Trust Me: The False Prophet

0:00Rebecca Lavoie:I'm Rebecca Lavoie, and this is You Can't Make This Up.

0:15Rebecca Lavoie:You Can't Make This Up is the podcast where we uncover the true stories behind your favorite Netflix documentaries and films. On today's episode, we take a closer look at the Netflix documentary series, Trust Me, The False Prophet. Maybe if we spent more time with them and developed a relationship with them, maybe we would see what was really going on. Was he sexually abusing any of these girls? Today we're talking to documentary contributor Dr. Christine Marie. When a cult expert and her videographer husband moved to Short Creek, Utah, they made friends with members of the polygamous Mormon breakaway group, the FLDS.

0:53Rebecca Lavoie:Christine Marie and Tolga Catus convinced an emerging leader and self-proclaimed prophet to take part in a documentary. But when the couple learned that Samuel Bateman was abusing and trafficking his underage wives, they decided instead to use their intimate access to capture evidence of his crimes and free his victims. The Netflix documentary series Trust Me, the False Prophet follows Marie as she pivots from confidant and documentarian to investigator as she helps authorities build a case against the fundamentalist cult leader who's invited her into his home. Featuring interviews with FLDS members and exclusive video from inside this insular community, Trust Me provides a unique view on a story of coercion, abuse, faith, and redemption.

1:35This is, we're adults, we're parents, and we're following a false prophet. And he's leading us right to hell. And I'm not gonna go there anymore.

1:58Rebecca Lavoie:And I'm joined now by Dr. Christine Marie. Christine, welcome to You Can't Make This Up. Thank you. So this series is unique because you are a documentarian, but the series isn't your documentary. It's directed by award-winning filmmaker Rachel Dredson, who made the FLDS Netflix series Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey. But it features you and your footage. How did that collaboration work? I didn't start out as a documentarian. I have a charity. I have a PhD in psychology, and I was just helping these people survive along their path. We started documenting just things around that we saw that didn't feel right to us.

2:38And a member of the community suggested that we make a documentary primarily aimed at my husband. He's the cinematographer, filmmaker type, and I'm his helper. So as we were creating a media piece about the FLDS, we were trying to show them as human beings and trying to take away some of the stigma that they experience constantly. Because when you're stigmatized and marginalized by a world that you don't understand, it makes it scarier for you to leave your own world and go into the outside world. So we thought we would be doing them the service to try to show some of the things that most documentaries never do.

3:24So that was our original plan. When the Sam Bateman situation came along, it was actually something I didn't want to document because I didn't realize at first how bad it was. And he wanted to be in this other project. But I thought, no way, we're not going to platform somebody, some narcissist like this. But as the need for evidence continued to be a problem, you know, we thought about it and said, you know, what if we go ahead and film him and see what happens to see where it leads? There wasn't even a decision to make a documentary about him when we started filming him. We thought we've got to get some footage and turn it into law enforcement.

4:11So that's how it started. so when things got too big and we're at the center of it it's very stressful it was just a very complicated thing and so because victim sensitivity was my highest priority and that matched Rachel's priorities we knew that we couldn't do this ourselves we're in the middle of it it wouldn't be seen as authentic. So we just entrusted the whole thing in our hands.

4:43Rebecca Lavoie:You mentioned a couple of things there, victim sensitivity and humanizing marginalized people that other folks don't understand. Can you talk a little bit about how your own background with the Mormon church led you to think this way and think about things in this way? Yes. Thank you for asking that. I joined the mainstream Mormon church when I was 18 years old. I was very zealous and I became a missionary and was the perfect Mormon wife, in my opinion, and so on. And then I was lured into an offshoot by a man posing to be a prophet. And it ended up being a very traumatizing experience for me.

5:19And when I was done with it, because I had left the beaten path and because I had lost my critical thinking along the way, I had a very difficult time being seen as worthy of help. many of the members of the church, including leaders that I went to for help. Because when I left there, I was homeless, penniless, away from my children. I had no car and I had a severe amount of traumatic stress from my own personal experience. And in Utah, the law enforcement officers that I dealt with didn't even think I merited a victim's advocate because they just considered it a fraud, but it was so much more than a fraud because when you have one of these leaders that can be questioned who then exploit you in every way you can't, you know, humanly possible, they always go for three things, power, sex, and money.

