A polygamous sect leader already serving a 50-year federal prison sentence for orchestrating sex involving children was convicted Friday on state child abuse charges after girls were found in an unventilated trailer he was hauling through Arizona.
Someone alerted authorities about the trailer in August 2022 after seeing small fingers reaching through gaps in the doors. Police stopped Samuel Bateman’s vehicle as he was driving through Flagstaff and found three girls inside, who were ages 11 to 14 at the time. The trailer was enclosed with a makeshift toilet, a sofa and camping chairs.
In the federal case, Bateman was convicted of coercing girls as young as 9 to submit to sex acts with him and other young adults, and for scheming to kidnap girls from protective custody, the story of which is the focus of a Netflix series, “Trust Me: The False Prophet.”
Bateman previously claimed to have more than 20 “spiritual wives,” including 10 girls under the age of 18. He testified in his own defense in the state case, telling jurors he would never harm the people he loves. He acknowledged during cross-examination that he knew the girls were in a hot trailer for hours and the ventilation wasn’t good, but downplayed the conditions.
“I just trusted myself as a driver,” he said. “I asked God to bless me every time we hopped in that vehicle.”
He claimed he thought the girls had gotten out when they stopped. He said he was as “shocked as could possibly be” when he learned that they were still inside when he was pulled over.
Is it Mormons?
And he ends up behind bars because he is not in the Epstein papers.
How does a guy serving a 50 year sentence drive…well, anything? Parole?
His 50 year sentence for sexual abuse of minors etc came down in December of 2024, the sentence coming down now is for child abuse by transporting them in the hot trailer through Arizona in 2022.
Also this was an Arizona State case, while the other one was a Federal case. So the prosecutions ran concurrently.
The arrest for the abuse by neglect was actually first, he posted bond for that and was later arrested again for the federal case.
Ok, so he was out on bond.
No, actually. Like I said, the Arizona state case, the child abuse for the hot trailer transport, was the first arrest.
“A polygamous sect leader already serving a 50-year federal prison sentence for orchestrating sex involving children was convicted Friday on state child abuse charges after girls were found in an unventilated trailer he was hauling through Arizona.”
I didn’t mean to be daft here but the paragraph above is what’s causing me confusion. See that word “already?”
Yeah the thing is that the two prosecutions ran in parallel but the federal one “overtook” the Arizona one.
Timeline:
- Sexually abuses kids and physically abuses kids, all in the same time period
- Arrested by Arizona for physical abuse, but gets out on bail, court case is now ongoing
- Arrested by the Feds for sexual abuse, court case is now ongoing
- Convicted by federal court, put in prison
- Convicted by Arizona court (now, while already in prison)
It’s stories like this that got me banned from reddit. Because that guy needs every fucking bone in his body broken with a crowbar starting at the toes and his heart dug out with a rusty spoon
Naturally, Spez doesn’t like people like us, talking about the things that should happen to cretins like them.
I’m sick of living in a world run by the most vile, repulsive, and evil humans to walk the earth. Sick of working 5-days a week to make those same creatures richer.
There so many people more deserving of this in America than this fucker.
Idk. Hurting kids is at the top of my list. Granted there are worse people who hurt kids but fk this guy
This is probably the same Mormon group that Warren Jeff’s was from. Its the same area. About 15? Years ago now. They never dismantled the network of people, they just arrested the one guy. I’m sure its touchy because of religious freedoms but also its like a major tenant of the FLDS religion. One google search later https://www.biography.com/crime/a70909349/warren-jeffs-now-life-in-prison
I’m sure its touchy because of religious freedoms
Ugh, that’s one thing I hate about religious “freedom” in this country - when something is wrapped up in religious garb, especially if its some xtian denomination (and no, I’m not playing that “no true Christian” game with LDS or its fundie groups - the full name of LDS is “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” so getting into a debate over it being “real” Christianity is just not really worth it) - it often takes a much higher bar to get it stopped.
