men and three women.

Lawyers for Alamo, who is charged with taking underage girls across state lines for sex, argued that the alleged victims traveled across the country to further the outreach and business interests of a "bona fide religious group" that the government targeted out of its own prejudices.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes told jurors that a 15-year-old girl who left the Alamo ministries in 2006 told the FBI that the evangelist "married" her at age 8. She told agents Alamo exchanged wedding vows and rings with her and sexually assaulted her for the first time before she turned 10, Fowlkes said.

Alamo summoned another 15-year-old girl to his home in 1994 by telephone, authorities said, then told her parents that God instructed him to marry her. Fowlkes said the parents consented and Alamo repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl, taking her on trips to West Virginia and Tennessee as he prepared for a trial on federal tax-evasion charges.

Another call came in 1998, when Alamo "married" a 14-year-old girl, Fowlkes said.

In 2002, Alamo summoned three underage girls into his bedroom and shut the door, telling them God wanted him to marry two of them, Fowlkes said. Alamo later sexually assaulted two of those girls he "married," one 11, the other 14, the prosecutor said.

The girls also traveled on Alamo's orders to other states, Fowlkes said.

One of those girl's parents encouraged her to marry Alamo, saying his home had access to better food, movies and a swimming pool, Fowlkes said. But the evangelist controlled every aspect of the girls' lives from what they ate to who spoke with them, the prosecutor said.