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A paedophile leader of a sect who claims to have "spiritual wives" has been found guilty of child abuse after girls were found in a trailer he was driving through Arizona. Authorities were alerted to the unventilated vehicle in August 2022 after seeing small fingers reaching through gaps in the doors.
Police stopped Samuel Bateman's vehicle as he was driving through Flagstaff and inside found three girls aged 11 to 14 at the time. The trailer contained a makeshift toilet, sofa and camping chairs. In a federal US court case, Bateman was convicted of coercing girls as young as nine to submit to sex acts with him and other young adults. Bateman is already serving a 50-year prison sentence for arranging sex with children.
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He was also convicted of scheming to kidnap girls from protective custody in a twisted story which features in the Netflix series, "Trust Me: The False Prophet".
Bateman previously claimed to have more than 20 "spiritual wives", including 10 girls under the age of 18.
Testifying in his own defence in the case, Bateman told jurors he would never harm the people he loves.
The paedo acknowledged during cross-examination that he knew the girls were in a hot trailer for hours and the ventilation wasn't good, but downplayed the conditions.
He said: "I just trusted myself as a driver. I asked God to bless me every time we hopped in that vehicle."
Bateman claimed he thought the girls had got out when they stopped and said he was as "shocked as could possibly be" when he learned they were still inside when he was pulled over.
Prosecutor Eric Ruchensky told jurors: "It’s common sense that you don’t carry people in a trailer designed for cargo on a hot day with no ventilation."
Jurors in the state case weren't supposed to hear about Bateman's conviction in federal court.
The judge barred the evidence from being introduced, but Bateman brought it up several times as he represented himself, leading the judge to strike his comments off the record.
It took jurors about 40 minutes to deliver the verdict on Friday (June 26), convicting him on all three counts of child abuse. Each count carries a mandatory sentence of between four and eight years.
The judge has discretion to run the counts consecutively or concurrently. Bateman is due to be sentenced on August 25.
Federal authorities said Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet, travelled extensively between Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska as he built an offshoot network of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Church has been based in Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah.
Bateman and his followers practised polygamy, a legacy of the early teachings of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly bans it.
He was a trusted follower of Warren Jeffs, who previously led the sect and is serving a life sentence in Texas for child sexual assault.
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