On Friday, December 2, 2022, the FBI, the United States (US) domestic intelligence and security service, filed an affidavit in Washington outlining horrifying accusations of incest, group sex acts involving adults and minor children, and child sex trafficking against a 46-year-old cult leader named Samuel Rappylee Bateman.
According to an FBI document obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune, Samuel Bateman “began to proclaim he was a prophet” after assuming control of roughly 50 followers in 2019. He also revealed his intention to marry his own teenage daughter.
According to media reports, Bateman married up to 20 women, many of whom were minors under the age of 15. He coerced them into heinous acts of incest, paedophilic group sex, and child sex trafficking.
Cult leader directed three followers to have sex with his daughters while he watched
The affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Dawn A Martin revealed that Bateman directed three of his male followers to have sex with his daughters, one of whom was only 12 years old, while he watched.
The affidavit also details video calls in which Bateman and everyone else on the call was allegedly naked and engaged in group sex actions. Bateman allegedly had sex with the spouses of his male followers in a so-called “Binding of Brothers” ritual while other men and underage girls watched on.
According to audio and video recordings referenced in the affidavit, on November 1, 2021, Bateman allegedly stated the “Heavenly Father” directed him to “gift the most precious thing he possesses, his ladies’ virtue,” to three of his male followers in a group sex act. One of the females was only 12 years old.
According to the reports, Bateman claimed the girls had “sacrificed their virtue for the Lord”, and that “God will fix their bodies and put the membrane back in their body.”
Bateman arrested while transporting minor girls across state borders
Bateman, the polygamous cult leader was apprehended by local police on September 6th of this year while transferring underage girls over state boundaries. A state trooper initially stopped him after noticing children’s fingers moving in the gap of the rear trailer door.
According to local media, his SUV included two women and two girls under the age of 15. Three females aged 11 to 14 were present in the trailer.
The affidavit says Bateman drove two Bentleys. Meanwhile, his underage wives were reportedly transported in a trailer with a bucket and trash bag as a makeshift toilet.
Bateman was arrested and charged locally with three charges of child abuse, but he was eventually released after posting bail.
He was arrested again by federal investigators, who charged him with three counts of deleting records after instructing followers to destroy conversations transmitted via an encrypted private messaging system.
Since then, the FBI has performed several raids on Bateman’s two residences and taken nine girls into protective custody. Meanwhile, US Magistrate Judge Camille Bibles ordered that Bateman remains in custody while the case is heard in court.
Bateman’s group began as an offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints better known as FLDS Church, a bigger organisation led by Warren Jeffs, another convicted paedophile who is presently serving a jail sentence in Texas for sexually abusing two girls.
According to The Tribune, the rebel group considers itself different from Jeffs’ version of the FLDS church, despite the fact that a photo of the previous leader was discovered hanging in a bedroom in one of the houses raided by the FBI.
They have named themselves the Fundamental FLDS and have been referred to as the ‘Samuel Bateman group’ and ‘Samuelites’ by others. They see Bateman as their leader and address him as ‘father.’