6:15So it was much more than money. And I was very victim shamed and treated as undeserving of help. So when I came to this community, I just knew right up front that I wasn't going to shun anybody. If I didn't agree with what they were doing, the last thing you should do is attack them because people don't change their minds based on attacks and facts. They need to be shown different ways of thinking that they're safe. So my past experience as LDS and then as joining my own offshoot contributed significantly to my views and how I approach things in this community. Yeah.

6:56Rebecca Lavoie:You know, you're saying if you shun, you can't help. I know also if you shun, you can't understand. And I just find myself thinking again and again today, like in the world and in my own work, and then watching this, that that is something that I think we can all benefit from thinking about all the time, right? Because we can't actually make connections with people and heal if we just shut out the people that we don't understand or agree with. Thank you for saying that. I have a saying, which is stop judging, start helping. And if we can look at everybody as a person and not a political party or not somebody whose decisions we don't agree with and line up with them on what we do have in common and treat them as if they're worthy of being treated with dignity, we can get so much further.

7:46Yeah.

7:47Rebecca Lavoie:The series begins with you and your husband, Tolga, moving from Las Vegas to Short Creek, Utah. We saw that you had this big lifestyle shift. But what about the culture shift? Yeah, that was culture shock for sure. So we were living in Las Vegas. My husband, Tolga, is a fashion photographer. And he does music videos. So he's done a lot of interactions with celebrities. Yeah. So I would say it was a glamorous life under the neon lights of Las Vegas. However, during that time, I was taking in to my own home survivors of human trafficking and survivors of coercive polygamous situations, all young people.

8:33And I did not have a big enough house. And when I moved here, I moved here first by myself. Tolga wouldn't even come. It took him like a month before. I mean, I actually drove here with him with the U-Haul, but then he went back to the Las Vegas house and sat in the empty house on the floor with his laptop being rebellious. I'm not going to leave my life, but I was determined. I just really felt called to be here and felt like I could help them. And then he came and then, yeah, it's been amazing culture shock. Just remarkable. But I really love it.

9:06Rebecca Lavoie:So one of the visuals that I think people will find surprising is how plugged into the modern world the women in this community are. I mean, they're wearing homemade dresses, but they're carrying iPhones and they are as connected to technology as the rest of us. What else do we misunderstand about this community? There's a lot of love in the families. And even if the families have gone through the stress of having half their family leave the church, they still love each other intensely. In this whole community, there's a lot of love. And the women love their children. It seems as if so many sensational media pieces out there make you wonder if these people are on another planet.

9:52But they're not. I mean, they're just people. After you get to know them, you don't even notice their dresses anymore. That's just Esther. That's just Norma or Julia. When Christine came along, everybody was leery ever because nobody knew what she was about.

10:10Rebecca Lavoie:We always had people looking at us like we were a freak show. So there was a lot of speculation among our people that they were just here to do something for TV or write a book or something. And they have feelings and they're just as individual as you and I are. So they all live in their religion their own way. They're not one big monolith or group that follows in complete obedience at every step. It just depends on the person and the family that they come from. So we know that FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for child sexual abuse. Can you talk about what became of the sect after he went to prison in 2011?

10:53The members, the people who believe in him, it did not impact many of them, probably most of them. We weren't supposed to be getting married. We couldn't have marital relations. Even with your husband, then we didn't hug anymore. We've been taught our whole lives that not one year should go by without a child being born. So now there were no more children. Nobody was having babies. Either they believe that it's not true, or they believe that if he had underage wives, it was in the tradition of generations past. But they don't believe that he's a criminal. They believe that he's innocent in jail.

11:34So he remained the prophet, and he's still the prophet.

