Prosecution rests in fundamentalist Mormon child sex abuse trial

Federal agents said they began investigating self-proclaimed FLDS leader Samuel Bateman in the summer of 2022, but was apparently on their radar long before then.

Court News/September 26, 2024

By Joe Duhownik

Phoenix — The prosecution in a federal trial against two Arizona men accused of aiding and abetting a child sex abuse ring within a fundamentalist Mormon sect rested its case Thursday afternoon, closing with a witness who says she was raped by one of the two defendants when she was 13 years old.

Brothers Torrance Bistline and LaDell Bistline Jr. were indicted in January on charges including transporting underage girls for sexual activity and obstruction of justice for interfering with the FBI’s investigation into the sex abuse operation. At the helm was Samuel Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a polygamous offshoot of the Mormon Church — who between 2019 and 2022 amassed at least two dozen wives, 10 of whom were underage when he first married and slept with them.

On the 11th day of trial, federal prosecutor Dimitra Sampson interviewed a former child bride of Bateman who said Torrance Bistline anally raped her when she was 13. The witness, being identified by Courthouse News with her initials D.B., said Bateman, who hailed himself as a successor of the now-imprisoned Warren Jeffs, told his child brides that the sexual acts he forced upon them were ordained by God, and those who refused to have sex with Bateman were rebuked as sinners.

“He told me the Lord had told him that I was supposed to be with Torrance,” the now-16-year-old recalled in the witness stand Thursday morning. “We went back to his room and he had sex with me.”

It wasn’t the first time D.B. had sex, she testified. She said Bateman forced her to have sex with him more than 20 times while she was 12 and 13, often in front of other brides, child and adult alike. But the time with Torrance, which she said Bateman referred to as “the atonement” for sins of his male followers, was the only time she was made to have sex with another man.

Torrance Bistline’s defense attorney Kathy Henry challenged D.B.'s memory of who was in the room during the atonement, referring to an interview conducted by the FBI in April in which she gave different names than Thursday’s testimony. A child bride who testified earlier Thursday morning said she witnessed Torrance Bistline have sex with D.B., but D.B. told the FBI that the other child bride wasn’t in the room.

D.B. said Thursday that she struggled to recall exactly who was there, but knows what Torrance Bistline did to her.

Over the last two weeks, other girls who were placed under the care of LaDell Bistline Jr. said he pressured them to marry Bateman, knowing that he would sexually abuse them. Bistline Jr. transported at least three girls to and from Lincoln, Nebraska, back to Colorado City, Arizona, where the FLDS community is based, to be married to Bateman. The girls told the jury they had no choice but to agree to marriages.

Bateman was arrested in Flagstaff in August 2022 when a driver noticed hands sticking out of a box trailer pulled by Bateman’s pickup truck. D.B. and two other girls were in the back of the trailer with a black bucket to defecate in. D.B. said Bateman didn’t want to be seen with his child brides in public, so he wouldn't stop to let them use public bathrooms.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Bateman called both defendants from jail and ordered them to delete messages between themselves and the child brides, and to delete Bateman’s account on the messaging app Signal. Both defendants told FBI agents they deleted their accounts when questioned after Bateman’s arrest.

A pair of filmmakers whom Bateman invited into his house to document him and his two dozen wives testified that Torrance Bistline gave them a USB drive to hide during an FBI raid of Bateman’s houses. The filmmakers turned the drive over to law enforcement immediately.

FBI agents who testified Tuesday and Wednesday said they began investigating Bateman in the summer of 2022, but the filmmakers had been giving tips to the FBI for months prior. It’s unclear why so much time passed before law enforcement took action.

Colorado City police officers said they stopped Bateman two weeks before his Flagstaff arrest. They said he was driving recklessly with underage girls sitting on a flatbed trailer behind his truck, but they were told by their chief not to arrest Bateman because the FBI was on the case.

Defense attorneys will notify the judge Friday morning whether their clients will testify on their own behalf. It’s unlikely, as counsel on both sides have tentatively agreed to hold closing arguments Tuesday — the first trial day of the week.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.