News

Naturally, Spez doesn't like people like us, talking about the things that should happen to cretins like them.

I'm sick of living in a world run by the most vile, repulsive, and evil humans to walk the earth. Sick of working 5-days a week to make those same creatures richer.

There so many people more deserving of this in America than this fucker.

There's a decently done but horrific doc on Netflix about this. The cops in that town are definitely in on something, if not just trying to protect Mormonism in general. A single woman went and infiltrated and collected all the evidence and the cops didn't give a damn. She eventually got the feds involved and that was slow, but the cops clearly were dragging their feet.

Yep, I was gonna say... this FLDS, or an offshoot?

Great work Mormons, you continue to generate terrorist pedophile sex cults, even into the modern era, truly an extremely legitimate cultural lineage and religious tradition.

I’m sure its touchy because of religious freedoms

Ugh, that's one thing I hate about religious "freedom" in this country - when something is wrapped up in religious garb, especially if its some xtian denomination (and no, I'm not playing that "no true Christian" game with LDS or its fundie groups - the full name of LDS is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" so getting into a debate over it being "real" Christianity is just not really worth it) - it often takes a much higher bar to get it stopped.

It was far down the article but yes, they describe it as an offshoot of the FLDS:

Federal authorities said Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet, traveled extensively between Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska as he built an offshoot network of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which historically has been based in the neighboring communities of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah.

And indeed there is the link to Warren Jeffs:

Bateman was one of the trusted followers of Warren Jeffs, who previously led the sect and is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexual assault of children.

The AP claims that things were actually done to dismantle the network:

The influence of the polygamous sect has waned significantly over time in the towns where the sect has historically been based. In 2017, a court order placed the towns under supervision, excising the church from their governments and shared police department.

But the area has since transformed so quickly that they were released from court-ordered supervision last summer, almost two years earlier than expected. Practicing sect members are now believed to account for only a small percentage of the towns’ populations.

... but I have no way of knowing it that was enough or not, don't want to be too optimistic.

His 50 year sentence for sexual abuse of minors etc came down in December of 2024, the sentence coming down now is for child abuse by transporting them in the hot trailer through Arizona in 2022.

Also this was an Arizona State case, while the other one was a Federal case. So the prosecutions ran concurrently.

The arrest for the abuse by neglect was actually first, he posted bond for that and was later arrested again for the federal case.

There's a bit of a difference between FLDS style polygamy and modern polyamory.

Polygamy is about being married to multiple people, but to most people generally refers to situations where men have multiple wives. A "polygamous sect" in Utah generally means a man who is worshipped in a cult-like situation by a group of oppressed women. The wives are groomed through the religion from a very young age to believe that their path to heaven lies in obeying their husband who is closer to god. They're taught that it's sinful to think "sinful thoughts" or to question anything their husband says.

In this case he, quite literally, told them all he was god's prophet, the successor to Warren Jeffs, the equivalent of Jesus, and his followers needed to stop thinking and live in worship, give him their daughters to be his wives, give him their money and work for him, let him control every aspect of their lives and thank him for the beautiful opportunity to be allowed to worship a real prophet and be one of god's chosen.

Not the first time this has happened and not the only active polygamous sect around there. It's super fucked up even without the child sex offenses.

On the other hand polyamory is generally about ethical non-monogamy and involves people having multiple loving relationships (married or not). One of the reasons the term was invented (aside from removing the connotations of polygyny and marriage) was to distance polyamorous people from the FLDS which was often the only kind of non-monogamy that people knew about.

These guys use polygamy as a cover story for child sex trafficking.

The west is built on “traditional family values”. So for some reason they make it about the polygamy in the press, not the child sex.

Cops are in on it. Same easily bought mfers in the Bricks & Minifigs drama: willing to sell out their power for someone to use to exploit helpless people.

We gotta make sure to vilify anyone who "desecrates the sanctity" of the nuclear family or some dumb fucking shit.

Christ American news sources are trash.