Phoenix • She was 14 years old in 2021 when Samuel Bateman decided he wanted her as a wife — and the self-proclaimed prophet took her as one of 20 women and girls he “spiritually married.” ...

In addition to Samuel Bateman, who else was arrested? Bateman was the first person charged in connection with his sect's abuse of girls. Subsequently, seven of his followers were also charged by ...

Phoenix • She was 14 years old in 2021 when Samuel Bateman decided he wanted her as a wife — and the self-proclaimed prophet took her as one of 20 women and girls he “spiritually married.” ...

Bateman, who came into power in 2019 after infamous FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs was imprisoned, faces 51 felonies, including counts of sexually abusing young girls he claimed as his wives.

Two years after his arrest, Samuel Rappylee Bateman, a polygamist sect leader who prosecutors said orchestrated the ...

Samuel Bateman, 48, was sentenced for coercing girls as young as nine years old to criminal sex acts with him and other adults, and for scheming to kidnap them from protective custody.

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — On a cloudy day in late December of 2021, an unusual scene played out in a Phoenix park. More than two dozen women and girls—some holding babies, all adorned in ...

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

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 for coercing girls as ...

At his sentencing, U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich called Bateman, 48, "the worst kind of abuser." “With respect to the minor girls, you took them from their homes, from their families, and ...