Samuel Bateman was sentenced to an additional 24 years in prison Tuesday on state child abuse charges.
Bateman, 50, already is serving a 50-year federal sentence for orchestrating sex acts involving children and scheming to kidnap girls from protective custody. The separate state convictions stem from an August 2022 traffic stop in Flagstaff, Arizona, where authorities discovered three girls, ages 11 to 14, inside an unventilated trailer he was hauling.
The trailer contained a makeshift toilet, sofa and camping chairs but lacked air conditioning and seat belts. Someone had tipped off authorities after spotting small fingers reaching through gaps in the doors.
“I love these dear people with all my heart, and I had no intention in the entire world to harm them,” Bateman said during his sentencing hearing. He represented himself in the case and did not make a plea for leniency.
Victims urged Judge Joshua Steinlage to reject Bateman’s claims that he never meant to harm anyone. One victim who had been inside the trailer when Bateman was pulled over described the psychological pain she suffered. The victim, who was then 14, said Bateman took advantage of her sexually when she was 12.
She said she has had to undergo therapy to recover from “things that should have never happened to me as a child.”
Coconino County Attorney Ammon Barker issued a statement following the sentencing. “Today’s sentence is about accountability for the harm done to these young victims,” he said. “It also ensures that Mr. Bateman will never again be in a position to harm a child.”
Citing an “insane danger” to the girls in the trailer, among other factors, Judge Steinlage ordered Bateman to serve the state sentence only after completing his 50-year federal sentence.
Bateman acknowledged during the state case that he knew the girls were in a hot trailer for hours and that the ventilation was poor, though he downplayed the conditions. He had claimed he thought the girls had gotten out when the group stopped, saying he was as “shocked as could possibly be” when he learned they were still inside at the time of the traffic stop.
Bateman’s small group was an offshoot of the polygamous sect once led by Warren Jeffs. Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet, previously claimed to have more than 20 “spiritual wives,” including 10 girls under the age of 18.
In the viral moment that first brought Bateman to national attention, federal authorities said he traveled extensively between Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska as he built his offshoot network of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The sect historically has been based in the neighboring communities of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. He and his followers practiced polygamy, a legacy of early teachings of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it.
Bateman was one of Jeffs’s trusted followers. Jeffs is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexual assault of children. The influence of the polygamous sect has waned significantly in its historical base towns. In 2017, a court order placed Colorado City and Hildale under supervision, removing the church from their governments and shared police department. The area transformed so rapidly that the towns were released from court-ordered supervision last summer, almost two years ahead of schedule. Practicing sect members now are believed to account for only a small percentage of the towns’ populations.
Bateman’s crimes are the focus of the Netflix series “Trust Me: The False Prophet.”