ByCLARA GASPAR, ASSOCIATE FEATURES EDITORandTOM LEONARD, US CORRESPONDENT
Published:12:40 EDT, 21 April 2026|Updated:12:40 EDT, 21 April 2026
It had just gone 8am on a mild September morning whenFBIagents swooped on an unassuming green bungalow in Short Creek,Utah– a small desert community of 5,000 people on theArizonaborder.
Naomi Bistline, then 24, was in the shower when mayhem erupted. Through the walls came the bark of officers, amplified by megaphones, ordering everyone outside with their hands up.
Downstairs, her housemates – more than a dozen women and girls, some as young as nine – braced themselves for confrontation.
‘Where’s my pepper spray? I need an AR-15[gun],’ shouted one.
‘If they try to come in, they die and we die,’ vowed another.
What none of them knew was that they had a traitor in their midst – someone who had spent two years gaining their trust and helping orchestrate this raid. Nor did the women realise they were not villains but victims of one of America’s most disturbing cult leaders.
It would later emerge that Samuel Rappylee Bateman had a harem of polygamous ‘wives’, many underage, whose every movement he controlled.
As officers led the women from the bungalow, Bateman was arrested on suspicion of child sexual trafficking, destroying evidence and kidnapping.
Source: Drudge Report