11:36Rebecca Lavoie:But talk about Sam Bateman a bit, because as we see in the documentary, he doesn't seem like the obvious choice to ascend to leadership. Right. Yeah. In the course of me knowing him, there was a time when he had divorced his wife. He married a new young wife. She was like 20. And he was so broke that when I invited him and his new young wife to go with us somewhere, he said, we can only go if you don't need gas money because I just am in dire financial straits. So he was so broke and unsuccessful at his career that it's amazing to compare it to what he became once he decided to imposter as a prophet.

12:28I remember thinking, that's interesting. How did Sam get a new wife? You know, somebody's been doing something that wasn't put together by the prophet. So suddenly he returns with two cars full of women with multiple vehicles. Eventually, even he had Bentleys and Range Rovers. So he was not charismatic at all. He was very boring, but he took on the mantle of the new prophet. And because in Mormonism, the prophet is the highest calling you can have. It's the most esteemed. It's the highest status. It's like he's the only rock star allowed.

13:10Rebecca Lavoie:Can you talk a little bit about how he ended up being supported by these other men in the community? Because I will say one of the things I often wonder when I watch documentaries about sex and sometimes and cults is how are these folks making money? Like, how are they making a living? How are they buying fuel for that house and gas for their cars? But he ended up finding a way with these other men who did have money to get money, right? Yeah, that's right. He took everything from them. You know, their wives, their children and their money. It's an honor and a tradition in Mormon history that the saints, that's what they called the early Mormons, would sacrifice everything they had to help build the kingdom of God.

13:52And in the tradition of that, Sam would tell these men what he needed and they supplied it in spades. In fact, he even had an impression, which is his version of a revelation, that his sons should get some new motorcycles. What do you know? His son's got some new motorcycles. Wow. It's a great living to be a prophet. Yeah.

14:12Rebecca Lavoie:I mean, it's like the ultimate kind of manifestation, right? You just say it out loud and it happens. Yep. So I have a question for you. You took it upon yourself to go and help people and they didn't ask for your help to begin with. That's a risk. That's a risky proposition. How do you think about that when you're stepping in to that risk? They actually did ask for my help because there's a political situation in town where people could lose their homes if they didn't do the proper paperwork with proper organization. And so I was the person who was an intermediary and interceded in those cases.

14:48So they did ask for my help and then they wanted more help and then they wanted Toga's help and more help. So they brought me in. I didn't go after them.

14:58Rebecca Lavoie:Right and they build trust with you in that way right because they saw you as somebody who they could rely on Yeah, that's true so we have a saying on another podcast that we make that You're not really a cult for lack of a better word unless you have someone take hours of video footage of you doing everything I mean that seems to be a pattern and we see over and over again Do you think that bateman let you in in order to spread the word and promote his teaching or because he just really liked seeing himself on camera? I think both. He wanted to be on camera. He pushed that as well. And all the people that were filmed were consented to be filmed.

15:37And they wanted to share their testimonies with the whole world so that soon the whole world would know that Samuel was the prophet. And he's facilitating a reenactment of an experience. There's a message in it. It's like a life lesson. And he wanted that captured. So we're doing it. So this is kind of how it was. Did you say pray for me? Oh, yeah, I didn't say that.

16:01Rebecca Lavoie:Should we do that again? Yeah. Pray for me. Yeah, Sam certainly did enjoy being the center of attention. In fact, we did this ruse to assist with the raid where we were filming Sam. And before that, he was, you know, some of his wives were, they were combing his hair and they were spraying it with dark stuff so his hair didn't look so thin and they were just crimping him like a star. And he was really in his element.

16:36Rebecca Lavoie:Can you talk about that night? I know it's a difficult time for you, but that night in Bateman's car when you ended up secretly recording him on your phone. Yeah, it was a very weird day. It started out with a call early in the morning and he said he had an impression, which means God told him something, that he needed to come and pick us up right now. And so we had this rule, when Sam wants us, we want to go there. Tobin and I both went outside, we got the car. He took us to where he lived with his wives, like 22 wives and over a dozen children all in a house that only had two bedrooms and a sewing room.

