Original subtitles

[Rachel] I was born to Warren Jeffs.

The sexual abuse started when I was 8.

Even with all the truths put out about Warren,

he still has followers.

[Nate] The thing the trial really didn't get at

was what were other men doing in the group.

A guy named Sam Bateman just popped up

and declared himself the prophet.

There's some really bad things happening

and something has to be done.

[Matt] And now all of sudden, next thing you know

kids are missing and we have no idea

what's going on with them.

[phone ringing]

[Matt] What can I do for you?

[Officer] Put your hands behind your back.

I just can't fathom how a father could give his baby girls

to a predator like that. I can't fathom it.

[Matt] My name is Matt Browning.

I'm a retired law enforcement out of Arizona.

I was on both the Joint Terrorist Task Force

and the Fugitive Task Force, with the FBI.

But most importantly, I'm a husband and a father.

And I was born and raised a member

of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

A few years ago, my wife Tawni and I were contacted

by women who wanted help leaving polygamous groups.

Since then we've been contacted numerous times

by people asking for help.

Some of these groups have a history

of incest and child abuse.

And are thriving right here in the United States.

People need to know about this. That's why we do what we do.

A few years back,

I had the opportunity to meet some girls

that were part of polygamist groups.

I was able to talk to them about the different things

going on within these organizations.

Crimes such as the, the rapes, the pedophilia,

the underage marriages, um, the incest.

I helped some of these women get out of polygamy

and since that time, in helping them,

my name has gotten out and I've been able to help more

and I've been getting more information

on what's going on within polygamy.

[Nate] The group that eventually became the FLDS

settled in a place called Short Creek

on the Utah Arizona line.

One thing you see across the polygamist groups

is they seek out isolation to some extent,

in part because they distrust governments.

And so they tend to kind of settle in places

where they can have their own community.

You talk to former members of the FLDS

and a lot of them will tell you

that, once upon a time, it was a good society.

They were all geared toward the same goal

of creating a kingdom on earth for when Christ returned.

There wasn't a dictatorship,

the way there became under the Jeffs.

Once Warren comes to power,

Warren was, you know, specifically telling people

which houses they could live in,

what he expected out of businesses.

You know, he was basically taking any woman

he wanted, or girl, to marry.

He's evicting men that he saw as disloyal

or some kind of threat to his political power.

And, there were, were new accusations

of, uh, men, particularly Warren marrying underage girls.

Then Warren went on the run.

And so there was a big announcement

that Warren was now a 10 most wanted fugitive

on the FBI's list.

I remember thinking the thing the trial really didn't get at

was what were other men doing in the group.

I mean, how many other underage brides were there,

underage mothers were there within the FLDS.

Even though Warren is locked up serving a life sentence,

he is still the president on the incorporation papers

for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter Day Saints.

So he still has a following.

He still has people who believe in him.

[Matt] So, when Warren got locked up,

the whole church actually kind of was in limbo.

They still believed Warren was running the church

from inside prison,

but also different people were fighting for power

and a guy named Sam Bateman just popped up

and declared himself the prophet.

Within these extreme organizations,

if you are so set on going to heaven

and your prophet leaves or is in prison,

you need to find another prophet

because they are the only ones that can get you to Heaven.

So Sam Bateman easily inserted himself

in this whole power vacuum.

So what we know about Sam Bateman

is that he grew up in the FLDS.

He was nowhere even close to being in the leadership

within the church

and he just declared himself the prophet.

Sam was pulled over, up around Flagstaff, Arizona up north

and he was driving a truck with some teenage women

that claim to be his wives,

but he was pulling a trailer

and in the trailer was some underage girls.

[Police] Put your hands behind your back.

Put your hands behind your back.

[music]

Something Warren Jeffs and Sam Bateman have in common

is they both faced charges related to child abuse.

The reason why we are looking at people

who are already locked up like Warren and Sam Bateman

is because both Warren and Sam have people on the outside

who do the things that they are told to do.

Usually Tawni's phone goes crazy with people wanting help

leaving the FLDS

but lately the phone calls we've been getting

are from people who have already left

the FLDS church but now they want help

finding their kids that have gone missing.

[phone ringing]

What can I do for you?

And how many children are we talking?

Now, I have moms and dads who can't sleep at night

because they don't know where their kids are.

I think that a lot of it has to do with these, you know,

revelations that are coming from Warren Jeffs.

These revelations are coming from Warren Jeffs

who is in prison and there going to his son Helaman

who then distributes them throughout the church.

So one thing that Warren Jeffs is putting out there

is that we need to gather up all these children

from their apostate parent

and re-indoctrinate them all within the FLDS.

Now what I have to do is go talk to the people

that can point me in the right directions

and the best person that I know of

that I can talk to is Rachel Jeffs.

Rachel Jeffs is Warren Jeffs' daughter.

Rachel's story is amazing and she definitely is a survivor

Rachel and Helaman grew up together.

The difference is Rachel left the FLDS group

while Helaman stayed.

When she left Polygamy, she spoke up.

She's one of those that spoke up and because of that,

she became almost like an activist

for the FLDS community.

There's nobody that knows FLDS like Rachel.

I want to know if Rachel's heard anything

about what her brother and father are doing,

and if it's got anything to do with these missing kids.

We're headed to Rachel Jeffs' house

in Northern Idaho, just south of the Canadian border.

Rachel is the strong one that left FLDS

because she's really speaking out

about the things that have happened to her

in her life and -- and the things that go on

still within the FLDS communities.

She's written a book, Breaking Free,

and she's talking about her family.

Her family is doing bad things, and she wants it to stop.

And I think people are coming forward now

because they're tired of kids getting hurt.

Rachel's brother, Helaman Helaman Jeffs, Warren's son

has kind of taken up the reins and is,

for lack of a better word, Warren's mouthpiece

outside of the prison system.

Warren Jeffs is in prison for the rest of his life.

While Warren is still running it from inside his cell,

Helaman is actually receiving revelations

from Warren and distributing them

to the faithful members of the FLDS community.

But then you have Sam Bateman who wants to be the leader

and has caused a split within the FLDS community.

So now you have one organization that has split into two

because of two battling prophets.

So, I would think that there's nobody

that knows Helaman Jeffs better than Rachel

because Rachel is his sister.

[music]

What I'm looking for with Rachael and Brandon

is picking their brains on what they've heard

and what they know.

So, hopefully, we can come up with an idea

of where these kids are being taken.

-Hey, how's it going? -[Brandon] What's up, man?

-[Matt] How are you? -[Brandon] Not bad,

good to see you.

[Matt] You gotta give me a hug. Sorry.

How have you guys been?

- [Rachel] Good. -[Matt] Good?

Getting on the backside of winter.

Get on the backside? You heard about Sam, right?

-Sam Bateman? - Yeah.

And he's sitting in jail down in Phoenix,

but seems like he's back to the same old thing.

You have some people who are hurting kids

and marrying off young kids.

So, I was wondering about what Helaman was doing.

My theory behind why Helaman is where he's at,

is over time Warren's own group was starting to fragment

pretty bad.

Different little groups are popping up

and Sam Bateman being one of them.

He claims well, Warren's dead now, I'm the leader.

So, Warren in response to that

appointed his own subordinate,

which was Helaman Jeffs, his son.

He's like, "No, this is actually the guy

that's doing what I want him to do"

And he uses him as a puppet to rally his troops.

[Rachel And I think even Helaman did that.

He's like, "Oh, we were losing everybody.

So, now we got to gather them back up."

Okay. Now, that's extremely interesting.

[Rachel] I was born to Warren Jeffs and Barbara Barlow.

They're my parents.

We lived in polygamy.

My dad had several wives. So, we had lots of siblings.

We were taught that, you know, we had to look different

than the world to prove that we are different.

Dresses came up to our necks, ankle length.

We had to keep our hair braided.

Men, of course, kept their bodies covered too.

It's like we're the priesthood people.

We're a part of the church and the wicked people

were considered Gentiles, what we call Gentiles.

If you weren't in our church, you are a Gentile.

We were going to heaven, they were going to hell.

To me, this was normal.

We believed it because, you know, who loves you more

than your parents, you believe your parents.

So, you just don't know any different.

[Matt] Has Warren always been hurting kids

since he was in command or rule?

I believe he has been hurting kids

since he was a kid probably.

-[Matt] Really? -Yeah. I mean,

the more I find out about, you know, the more people,

as his sisters and stuff that have talked to me

and the more stories that come out.

[Matt] He hurt you when you were a kid, when you were little.

Yeah.

The sexual abuse started when I was eight

and, you know, I was very scared.

I remember the very first time, it was very shocking.

I just remember going to bed crying and thinking,

what did I do bad that made him do that, you know.

He kept me with him all the tie and if I ever asked,

can my like, my same sister Becky,

I'd say can, "Becky come with me?" or something.

He'd be so angry at me

and so then the family would treat me bad

because he was treating me bad.

And so then nobody would talk to me

and it was very lonely and painful.

The sexual abuse happened till I was 16.

So, I kind of learned to please him

so that the rest of the family would treat me good.

And that's how he makes you feel like you did something wrong

so I'm going to do this to you.

May I ask you a question and promise

that you're not going to get mad at me. Okay, you promise?

I don't ever get mad.

[Matt] Okay. Why didn't you call the police?

[Rachel] We were taught all our lives

that the cops were going to hurt us

or the cops are out to get us.

So, I mean that was the last thing you do.

When Warren separated me from my kids several times,

he'd say, "Rachel, you just have to go away for a week."

But then he wouldn't let me return for months.

[music]

One time while I was separated, when I got back,

my baby didn't remember me and I was just so angry

at father and I even wrote to him and told him,

I was just so upset at him.

It's like you're on detention and you're in prison,

You're in this house by yourself.

You're supposed to sew every day.

