Sitting across from an interviewer at the Children's
Advocacy Center in Texarkana, Texas, the 16-year-old girl
described her job sorting mail at the Tony Alamo Christian
Ministries compound in Fouke, her belief that the end of the
world is near and her passion for distributing religious
pamphlets in cities across the country.
She said emphatically that she had never been abused, and
she defended her 74-year-old pastor, Tony Alamo.
"If anything ever happened to anybody, anything ever
happened where someone was molested in the church, Tony, my
pastor, would kick them out immediately," the girl
said. "He doesn't tolerate that, let alone - he would
never do such a thing. That's a sin."
The interview was videotaped at the center on Sept. 21, a
day after more than 100 state and federal police officers
raided the ministry's compound in Fouke in search of
evidence that children had been physically and sexually
abused. The 16-year-old and five other girls were taken into
protective custody, interviewed at the Children's Advocacy
Center and placed in foster homes.
On Christmas Day, a Google Video user known as First
AmendmentTV posted a copy of the recording on the free
videosharing Web site. Another Web site,
inquisitionupdate.org, provides a link to the video and to
records in the girl's child-welfare case.
Today, the Arkansas Department of Human Services will ask
a Miller County circuit judge to order whoever released the
information to have it taken off the Web.
Julie Munsell, a spokesman for the department, cited
Arkan- sas Code 9-27-352, which requires proceedings in
juvenile court to be confidential.
"We do have some serious concerns about
confidentiality, particularly when it involves a child who
is entrusted to our care," Munsell said. "The law
is very clear on what the limitations are in terms of
disclosure."
Copies of the video recording of the 16-year-old's
interview, along with other material, had been provided to
the attorneys for all of the parents and children in the
case, Munsell said. It's unclear who leaked the recording
and the documents, she said.
The Web site that featured the links is titled
Inquisition Update with Tom Friess. E-mails sent to Friess
weren't answered Wednesday.
The filing in Circuit Court will ask for an order
directing whoever released the information to ask for it to
be taken off the Internet and will bar the release of such
information in the future, Munsell said.
The video has been cited by members of the ministry and
their supporters in response to what they contend is an
assault on their church
The ministry's Web site, www.alamoministries.com,
features interviews with parents of some of the 36 children
from the ministry who have been placed in foster homes
during the investigation into abuse. The ministry's
newsletters, left on car windshields in cities throughout
the country, have featured letters from the parents
complaining about the Human Services Department's actions.
Among those who have spoken up is Debra Ondrisek, the
mother of the 16-year-old girl interviewed in the video and
of a 13-year-old boy taken into protective custody during a
sweep of Alamo-controlled properties on Nov. 18.
"It is out of control, and they are out to destroy
Pastor Alamo and to destroy this ministry," Ondrisek
said in a Dec. 16 interview, posted on the Web site.
"If people can't see that, they are so engulfed in
their entertainment, their booze, whatever they do on the
Internet, on television - all they care about is what
pleases them sensually in this world. They don't mind being
braindead."
Ondrisek didn't return a call seeking comment for this
article.
The Human Services Department has said that the practices
of the church, including beatings for infractions of church
rules, put children at risk of abuse. Alamo, who was
arrested in Arizona on Sept. 25, is awaiting trial on
charges that he transported five underage girls across state
lines for sexual purposes over the past 14 years.
"We absolutely do not have an opinion about how
people choose to raise their children, except that they are
raised in a environment that's free of abuse and
neglect," Munsell said.
During an hour and 45 minutes of questioning at the
Children's Advocacy Center, the tall, thin 16-year-old, with
dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, spoke politely, with
her legs crossed and fingers locked around her knee. She
wore a blue hooded jacket over a T-shirt, and bluejean
shorts.
She said she was raised in the ministry, along with her
13-yearold brother and two sisters, now 33 and 20. Three
other brothers, ages 18, 23 and 30 were also raised in the
ministry but have left.
Her parents met after joining the church in the Los
Angeles area. For the past eight years, the family has lived
in Texarkana, where the girl, her youngest brother and her
parents shared a six-bedroom, two-story house with another
family.
The girl said her mother works at a ministry-controlled
thrift store in the Texarkana area. Her father, Richard, is
a janitor at the church in Fouke.
The girl said she graduated from high school at the
church this year and worked in the office, sorting requests
for religious pamphlets and Bibles.
Asked by the interviewer, Missy Stout, if she planned to
go to college, the girl said, "My job's assigned. I
don't need to go to college for it."
She added, "What I like to do really is, I like to
go out and pass out literature." That task, carried out
by teams of church members, had taken her across the
country, she said.
"It's very exciting really, to just tell people
about the Lord and get responses," the girl said.
Asked if she wants to do that for the rest of her life,
the girl said, "The world's not going to last much
longer."
"Natural disasters going off all over the place -
people think it's Mother Nature," the girl said.
"It's really God."
She said she went to the church in Fouke every day where
she worked in the office, ate in the cafeteria and attended
services at night. Friday is movie night for girls and women
in the church, she said, and the night before the raid, she
and other girls had watched a Charlie Chaplin film in a
house at the compound.
During the raid, "We didn't know what was going on
at first," the girl said. "At first ... I couldn't
see that they had 'FBI' - I thought maybe they were
burglars."
She continued, "We tried to make an exit through the
back way, but then one came up there so we had to go back
in. Then some more came and pointed their machine guns on
us, put a spotlight on us and said 'stand right
there.'"
The girl said she had never been touched in what she
described as her "private area" and that no one
had ever asked her to touch him.
"I believe in keeping your virginity until you get
married," the girl said. "If anything else
happened, I'd be totally ruined."
At one time, men and women in the church were allowed to
interact, but "some of them got into fornication and
stuff," the girl said. Now, boys and girls sit on
opposite sides of the cafeteria and church. People avoid
talking to members of the opposite sex unless they are
related, she said.
"We don't talk to each other, which is fine with
me."
Asked about marriages within the church, the girl echoed
Alamo's teachings that the Bible allows girls to be married
when they reach puberty. But she said the Bible also says
people should obey the law of the land unless it's a sin, so
the church doesn't allow people to marry until they turn 18.
She added, "What if you like someone when you're 16,
and it's just a little crush or something? ... It's always
better to wait."
