Samuel Bateman faces Arizona sentence over girls found in sealed trailer

Arizona,UPDATED: Aug 25, 2026 18:04 IST

Samuel Bateman, the leader of a polygamous sect who is already serving a 50-year federal prison sentence for orchestrating sex involving children, is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday in Arizona in a separate state case. The case relates to convictions for transporting girls in an unventilated trailer through a community in northern Arizona.

Bateman, 50, was convicted on three child abuse counts after an August 2022 traffic stop in Flagstaff led to the discovery of three girls, aged 11 to 14, inside the trailer. Each count carries a mandatory sentence of between four and eight years, and the judge will decide whether the terms will run consecutively or concurrently.

Authorities said the trailer had a makeshift toilet, a sofa and camping chairs, but no air conditioning or seat belts. Someone alerted officials after seeing small fingers reaching through gaps in the trailer doors. In the state case, Bateman acknowledged that he knew the girls had been in the hot trailer for hours and that the ventilation was poor, but he downplayed the conditions.

Bateman, who is not a lawyer but represented himself at trial, said he believed the girls had got out when the vehicle stopped. He said he was "as shocked as could possibly be" when he learnt they were still inside when he was pulled over. Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet, had previously claimed to have more than 20 "spiritual wives", including 10 girls under the age of 18.

He is currently serving a 50-year federal sentence for coercing girls as young as nine to submit to sex acts with him and other adults, and for plotting to kidnap girls from protective custody. Federal authorities said Bateman travelled widely in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska while building an offshoot network of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a sect once led by Warren Jeffs. Bateman and his followers practised polygamy, which the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned in 1890 and now strictly prohibits. Bateman was regarded as one of Jeffs' trusted followers, and Jeffs is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexual assault of children.

The influence of the sect has declined sharply in the neighbouring communities of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, where it had long been based. In 2017, a court order placed the towns under supervision and removed the church from their governments and shared police department. The towns were released from court-ordered supervision last summer, nearly two years earlier than expected, and practising sect members are now believed to make up only a small share of the population. Bateman was also the focus of the Netflix series "Trust Me: The False Prophet". His sentencing on Tuesday in the Arizona case will determine the prison term for the three child abuse convictions linked to the 2022 trailer stop.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends