Wife of polygamist Mormon leader gets 15 years for child sex abuse
Published By admin with Comments 0
PHOENIX (CN) — The fifth of eight women indicted in an Arizona child sex abuse ring was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday for her role in recruiting young girls into illegitimate polygamous marriages with the religious leader of a disgraced Mormon sect.
Josephine Bistline helped Samuel Bateman, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, marry and sexually abuse at least nine underage girls between 2019 and 2022. The victims were as young as nine years old, and two were Bistline’s own daughters.
Bistline admitted to engaging in sexual activity with two of the child brides, sleeping naked with them and sexually abusing at least one. She also helped plan a 2022 kidnapping of eight child brides from the Arizona Department of Child Services.
Bistline, indicted on 14 counts ranging from transporting a minor for sexual activity to conspiracy to commit kidnapping, pleaded guilty in April to two counts of persuading or coercing travel to engage in sexual activity, a class C felony.
Her attorney Mark Anderson painted Bateman as a master manipulator.
“No one actually thinks Josephine Bistline is some kind of pedophile,” he told U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich, a Donald Trump appointee. “At the very worst, she was doing these things at the behest of Samuel Bateman.”
And yet the sexual conduct to which Bistline admitted happened in Arizona while Bateman was traveling in Nebraska.
“That’s not something Bateman forced her to do,” federal prosecutor Ryan Powell said.
Bistline told Brnovich she took full responsibility for her actions. Nonetheless, she showed little remorse for them.
“I haven’t been coerced by Samuel Bateman or anyone else,” Bistline said.
Prosecutors described Bistline as “by far the most culpable of any of the women involved.”
Many of Bateman’s wives were raised in a community in Colorado City, Arizona, without any access to the outside world. There, they were taught that complete obedience to the men in power, even when asked to perform immoral acts, was the only way to find salvation in the afterlife.
Federal prosecutor Ryan Powell said Bistline’s mother, Josephine Barlow, warned her against joining the community or marrying Bateman. At one point, Barlow even called police in an attempt to stop her granddaughters from entering Bateman’s world.
“She was involved with her own daughters being given away to terrible sexual abuse,” Powell said. “She fetched girls [and] brought them in knowing what would happen to them.”
“She was there, she watched, and she participated,” Powell continued — “and she didn’t do anything to stop it.”
Addressing the court, Josephine Barlow asked for mercy for her daughter.
“Before all this happened, she was very protected from all the evils that were out there,” Barlow said. “So, she was open to somebody who was evil.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.courthousenews.com/wife-of-polygamist-mormon-leader-gets-15-years-for-child-sex-abuse/.
