Polygamous sect leader Samuel Bateman gets 50 years in prison

PHOENIX (AP) — Samuel Bateman, a polygamist religious leader who claimed more than 20 spiritual “wives” including 10 underage girls, was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Monday.

He was charged with coercing girls as young as 9 years old to submit to criminal sex acts with him and other adults.

He was also charged with scheming to kidnap them from protective custody.

Samuel Bateman ran a small group that was an offshoot of the sect once led by Warren Jeffs. He had pleaded guilty to a yearslong scheme to transport girls across state lines for his sex crimes.

He also pleaded guilty to kidnaping some of them from protective custody. His plea agreement called for 20 to 50 years in prison, though each conviction carries a possible life sentence.

Authorities say that Bateman, 48, tried to start an offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

It was based in the neighboring communities of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. The fundamentalist group, also known as FLDS, split from the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially abandoned polygamy in 1890.

Samuel Bateman and Warren Jeffs

The alleged practice of sect members sexually abusing girls who they claim as spiritual “wives” has long plagued the FLDS. A jury convicted Jeffs of state charges in Texas in 2011.

The charges involved sexual assaults of his underage followers. Bateman followed Jeffs’ and declared himself, like Jeffs, to be a “prophet” of the FLDS. Jeffs denounced Bateman in a written “revelation” sent to his followers from prison.

In 2019 and 2020, insisting that polygamy brings exaltation in heaven and that he was acting on orders from the “Heavenly Father,” Bateman began taking female adults and children from his male followers and proclaiming them to be his “wives,” the plea agreement said.

Bateman traveled extensively between Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska and regularly coerced underage girls into his criminal sexual activity, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona said. 

Officials arrested Bateman in August 2022 by state police as he drove through Flagstaff pulling a trailer. Someone had alerted authorities after spotting small fingers reaching through the slats of the door. Inside the non-ventilated trailer they found three girls, 11 to 14 years old.

Here is the complete story by the Associated Press.