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(AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File)
After nearly a year, the Arkansas Department of Human Services still has not returned more than thirty children, who were taken in a raid on Tony Alamo Ministries. The Department has made several requirements for the reunification of parents and children. One of the requirements the Arkansas DHS has made is that the parents must sever their connection with Tony Alamo Ministries if they want to be reunited with their children.
In a request to the United States District Court for Western Arkanasa for injunctive relief from the Arkansas Department of Human Services, Philip Kuhn, attorney for Tony Alamo Ministries and two members of the ministry, Albert Ralph Krantz and Gregory Scott Seago, states on page 29 of the petition for relief that:
"The parents must abandon church sponsored housing and secure secular employment outside the church in order to get their children back from the state. This is such an unconstitutional policy that ordering this as a condition of parent and child reunification programs is clearly outside the jurisdiction of the state court. This requirement goes to the very heart of the constitutional violations as church sponsored housing and employment within the church is both critical and essential to the way the church members wish to practice their religious preference."
One Arkansas child protective services caseworker went as far to say that parents should leave the ministry and go to the Salvation Army or a homeless shelter. Attorney Kuhn's plea for injunctive relief questions how becoming homeless is in the best interests of the children.
The requirement that parents chose between their church and their children in order to be reunited with their children, appears to be unprecedented in American History. The lawsuit filed by attorney Kuhn asking for the federal government to give injunctive relief from the State of Arkansas is one of the most important petitions filed on behalf of religious and civil liberties in recent years.
For more info: Read more articles by this writer on Tony Alamo Ministries, child protective services, child abuse and family court.
Comments
I have to ask. Does the writer of this article (Daniel Weaver) work for Tony Alamo Ministries? Or, perhaps Alamo's attorney?
Nowhere does it say they must choose between their children and their religion. They are fully able to keep practicing their religion. They must be able to prove they are capable of raising their children themselves, without having to rely on the church for basic needs. Like every parent must do.
This should be fully retracted, or re-titled.
Just because DHS wants the parents to be gainfully employed and able to support their children, and not be totally under the control of the church, is no reason to start such lies.
Anybody following this story knows that this man had complete control of his followers. One of the ways these cults gain and maintain control of it's people is to take away everything they have and leave them no choice but to turn to the church for the basics of life.
If they are unable to provide for themselves, how can they ever raise chil
They must be able to prove they are capable of raising their children themselves, without having to rely on the church for basic needs. Like every parent must do.
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Using this argument a mother in a wheelchair, if depending on relatives for assistance in meeting the children's basic needs, must yield custody of the children to the state.
A person in a wheelchair is under a disability plan paid for by the government. They receive government support for both themselves and their children.
Plus, if there were no family to take care of the children or the person in the wheelchair, you bet the state would step in and see that the kids were taken care of correctly. That's their job. That's what they did with these kids. As they should have. They were in real danger.
People like KWH are haters and delight in the pain and suffering of the Alamo ministries children and their parents. They fit right into DHS to destroy innocent families.
They have no conscience and no natural affection or compassion and their only motive is the same as the state and that is to destroy the Alamo ministries. Extremely EVIL people that they are! No abuse was found on any of the 36 children already stolen. They need to be returned! There is no abuse in that ministry this whole thing is a lying slandering campaign to destroy this Christian bible believing church so that they will stop exposing the Vatican and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world so that souls can be won for the Lord. These people are being used by the government to fuel hate against these innocent children. They used people like this in Waco, TX to burn alive innocent men, women and children/babies. This government is NOT for America it is out to destroy America for the Pope
People have a right to work, live and raise their children in their own faith. There is no law that states a person must have secular employment or dictates where they can live. At least not yet. It's people like KWH that want this government to dictate every aspect of our lives and take away our rights! It is against the constitution/amendment rights to force anyone to comply with these demands. It was posted in articles that every conversation is being monitored so where do you get off saying these people are being controlled by this Pastor? They are free to leave anytime. This country is going to hell in a hand basket and people like you are fueling it. Stop Religious persecution, the stealing of children and dictatorship. KWH tend to your own house and stay out of other peoples business! If you want to attack child sex abuse start attacking the Catholic church and rally for it's hundreds of thousands of victims and pedo priests who are not jail. Wake up people! you may be next
To clarify KWH, I do not work for Tony Alamo Ministry or his lawyers. I have no connection with the ministry, and I am opposed to many of their teachings.
The article stands as written. It will not be retracted. Several of the people whose children were taken believe that they should work full time in the ministry in exchange for their daily needs being met. This is very much like the way full time ministers in other religions have their needs met, so why discriminate against this religion.
People in the Peace Corps work for what amounts to their room and board. Are they not gainfully employed?
Why did you delete my post? I was not crude nor did I attack you personally.
I stated that I have been involved with Alamo and his ministry for close to 40 years. Don't you think that input is valuable?
I understand your personal contempt for DHS, but do you find it necessary to overlook the facts?
Tony Alamo controls every aspect of his followers lives. I understand the concept of willing service. This situation is closer to indentured servitude. Originally Alamo promised a sharing of the wealth, and eventually ministries of their own, to his followers. He took complete financial control early on.
This was done willingly, to be sure, by sincere people wanting to serve God. What followed, was more and more control. Threatening and putting people in the streets with nothing, if they attempted to question him.
Husbands had their wives taken from them, and some willingly and some unwillingly watched their own little children added to Alamo's personal harem. This was fraud,
Cont'
The end result is that children were being abused, both sexually and with brutal corporal punishment.
