Alamo Refuses Deal on Abuse Charge : Courts: The evangelist turns down a judge’s plea-bargain offer of a misdemeanor conviction in the alleged paddling in ’88 of an 11-year-old boy in Saugus.

Evangelist Tony Alamo on Tuesday refused a deal in which prosecutors would have dropped a felony child abuse charge against him if he would plead no contest to a misdemeanor count and serve no jail time.

Alamo, 58, said he turned down the plea-bargain offer--which was suggested by San Fernando Superior Court Judge Sheri Silver--because a conviction for misdemeanor child abuse would give him a criminal record even though he could serve as much as six years in prison if convicted on a felony count.

“I hate dragging this out, but I have to be belligerent in a case like this,” said Alamo in an interview at the San Fernando Courthouse.

The 58-year-old religious leader is accused of ordering a member of his Holy Alamo Christian Church to beat an 11-year-old boy with a large wooden paddle in 1988.

Trial is scheduled to begin this week.

Alamo, who divides his time between homes in the San Fernando Valley and Arkansas, said Tuesday that he is innocent.

“If any child abuse had occurred, I would have put those members out,” Alamo said.

The boy said during two days of testimony in a 1991 preliminary hearing that he was hit at least 140 times by a church member who was given the punishment order by Alamo by telephone. Members of Alamo’s church at the time lived in a commune in Mint Canyon in Saugus.

Alamo disappeared shortly after the child abuse charges were filed. He was apprehended by federal marshals at a waterfront home in Tampa, Fla., where he was living nearly three years later.

During that time, authorities said, he operated businesses with his followers--including a hardware store and a restaurant--and produced taped sermons that were broadcast on as many as 50 radio stations each week.

Alamo said in an interview Tuesday that he has been the target of harassment by authorities because of his religious teachings, which are largely anti-Catholic and anti-government.

Alamo last year was cleared on charges that he had threatened to kidnap a federal judge in Arkansas.

“They’ve been presenting me with false charges for 28 years,” Alamo said.

Alamo said government authorities have been acting on the orders of Satan.

“The government agents are being deceived,” Alamo said. “They are the horse, and the devil is the rider.”

Judge Silver ordered Alamo’s attorney, Jeffrey A. Dickstein, and Deputy Dist. Atty. John Asari to continue negotiations on a settlement.

Silver had suggested that Alamo plead no contest to a charge of injury to a child not likely to produce great bodily harm. The judge said in court that she would be willing to waive any further jail time if Alamo agreed.

But Dickstein told the judge his client “was not interested” in the offer.