True Crime

Bateman has garnered a small following of around 50 FLDS members, splintering the sect, according to the FBI, and has taken 20 wives, most of them girls under 15 years old......

...In May 2020, Bateman went to his follower, Moroni Johnson, and took his daughter — born in 2010 — as his wife, according to the FBI.

...A law enforcement informant close to the child brides told the FBI that Bateman was "disgusted" over the youngest girl's bedwetting.

...While Moroni "expressed great anguish and was under extreme stress over having to give his youngest daughter to Bateman," the FBI affidavit said, he remained a faithful follower. Bateman has since taken all of Moroni's daughters and at least one of his wives as his own.

...Bateman's underage wives — several of them Moroni's own daughters — were made to watch in November 2020 as he had sex with Moroni in a Nebraska hotel room, according to the court document. The women and girls were told it was the "binding of brothers" and were forced to have sex with other men in the cult, the FBI said.