Cult leader who claimed underage girls among his ‘wives’ jailed for 50 years

Samuel Bateman’s cult was based in Hildale, Utah (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

A polygamist religious leader who claimed more than 20 spiritual “wives” including 10 underage girls was sentenced to 50 years in prison for coercing girls as young as nine years old to submit to criminal sex acts with him and other adults, and for scheming to kidnap them from protective custody.

Samuel Bateman, whose small group was an offshoot of the sect once led by Warren Jeffs, had pleaded guilty to a years-long scheme to transport girls across state lines for his sex crimes, and later to kidnap some of them from protective custody.