Judge Orders Trial of Alamo in Beating of Boy in Saugus : Courts: The evangelist is charged with child abuse in connection with the punishment of the youth at his religious commune in 1988.

Evangelist Tony Alamo was ordered Friday to stand trial on felony child-abuse charges based on two days of testimony by a 14-year-old boy who said he was beaten bloody, under Alamo’s supervision, at a religious commune in Saugus in 1988.

Even under intense cross-examination, Jeremiah (Justin) Miller insisted that he was hit at least 140 times with a large wooden paddle by a commune member who followed orders given by Alamo over a speaker telephone.

Newhall Municipal Judge Floyd V. Baxter set a trial to begin Dec. 27, saying he found Justin to be “basically credible” and that “this situation did arise.”

Baxter also refused to reduce the $250,000 bond Alamo posted for his release, saying he would have agreed to even higher bail if the prosecutor had requested it. After the child-abuse charges were filed, Alamo spent nearly three years in hiding until federal marshals managed to track him to a house in Tampa, Fla., in July.

“Your client has been a fugitive from justice,” Baxter angrily told Alamo’s attorney, Danny Davis.

Outside the courtroom, Alamo said he was surprised by the judge’s decision to go to trial, but Davis said he was not. Both men expressed confidence that they would be able to discredit Justin’s testimony at a full hearing.

“We’re going to be able to prove that we’re right at the trial,” Alamo said. “I’m very happy with the contradictions we heard here in the boy’s testimony.”

Davis said that if he continues to represent Alamo, he will strive to further point out inconsistencies in Justin’s story during the trial, as he attempted to do in the preliminary hearing.

He argued that the beating was a deserved disciplinary session. He maintained that Justin exaggerated its severity because of coaching from adults, primarily Justin’s adoptive father, a former Alamo follower who said in a lawsuit that the evangelist stole his trucking business.

Alamo also said that he plans to reopen and expand the commune in remote Mint Canyon, abandoned by his followers about a year ago. He said a contractor was “pulling the boards off” the dwellings and shacks, which at one time housed several hundred of Alamo’s followers. Alamo said the sect still owns two sites off Sierra Highway totaling more than 160 acres.

“We’re reopening the church up there now. . . . We’re trying to get the necessary legal permits to get it open as soon as possible,” Alamo said. “We’ll build more houses if we can get the permits.”

The organization, which began as the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation in the 1960s, started building a compound in Saugus in the late 1970s. Followers moved to compounds in the South after the Saugus commune became the target of critics who called it a regimented cult based on fire-and-brimstone philosophy. The group’s name was changed to the Holy Alamo Christian Church after Alamo’s wife, Susan, died of cancer in 1982.

When asked how many members remain in Los Angeles, Alamo responded: “It’s like the sand and the sea; it just is, you can’t count it.” But he said that he has continued to preach frequently at services in houses and halls in this area.

“We have to do it underground because of a lot of persecution,” he said.