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Samuel Bateman

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PersonQ139374503· pop 402,405· linked from 5 articles

Samuel Bateman

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Samuel Rappylee Bateman is an American convicted sex offender who led a small polygamous splinter sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) based in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah — an area known as Short Creek. Self-styled as a prophet and successor to imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, Bateman assembled more than 20 "spiritual wives" between 2019 and 2022, at least 10 of whom were minors, with victims as young as nine years old. He was arrested in 2022, pleaded guilty in April 2024, and was sentenced in December 2024 to 50 years in federal prison.

AI overview

Samuel Bateman is an American man convicted of leading a polygamous religious sect affiliated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, where he took multiple wives including at least 10 minors as young as nine years old between 2019 and 2022. He was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison in December 2024 after pleading guilty to the charges, representing a significant prosecution of abuse within an extremist religious community.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Person

Born
1976-01-01

via Open Library + Wikidata

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197,132 total

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Key dates

Born
1 January 1976

via Wikidata · CC0

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Given name
Samuel
Gender
male
Show 1 more fact
date of birth
1976-01-01

via Wikidata · CC0

~8 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Samuel Rappylee Bateman (born c. 1976) is an American convicted sex offender who led a small polygamous splinter sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) based in Short Creek, Arizona. Self-styled as a prophet of and successor to imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, Bateman assembled more than 20 "spiritual wives" between 2019 and 2022. At least 10 of these wives were minors, with some victims as young as nine years old. He was arrested in 2022, pleaded guilty in April 2024, and was sentenced in December 2024 to 50 years in federal prison.

His case was the subject of the 2026 Netflix documentary series Trust Me: The False Prophet, directed by Rachel Dretzin.

Excerpted from Wikipedia, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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