It was far down the article but yes, they describe it as an offshoot of the FLDS:
Federal authorities said Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet, traveled extensively between Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska as he built an offshoot network of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which historically has been based in the neighboring communities of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah.
And indeed there is the link to Warren Jeffs:
Bateman was one of the trusted followers of Warren Jeffs, who previously led the sect and is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexual assault of children.
The AP claims that things were actually done to dismantle the network:
The influence of the polygamous sect has waned significantly over time in the towns where the sect has historically been based. In 2017, a court order placed the towns under supervision, excising the church from their governments and shared police department.
But the area has since transformed so quickly that they were released from court-ordered supervision last summer, almost two years earlier than expected. Practicing sect members are now believed to account for only a small percentage of the towns’ populations.
… but I have no way of knowing it that was enough or not, don’t want to be too optimistic.
the FLDS
I was under the impression there are many fundamentalist LDS groups and not just one?
I don’t really know either, I was just going by the vibes of the AP text and conversation in the comments here.
When I’m trying to check it does look like from this Wikipedia article that “the FLDS” seems to refer to one specific organisation
Edit on the other hand this Wikipedia article has an entire list: Founders of mutually rival Mormon fundamentalist denominations include Lorin C. Woolley, John Y. Barlow, Joseph W. Musser, Leroy S. Johnson, Rulon C. Allred, Elden Kingston, and Joel LeBaron. The largest Mormon fundamentalist groups are the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) and the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB).
There are but this is the one that took the name if memory serves right, this is one of those things where the Mormons fractured super hard at several points in their history so there are lots of offshoots.
Ah, okay. I read Under the Banner of Heaven long ago and could not really remember.
Yep, I was gonna say… this FLDS, or an offshoot?
Great work Mormons, you continue to generate terrorist pedophile sex cults, even into the modern era, truly an extremely legitimate cultural lineage and religious tradition.
There’s a decently done but horrific doc on Netflix about this. The cops in that town are definitely in on something, if not just trying to protect Mormonism in general. A single woman went and infiltrated and collected all the evidence and the cops didn’t give a damn. She eventually got the feds involved and that was slow, but the cops clearly were dragging their feet.
Go watch through a decent recap of the Reckless Ben - Lego - Bricks N Minifigs situation.
Mormon cops are there also shown as hilariously, wildly, nakedly corrupt, just acting as a gang.
What the fuck does him being polygamous have to do with that?
There’s a bit of a difference between FLDS style polygamy and modern polyamory.
Polygamy is about being married to multiple people, but to most people generally refers to situations where men have multiple wives. A “polygamous sect” in Utah generally means a man who is worshipped in a cult-like situation by a group of oppressed women. The wives are groomed through the religion from a very young age to believe that their path to heaven lies in obeying their husband who is closer to god. They’re taught that it’s sinful to think “sinful thoughts” or to question anything their husband says.
In this case he, quite literally, told them all he was god’s prophet, the successor to Warren Jeffs, the equivalent of Jesus, and his followers needed to stop thinking and live in worship, give him their daughters to be his wives, give him their money and work for him, let him control every aspect of their lives and thank him for the beautiful opportunity to be allowed to worship a real prophet and be one of god’s chosen.
Not the first time this has happened and not the only active polygamous sect around there. It’s super fucked up even without the child sex offenses.
On the other hand polyamory is generally about ethical non-monogamy and involves people having multiple loving relationships (married or not). One of the reasons the term was invented (aside from removing the connotations of polygyny and marriage) was to distance polyamorous people from the FLDS which was often the only kind of non-monogamy that people knew about.
These guys use polygamy as a cover story for child sex trafficking.
The west is built on “traditional family values”. So for some reason they make it about the polygamy in the press, not the child sex.
Cops are in on it. Same easily bought mfers in the Bricks & Minifigs drama: willing to sell out their power for someone to use to exploit helpless people.
Bricks & Minifigs?
We gotta make sure to vilify anyone who “desecrates the sanctity” of the nuclear family or some dumb fucking shit.
Christ American news sources are trash.
