Six minors have been temporarily placed in state custody as part of a child porn investigation after a raid on a ministry run by a man who says “consent is puberty” when it comes to sex, officials said on Sunday.
The children will be in the custody of the Arkansas Department of Human Services as investigators interview them, state police spokesman Bill Sadler said in a statement.
Sadler didn’t say how long the interviews would last, but did say that courts would decide the children’s status in the event of any “long-term separation” from the property of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in rural Fouke.
He did not say how old the children were, but an e-mail that authorities inadvertently sent to media members last week referred to 12, 13 and 14-year-old girls.
The move comes after a raid on Saturday by more than 100 federal and state authorities. Investigators said their two-year probe into allegations of child porn and abuse focused on convicted tax evader Tony Alamo and his ministry, described by its critics as a cult.
Alamo claimed in a telephone interview on Saturday that the investigation was part of a federal push to legalize same-sex marriage while outlawing polygamy. He also said when it comes to girls having sex, “consent is puberty.”
News of the raid brought Anthony Justin Lane, 34, into Fouke from his job in nearby Texarkana, hoping for some word about his family.
Lane said he has been trying for 10 years to reunite with his children, who belong to Alamo’s ministry. Lane said he saw a 13-year-old girl marry a man of about 40 just before he was kicked out of the church for asking too many questions.
Lane hired a lawyer and said that he is trying to subpoena his girlfriend, but that it remains difficult as she moves among Alamo’s churches in Arkansas and California.
Lane said he last saw his oldest daughter, who would now be 13, in 2005. She offered him a pamphlet as he sat in his car reading a newspaper outside Alamo’s church in Fort Smith in 2005. When Lane told her he was her father, he said, she ran off.
He has received only a few photos since then of the 13-year-old, an 11-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son from a relative. His longtime girlfriend was pregnant with the boy when Lane said he was expelled from the church for questioning its practices.
“I see pictures of those kids and I feel robbed — robbed of being a father,” Lane told reporters. “I keep laying it in the Lord’s hands and hoping he’ll have mercy on my children and protect them.”
US Attorney Bob Balfe declined to comment when asked whether an arrest warrant had been issued for Alamo.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors the activities of extremist groups in the US, describes Alamo’s ministry as a cult that opposes homosexuality, Catholicism and the government.
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