We may question the parents lack of fortitude or common sense, but this is one situation where DHS had a duty to intervene. I contend that if they had not and these activities had been revealed, you would have been among the first to condemn their inaction.
Children had become property. All that DHS required is that the parents break the financial stranglehold of dominion that Alamo has over the parents. It did not require them to change beliefs, to quit tithing their money, or stop attending the church of their choice.
Children as young as 9 years old were being forced against their will to have sex. Some with this 70 something year old pervert. You say there should not have been intervention! How deep is your hatred toward DHS? You are willing to defend this pervert just to get even with DHS?
You need to do a soul searching of your own.
Cont'
The end result is that children were being abused, both sexually and with brutal corporal punishment.
We may question the parents lack of fortitude or common sense, but this is one situation where DHS had a duty to intervene. I contend that if they had not and these activities had been revealed, you would have been among the first to condemn their inaction.
Children had become property. All that DHS required is that the parents break the financial stranglehold of dominion that Alamo has over the parents. It did not require them to change beliefs, to quit tithing their money, or stop attending the church of their choice.
Children as young as 9 years old were being forced against their will to have sex. Some with this 70 something year old pervert. You say there should not have been intervention! How deep is your hatred toward DHS? You are willing to defend this pervert just to get even with DHS?
You need to do a soul searching of your own.
First of all Tom, I do not hate DHS. DHS has a responsibility to remove children when they are abused and neglected. Secondly, if Tony Alamo did what the jury convicted him of, then he is where he belongs. The third and most important point, that you and others like you don't seem to get is that you can't confuse the innocent with the guilty. While there was testimony that Tony Alamo abused children, which brought about his conviction, there has been no evidence offered that the parents whose children were seized abused or neglected any children. The leaked interviews of the children who were seized make it clear that they were not abused, which is why DHS was so upset that they were leaked. Regardless of how you interpret things, these parents who unlike Alamo have not committed any crimes are being forced to chose between their children and their religion. I don't remember deleting your comment. I had to delete a few comments lately be a comment stalker who misrepresented my position
Also Tom I really should delete these comments of yours. You state without presenting evidence that I hate DHS. Unlike many people who are opposed to child protective services, I do not believe CPS and DHS should be dismantled. If you have read the 70+ articles of mine on this site, you would realize that I want CPS reformed but not destroyed. So please do not try to tell me and other people what I think. Child abusers should be punished severely. On the other hand, people who have had their children taken when they have not abused them need defending. Sex offenders who have committed heinous crimes have more rights in criminal court then parents, who have not committed or been charged with any crimes, do in family court. I won't attempt to say what you think, as you have done to me, but you might want to ask yourself what is coloring your views that make you appear to want to put people who have not been charged with crimes into the same boat with people who have been convicted.
Before you comment on here again, I suggest you read other articles of mine. I also suggest you go to the ACLU website and read their amicus brief on the FLDS raid in Texas. That raid was much like the Tony Alamo one. People who were innocent were swept up with the guilty and treated the same way. I am in total agreement with the ACLU brief. Are you one of those people who think the ACLU is an evil organization? If so, then it will be difficult for you to understand my point of view and we will have little common ground, except that we both agree that people who abuse children should be punished severely.
I knew Tony Alamo also for over 30 years. Whatever he is. Whatever he did. It is irrelevant in regards to to rights of individuals who have not been convicted or even charged with a crime. I am probably on the other end of the political spectrum than the author of this article. However, his point is valid and serious. If you allow the government to become the conscience of all individuals for the betterment of society. You will loose far more than you would ever imagine to gain by controlled oversight. It is a very dangerous precedent to allow the the government to become the moral conscience of the nation. Unless you can PROVE a crime, it is by far better to allow individuals the right to suffer the natural consequences of their mistakes, in hope that either they will learn or that others will from their experience, than to go down a road that never allows travelers to return.
First off Tom A. was NOT in the ministry or close to the ministry for 40 years except to spew his hatred and lies.
Secondly, One Father who did move off the property, got an apartment and a job outside of the ministry had his parental rights given to an aunt who got the children for her drug addicted sister who was thrown out of the church for stealing a parpalegic members prescription medicine. The Aunt will not allow the children to even talk to their own Father which they do love and the Judge says that is just fine.
There is NO abuse here in this ministry. Just a couple of young kids who were bribed to exagerate a spanking in order to sue for big money so they don't have to work at McDonalds.
I suggest that people go to the ministry web site and READ the truth. Too many lies and liars have fueled a huge slander camppain that got ended up putting an innocent Pastor in jail and gotten 36 children ripped from their families and have suffered GREATLY! www(dot)alamoministries(dot)c
I have been in the ministry since I was born and am still in the ministry. I am 34 years old and I do not rely on Tony Alamo to pay my bills. I have to remain in hiding so my children will not be kidnapped illegally by the DHS. I know Pastor Alamo is innocent, and all the parents are innocent of any crime to get their children ripped violently out of their arms. There is no financial stronghold on the parents in the ministry. Don't we have the right to raise our children in whatever ministry we choose? TomA is just a liar who does not like Tony Alamo for some reason. My own sister was held at gunpoint and violently taken away from her parents and the ministry. My brother is in FOSTER ABUSE just like my sister and they both want to come home. They can't stand being away from their loving, non-abusive parents. Aren't we Americans? Isn't this supposed to be a free country? Last I checked, it was still America with the Constitution and all our freedoms.
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