Prosecution rests in fundamentalist Mormon child sex abuse trial

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.