What Is the FLDS?
The FLDS church is led by a single prophet, whose followers believe has direct communication with God, according to experts.
The prophet oversees spiritual marriages and assigns wives—who are often underage—to their husbands. Some marriages are between cousins.
Females in the FLDS wear prairie dresses that cover their bodies from their neck to their ankles, and they aren’t allowed to cut their hair.
It’s believed there are around 10,000 followers who mostly live near the isolated Arizona-Utah border, where television and the internet are forbidden at their compound.
From Machinist to Prophet
Bateman worked as a machinist, realtor and motivational speaker before realizing his purported calling as FLDS leader and successor to Warren Jeffs, according to the Arizona Republic.
Jeffs, also known as “Uncle Warren,” is the former FLDS head who had nearly 80 wives, many of whom were underage. He was convicted of two counts of sexual assault in 2011 and is currently serving life plus 20 years in a Texas prison.
Following in Jeffs’ footsteps, Bateman dubbed himself the group's next prophet, although Jeffs would later on denounce him.
In 2019, Bateman’s first wife left him after he claimed it was his duty to marry and conceive a child with their teen daughter.
The dissolution of his marriage didn’t hinder him from convincing others of his presumed onus.
Bateman spearheaded recruiting efforts to amass wives and followers across Arizona, Nebraska, Utah and Colorado, and claimed to possess “impressions of Heavenly Father’s will” in an effort to convince them to submit to him, according to a 57-count superseding indictment that names multiple codefendants, reviewed by A&E Crime + Investigation.
By 2022, at least 10 of Bateman’s wives, whose parents willfully gave them over, were under the age of 18.
“His intent was to engage in sexual activity with minor girls, and he did so on a regular basis,” the indictment read.
While no legal ceremonies were performed to mark the marriages, “marriage signified the beginning... of Bateman’s sexual relationship with each of his wives.”
He called the ceremony the “Atonement.”
Bateman regularly forced his victims to participate in individual and group sex with adults and other children, prosecutors said.
He married several of his underage victims to fellow adult male followers and sent child sex abuse materials to others.
How Was Samuel Bateman Caught?
Police said they received several complaints about Bateman’s marriages to underage girls but claimed there wasn’t enough evidence at the time to bring charges.
In 2021, cult expert Christine Marie and her filmmaker husband Tolga Katas were working on a documentary about the FLDS culture, and Bateman asked to be included, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
Bateman wanted to be filmed for YouTube.
Throughout their time spent with Bateman and his followers, Marie and Katas captured hours of footage of the leader admitting to sexually abusing minors and videos of him surrounded by women and children at their compound.
The couple handed over the evidence to local police who in turn reached out to the FBI, and Marie and Katas subsequently spent the next several months as informants, escalating the investigation.
Under the guise he was participating in another interview for Marie and Katas’ documentary, Bateman was arrested by agents at a warehouse on federal charges in September 2022.
In December 2024, he was condemned to 50 years behind bars.
