Citizen Scandal: Preacher Under Child Porn Investigation, Says “Puberty Is Consent”

Tony Alamo, 74, had a syndicated televangelist program in the 70s with his late wife Susan. At the time, his “glitzy” denim jackets were worn by everyone from Elvis Presley to Bruce Springsteen. Then he went to jail for tax evasion in 1985, and again in 1994. Now he’s back in the news after police raided his Fourke, Arkansas compound (he prefers the term “campus”) as part of a child pornography investigation. Six underage girls were seized, as authorities believe they were in “immediate danger.” While Alamo swears that there are no porno shoots or child marriages going on (“In the Bible it happened. But girls today, I don’t marry ‘em if they want to at 14-15 years old”), he stands by his belief that young girls should be married as soon as possible and that, “consent is puberty.”

Fun facts about Tony Alamo:

• How did Tony get out of jail after being found guilty of tax evasion in 1994? By revealing the whereabouts of his wife’s body, which had been dug up in 1991 after he fled from an unrelated government raid, to her family. Susan died in 1982.
• Tony still swears that Susan will be resurrected.
• Tony considers himself “a completed Jew,” having converted to Christianity in the 60s after marrying his second wife. He was born Bernard LaZar Hoffman. Says Alamo, “[Jews] wrote the Bible. I don’t want these stinking gentiles in Rome telling me what it says. They don’t know.”
• Called Ronald Reagan an “Antichrist Devil.”
• He pronounces his last name “a-LAH-mo.”