WE WERE CHILD BRIDES
How two women fled a dark cult and moved on with their lives.
“Every day is a milestone. Some … easier than others” —Amy Eddy
n the dream, Pebbles Rodriguez was walking slowly down a narrow aisle, wearing a long, white wedding dress. A shadowy figure waited for her, and as she got closer, she realised who it was: Tony Alamo, the 62-year-old leader of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, the apocalyptic ministry her family had recently joined. Jolted awake, the 12-year-old began to scream and rushed to find her best friend, 14-year-old Amy Eddy, who was sleeping nearby. “You have to tell him,” Amy told her, “that was God talking.” But when Pebbles saw Alamo days later, she didn’t have to say a word. “It was like he could see into my soul,” she recalls. “Somehow . . . he knew. Just like that. That’s how I became a wife.”
For the next decade Pebbles’s dream would become a nightmare as she and Amy both lived as child brides of Alamo, where they were regularly starved, beaten and raped. They were finally freed from their torture in 2008, when Alamo was arrested and charged with 10 counts of interstate transportation of minors for illicit sexual purposes. Convicted a year later, he died in prison in 2017 at age 82. Now Pebbles, 32, and Amy, 34, have shared their harrowing story in an episode of the television series People Magazine Investigates: Cults on Investigation, which aired in the US on June 4. Both young women still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, where everyday, normal activities can trigger panic attacks and feelings of fear and loneliness. “Every day is a milestone,” says Amy. “Some days are easier than others.” Pebbles agrees: “I don’t think it will ever be easy. There are things that are out of my control, like recurring nightmares. There is nothing I can do to make it go away, but I try my hardest.”
Pebbles was living “a rough life” in New York with her single mother and two sisters in 1995 when a neighbour told her mother about a place where she could start a new Christian life. The neighbour showed them a promotional booklet, she recalls, filled with photos of people frolicking in swimming pools, singing in choirs and running through fields at the church’s compound in Fouke, Arkansas. “My mother was sold on the dream,” Pebbles says. “We joined the church and we were on our way to Arkansas.”
Alamo and his wife, Susan, had begun to amass their following in the late 1960s on the streets of Hollywood, preaching salvation and offering believers what they purported to be a peaceful commune existence. Randall Harris, a retired FBI agent who investigated the case against Alamo, believes some people were drawn to the cult because of Alamo’s charisma and
promises of a better life, then were bullied into remaining. “He threatened these people with eternal damnation if they were to leave. The world revolved around Tony Alamo,” he says. “It takes quite a character to convince a mother to turn over her [underage] daughter to him to become his wife.”
For Amy, the Tony Alamo cult was the only life she knew. Her parents had joined before she was born, and at age 14 she, too, became Alamo’s bride after he raped her and forced her to recite vows with him. “He told me, ‘This is between me, you and God,’ ” Amy remembers. “I was terrified.”
Alamo convinced his followers there was nothing wrong with polygamy or marrying young girls because the Bible allowed it, and his behaviour began to grow more deviant as the years went on. Any infraction, from running late to breakfast or listening to unapproved music, could result in being forced to fast or beaten with a two-by-four. “He got off on you screaming and crying,” Amy says. Because they weren’t allowed to commiserate without the fear of being punished, Pebbles and Amy would communicate through a secret code—using their eye movements to spell letters of the alphabet. Amy says, “It was our way of supporting each other.”
In 2010, with Alamo in prison, Pebbles fled and was reunited with her mother and sisters, all of whom had left the cult years earlier. Amy had left the cult several years before with the help of her father. Amy’s mother remains an active member of the group and is estranged from her daughter. “She won’t talk to me,” Amy says. “She thinks I’m going to hell.”
Pebbles and Amy share the unique bond of survivors—supporting each other through battles with night terrors and severe bouts of depression. Though distance separates them—pebbles, a stay-at-home mum who is in the process of getting a divorce, lives in the Phoenix, Arizona, area with her two young sons, and Amy is studying to get into college in Oklahoma City, where she is also raising two young sons with her boyfriend—the two are forever linked. “She’s a fighter and I’m a fighter,” says Pebbles.
The best friends speak to each other every day and continue to feel each other’s pain. As Pebbles recounts her story of becoming Alamo’s wife, Amy admits she’s the one who told Alamo about the dream. Pebbles stops
and places her hand on Amy’s arm. “Amy, I don’t blame you for anything,” she says. “I know,” Amy responds, “but I still wish I’d never done that to you.”
Last year on the day Alamo died in prison, “I went to the bathroom, got in the tub and cried for all of us girls,” says Amy. “I was relieved.” Says Pebbles: “We’re free now.” •