17:17So here we are. and he wanted these girls to tell us stuff. So he was setting the stage for something. It was clear, but we didn't know where that was going to lead to. So then he chose who needed to get in the car with us to go for a drive. And that's when he started confessing. And I should be there. Watch it. Sam explained that he had to atone for the sins of wicked men by having these three wives have sex with them. And the three girls that he had chosen to come in the car with, the three that he was telling you? Yes. Now, by that time, I had already been talking to law enforcement and telling them my concerns as well as things that I had learned.

18:07One of the young wives was telling me things secretly. So I was trying to get law enforcement to act, but they said, we need proof. If we can't have hearsay, we need something solid. So that's why when he started saying these things, I knew I had to record it because this is what they were waiting for. And so it worked out that I did. But it was sickening, the whole experience, to see him gloating, almost bragging about how much control he had over those women's bodies and those men's bodies too, because he decided who slept with who. And he had no concern for describing these acts in front of these girls.

18:50Now, keep in mind, the FLDS are very sheltered and very innocent. They don't even use the word sex. They don't use the word rape. They say ruined. They're just so pure. And so here he is using vulgar words in front of them about this ritualistic sexual abuse experience that he made them go through. And he's explaining this with them there in front of me and Tolga. And it was definitely an uncomfortable experience for them. And they were weeping. Sam didn't care about them at all. So it was difficult for me. I couldn't even finish. The tape that I got probably could have been longer, but I hit a wall.

19:35I hit a wall. I couldn't take any more. So I mean, I was like frozen in the car trying to think, what do I do? How do I handle this? You know, I mean, I had so many choices. I wanted to get the girls out of there. I wanted to assault Sam. I wanted to call the police. And I kept weighing everything. And I thought, no, I have to get this tape to the police. I have to follow the book. I have to figure out the right next path. I have to act like I'm OK with this. So I just said that I had to get out and go to work, tried to act like everything was normal. You know, like I love Sam. I love everybody.

20:12Like it didn't faze me at all when inside I was exploding. Yeah.

20:18Rebecca Lavoie:What do you think that was about? Was that a test? Was he trying to rattle you? Was that just like a power play? I find it hard to imagine why it would be that he would put you in that space and tell you all these things that he had to have known would be shocking. I can't get in Sam's mind, but I'll tell you my theories. I believe that it was such a traumatic experience for the people involved that he worried that one of them might come to me, which was my goal. And that if I heard this from somebody who snuck out, it would be much worse than if he presented it. So it's like he was getting ahead of it.

20:55Rebecca Lavoie:That's like maybe getting ahead of the story. Yeah. Damage control. Yeah. You know how serial killers take trophies? Yeah. I was wondering if maybe he was so proud of what he had done, he wanted to share it with someone. Yeah. We heard Sergeant David Wilkinson of the Colorado City Police say he only listened to Bateman's recorded confession once because as he said, quote, It's not something I like to burden myself with as we go through these cases, because there is a lot of information that comes that hurts a gentle heart. That shocked me because that is his job. What does that say about him and that police department being up to this task?

21:38Rebecca Lavoie:I mean, it really seemed like they were in over their heads with this. Oh, my goodness. You know, I didn't know that until I saw the doc. Wow. Wow. And I know where he was coming from because he's a religious man in his own religion. And they want to keep filth out of their minds. But how can you do that if your job is to investigate sexual crimes against children? And that was hard for me to hear. I also learned it took them a month or two, the local police department, before they would even let the FBI speak to me. Really? Yeah, that didn't go over well either. I have a complicated question, and I think that you'll understand why I'm asking.

22:22Rebecca Lavoie:I really kind of want viewers to understand because at the beginning of the documentary, we hear that Warren Jeffs said, you know, nobody can get married. Nobody can have any more babies. And then we see women in the community kind of immediately knowing that what Bateman was doing was wrong. Were they reacting because it was objectively wrong or because it was going against what Warren Jeffs had said they should do? Because it was going against what Warren Jeffs had said. Nobody that was an active FLDS member was getting married because only the prophet can marry. So with him in prison, there were no marriages since he went to prison in 2005 because he was in prison, you know, even before he went to Texas.

23:06So since 2005, that's when George Bush was still president.