Federal authorities conducting a child-porn investigation raided the headquarters Saturday of a ministry run by a convicted tax evader once labelled by prosecutors as a polygamist who preys on girls and women.

Social workers interviewed children who live at the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries complex, which critics call a cult, to find out whether they were abused. The two-year investigation involves a law that prohibits the transportation of children across state lines for criminal activity, said Tom Browne, who runs the FBI office in Little Rock.

“Children living at the facility may have been sexually and physically abused,” Mr. Browne said.

No one was arrested, but U.S. Attorney Bob Balfe said before the raid that he expected an arrest warrant for Mr. Alamo to be issued later. The federal investigation centred on the production of child pornography, while state police were looking into allegations of other child abuse, he said.

In a phone call to The Associated Press from a friend’s house in the Los Angeles area, Tony Alamo – who was also once accused of child abuse – denied involvement in pornography.

Tony could have easily deflected the charges by opening his buildings and computers for the feds to examine. Instead he takes a defensive posture, making the sort of defense we’ve come to expect from criminal theotards.

“We don’t go into pornography; nobody in the church is into that,” Mr. Alamo said. “Where do these allegations stem from? The anti-Christ government. The Catholics don’t like me because I have cut their congregation in half. They hate true Christianity.”

Damn those Catholics, breaking into Alamo’s compound and loading incriminating evidence on his computers. Or maybe it was the government’s secret agents.

Mr. Alamo told the AP on Saturday that he believed the raid was part of a push by the federal government to make same-sex marriage legal while outlawing polygamy.

Mr. Alamo said he thought polygamy was allowed in the Bible but said he did not practise it himself. He also said that “consent is puberty” when it comes to sex.

If that’s the best this roaring jackass can come up with as a defense he must think we’re all as stupid as those he’s hoodwinked into following him.

(Story source-globeandmail.com)