Six children are now in “protective custody” in Arkansas after police raided a ministry run by someone who said that “consent (i.e. sex) is puberty”, according to a report by ABC News.
These children will stay with the Arkansas Department of Human Services as investigators interview them, according to Arkansas police spokesperson Bill Sadler.
It's unclear how old these children, most of who mare girls, are, but according to a report issued last week, they are between the ages of 12 and 14.
It's clear that the children involved in this are frightened. According Anthony Justin Lane, a 34-year-old father of 3, when he told his eldest daughter, Ashley, who would have be 15 or 16 now that he was her father, she ran away. Lane told reporters that “When I see pictures of those kids (his own kids), I feel robbed - robbed of being a father. I keep laying it in the Lord's hands and hoping (that) he'll have some mercy on my children and protect them”. Lane, who has been trying to reconnect with his family for more than a decade now, said that he was distraught when he visited the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries because he thought that he saw a 13-year-old girl, who could have been his daughter, marrying a 40-year-old man. Right now, hope is about the only thing that Lane can hold on to.
In a statement, US attorney Bob Balfe wouldn't say if an arrest warrant had been issued for Tony Alamo, a convicted tax evader and sexual predator, who is now 74 years old.
Right now, it's too early to say where this is all going and how it all started, but this sounds like something that convicted pedophile Warren Jeffs would be behind.
