Warning: This episode includes discussion of child sexual abuse, cult abuse and human trafficking.
When Dr. Christine Marie told police that a self-declared prophet in Short Creek was calling young girls his wives, they told her it was hearsay. They needed evidence. So she and her husband, filmmaker Tolga Katas, became Samuel Bateman’s unofficial archivists, filming whenever he asked and turning the footage over to law enforcement. One car ride later, she had his confession on tape.
Christine knew what she was looking at because she had lived a version of it. A longtime member of the mainstream LDS Church, she was drawn into a fundamentalist situation by a man who exploited her, and it took her a decade to understand what had happened to her brain. When she first shared her story with a documentary company in 2014, the result was so victim-shaming that she went back to school and earned a PhD in media psychology studying that exact harm.
She tells Erica Brinker about the 2015 flood that first brought her to Short Creek, the harm-reduction approach that earned the trust of FLDS families who don’t talk to outsiders and the moment in the car when she hit record and had to act normal. “I felt like I was being skinned alive,” she says. That footage helped build Netflix’s Trust Me: The False Prophet.
Bateman is serving 50 years in federal prison, and in August an Arizona judge added 24 years on state child abuse charges. Christine still lives in Short Creek, where her nonprofit, Voices for Dignity, helps women earn money of their own. Her advice for anyone in a situation they can’t name yet: find one safe person, and if they don’t believe you, keep trying.
If you or someone you know needs help: National Human Trafficking Hotline, 1-888-373-7888 (text 233733). RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline, 800-656-4673.
Executive Producer: Sara Glassman
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