Netflix Docuseries Exposes Samuel Bateman, the False Prophet's Alleged Abuse

When fathers handed their own daughters, some as young as 9, to Samuel Rappylee Bateman as plural "wives," they believed they were honoring a divine decree. That particular betrayal, parents functioning as willing accomplices in their children's abuse, sits at the center of Trust Me: The False Prophet, Netflix's four-part docuseries that dropped April 8 and has already reignited debate in the true-crime community about how coercive control hides inside institutions built on trust.

Bateman grew up in Colorado City, Arizona, as a devoted FLDS follower. Around 2019, with Warren Jeffs unable to perform new marriages from prison, Bateman began claiming his own prophetic authority and led a breakaway sect of about 50 people known as the "Samuelites" along the Arizona-Utah border. He took multiple wives including minors, framing each arrangement as a divine command.

Directed by Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Rachel Dretzin, who also helmed Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, the four-part documentary is built largely from footage Christine and Tolga captured while embedded in Bateman's inner circle. The couple moved to an FLDS community and grew suspicious about Bateman, then decided to secretly investigate him. In late 2021, Marie recorded what would become a turning point in the case when Bateman described what he called an "Atonement" ceremony. Marie subsequently turned this material over to local law enforcement, and due to limited resources at the municipal level, the case was referred to federal authorities, with Marie working as an FBI informant while Katas provided video evidence.

The case broke open publicly in August 2022, when officers found three girls, aged 11 to 14, in an unventilated trailer after a passerby noticed their fingers poking through slats in the door. A federal raid on Bateman's Colorado City home followed in September 2022. On December 9, 2024, Bateman was sentenced to 50 years in prison for conspiracy to commit transportation of a minor for criminal sexual activity and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Several of his male followers are now serving lengthy sentences.

The docuseries raises a question it does not fully resolve. The Colorado City/Hildale police department, represented by Sgt. David Wilkinson in the docuseries, admitted to having received complaints against Bateman for having brought in wives from other states even before Christine and Tolga filed their complaints, but supposedly had to wait for more proof to make a move. The series surfaces this institutional gap without delivering a clean answer; a significant number of Bateman's adult wives remain loyal, still believing he is their prophet.

The documentary outlines how Bateman used a combination of religious language, isolation, and financial pressure to consolidate authority, with dissent reframed as spiritual failure and women and girls living under constant oversight. Those patterns, authority claimed through a specialized identity, dependency engineered gradually, outside contact labeled as betrayal, compliance extracted through shame, appear in controlling relationships far outside any religious setting, including online communities organized around charismatic figures who demand loyalty as proof of belonging.

Survivors navigating similar dynamics can reach RAINN's 24-hour sexual assault hotline at 1-800-656-4673, the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or Freedom of Mind Resource Center at freedomofmind.com for cult-specific exit counseling. Crisis Text Line connects users to trained counselors by texting HOME to 741741.

Christine and Tolga still live in Short Creek, continuing their work with the FLDS community. The reckoning Bateman's sentencing was supposed to close is still unfolding around them.