Five Escape Charges of Child Abuse

Child-abuse charges will not be filed against Christian commune leader Tony Alamo and his followers, four of whom were arrested in a March raid, because prosecutors concluded there was not enough evidence against them, the district attorney’s office said Thursday.

About 60 sheriff’s deputies raided Alamo’s commune in a remote Saugus canyon after receiving complaints from a child, who formerly lived there, that he had been beaten with a paddle. The four commune members were arrested on suspicion of felony child abuse, but authorities were unable to find Alamo.

“There is insufficient evidence, in my opinion, to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Myron Jenkins said.

Jenkins said that he concluded the case against Alamo was problematic because the child abuse allegations were made by an 11-year-old whose parents are locked in a bitter custody dispute and a physician could not say with medical certainty that the child had been battered. In addition, authorities believe that potential witnesses who lived at the commune were shipped out of the area on buses, he said.

In a telephone interview after the announcement, Alamo accused authorities of trying to discredit his church by masterminding the raid, which he said was “hatched in hell.”

“It’s an attempt to destroy the integrity of the church and myself,” said Alamo, who had remained a fugitive since the raid. “Every time Satan forces hurt on our church, it’s a direct attempt to destroy people’s souls.”

Alamo said he was talking from “the Pacific Northwest.”

Alamo operates the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation, which perhaps is best known for circulating anti-Catholic literature in cities across the country and operating buses from Hollywood to carry street people to services on the rural foundation grounds.

The foundation, which has been the target of numerous government investigations over the years, lost its tax-exempt status after the IRS concluded that it was primarily a money-making enterprise, taking much of the income of members. The foundation is appealing the decision.

The most recent investigation was launched in March after an Orange County Superior Court judge gave temporary child custody to two brothers, Robert Alan Miller and Corey Lee Miller, former Alamo followers, who alleged that their three sons had been physically and emotionally abused. After deputies seized the boys from the Saugus commune, Justin Miller, 11, told authorities that, at Alamo’s urging, four men had struck him 140 times with a wooden paddle two months earlier.

Miller’s allegations prompted the second, larger raid. Deputies arrested the men named by Justin as participating in the beating. Deputies failed to serve arrest warrants on Alamo and two other church members who they could not find on the grounds.

Jenkins said the physician who examined Miller could not pinpoint if the bruising on his buttocks came from a brief recent swatting or from a serious beating months ago.

Further weakening the case, Jenkins said, was the belief that the boy’s mother, who still belongs to the church, would deny that her son had been struck.

He said, however, that the charges could be reconsidered any time within a three-year statute of limitations.