Polygamous sect leader Samuel Bateman was slapped with an additional 24 years in prison Tuesday for hauling three girls — ages 11 to 14 — in an unventilated trailer across Arizona, adding to the 50-year federal sentence he's already serving for coercing children as young as nine into sex acts. The sentence is righteous. The institutional response is not.
Here is what Bateman did: In August 2022, someone flagged down authorities after seeing small fingers reaching through gaps in a trailer door, according to the New York Post. Inside, police found three girls in a trailer with a makeshift toilet, camping chairs, no air conditioning, and no seat belts. Bateman acknowledged he knew the girls were in a hot trailer for hours but downplayed the conditions, claiming he was "shocked as could possibly be" when he learned they were still inside at the traffic stop.
Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the same sect led by convicted child predator Warren Jeffs — claimed more than 20 "spiritual wives," including 10 girls under 18. One victim, who was 14 at the time of the traffic stop, told the court Bateman sexually exploited her at 12. "He stole my childhood," she said. Judge Joshua Steinlage cited the "insane danger" to the girls in ordering the state sentence served after the federal term. Coconino County Attorney Ammon Barker said the sentence "ensures that Mr. Bateman will never again be in a position to harm a child."
Good. Lock him up and throw away the key.
But notice what happens next. Both the New York Post and The Guardian — running near-identical copy — are careful to contextualize Bateman's sect as "an offshoot" of the FLDS, and note that the mainstream LDS church abandoned polygamy in 1890. Fair enough. The mainstream church did. But the framing invites a broader smear: religion as the breeding ground for child abuse. Netflix has already commodified the horror with its series "Trust Me: The False Prophet."
Now ask yourself: when a drag queen in fetish gear reads to toddlers at a publicly funded library, does the same press corps contextualize the risks? When gender clinics prescribe puberty blockers to confused 12-year-olds — the same age Bateman's victim was when he started exploiting her — does The Guardian run breathless coverage of the "insane danger"? When school districts socially transition children behind their parents' backs, does the county attorney issue statements about accountability?
Bateman is a predator who used religion as a shield. The justice system worked. The media's selective outrage — religious child abuse deserves the gallows, but corporate-sanctioned child exploitation deserves a pride flag — tells you everything about whose children they actually care about protecting.