Warren did this to all his wives and his girls and his sons.

Even 12 year olds got put in houses

all by themselves with nothing but to sew.

My sister, he had set her away, to live alone and she called me.

And she's like, "Rachel, you know what father

did to you when you were little."

I was like, "How did you know?"

And she's like, "Because he did it to me too."

[Matt] He hurt you when you were little?

[Rachel] Yeah.

And that went on for how many years?

For 8 years.

[Matt] So you were alone?

Well, you know, I thought I was.

When my sister told me about the sexual abuse,

I was angry that he did it to her.

But more than anything, the very big truth

smacks you in the face, almost

that it wasn't because of something that I did

that made him do this to me, it was him.

You know, I was-- that was a huge moment.

You know, we talked all night on the phone

and we both decided that night, we are going to leave someday.

We didn't decide that we're going to leave that day,

but we knew we're going to leave the church.

[music]

He was in prison, but he required other men

to marry underage girls too.

I remember him telling this one man

that he had to marry a 14-year-old.

You know, I just thought to myself, father can hurt me,

but he -- I'm not going to let him hurt my kids.

Then I just felt like, I'm not going to put up with this.

In the FLDS, most of the people didn't know

he had married underage girls.

And I think for a lot of us -- a lot of people

didn't even know that was illegal.

Even with all the truths put out about Warren,

he still has followers.

There's still people listening to him

and they still carry out his word

and it's just crazy that it still happens.

[music]

These kids have never seen their father

or talked to him since.

I mean, that was very, also very difficult

because I grew to love him.

To look back at the memories

especially, like to look at pictures of like my mom,

that's just so emotional, super emotional.

I think I bury some of that just because it's super painful.

It really wasn't until I left that I realized as a child,

my father could have gone to prison for what he did to me

and that was very empowering to me.

I believe it's been a cult all along.

I feel like this system was all about men

wanting to have sex with multiple women

and justifying it through religion.

And they know that.

[Matt] Are you happy now?

You know, I am.

-Are you happy now? -[Brandon] I am.

[Matt] And why are you happy?

Because we're free.

How'd you guys meet?

[Brandon] Actually, through my brother.

He suggested I should talk to her

and so I did and that's kind of what kicked it off.

[Rachel Yeah, I think we both had tough experiences

and I think we understood each other, you know.

[Brandon] My name is Brandon Blackmore.

I was born and raised in the FLDS

in Canada, British Columbia.

I had 21 brothers and 16 sisters.

We were busy building these log cabin kits

for Warren Jeffs.

I ran a log lathe so, I was very involved with building

all the log cabin kits.

On April 3rd, 2008, the YFZ Ranch in, in San Angelo, Texas

was raided by law enforcement after they received

an anonymous tip of a girl being raped.

[Brandon] I knew nothing about it

until the raid happened in 2008.

Me and several of my brothers

and a lot of the Canadian members

were building the log cabins and sending them down there,

but I had no idea where they're going.

It was even whispered around, you could find out

on the internet, but we weren't supposed

to look on the internet.

We just weren't privy to that.

[music]

She disappeared in 2004. She was 13 at the time.

What we were told is that she was on a mission

and so, it was just like, you don't ask,

you don't need to know.

The one thing that came out of that raid

that was quite pivotal to me is a claim

that underage marriages were happening.

She reappeared in 2008, came back to Canada.

And so the time went on, I wondered if she was married

to Warren, and she told me that, yeah she got married

the same day I got married when she was 13.

And so that immediately, I now had proof positive in my mind

that I've been lied to.

That was a very, very big deal to me

as my foundation that I thought was secure, wasn't.

That's not why I worked my entire life for this.

I don't support this.

[Matt] Let's talk about the kids that are missing.

How did you guys hear about it?

I've had parents that are ex-FLDS

that their kids are still there message me and say,

you know, my daughter disappeared,

my underage daughter disappeared,

or brothers say my sister has disappeared.

Rachel, what can we do?

And their -- their concern was that they were going to get

married underage or get sucked back into all that stuff

with Warren Jeffs and all the stuff he's doing.

What do you think is happening with the kids?

I think they're just trying to seclude them

for one thing, keeping them away from --

They keep them brainwashed. I mean--

Boys, I would -- I would imagine they're making them work.

They'd be working on whatever job site.

But the girls are typical, just--

Just raise them up and have them get married.

I don't know.

Yeah, we-- we don't know.

Here you have Helaman who's sending out Warren's stuff.

Kids are-- kids are missing.

Have you heard any recent instances

of FLDS going to any newer properties?

In North Dakota from what I've heard.

But do you know what part of North Dakota they're in?

[Rachel] I just know they're up by the Canadian border.

I've never been there so, I can't say exactly.

I just-- I just was told it was by the border.

[Matt] So some people within the FLDS

are headed up to North Dakota.

Do you think it's possible that some of the kids

that are reported missing could be going up there too?

[Brandon] Maybe or just with different families.

Or just in hiding.

I mean, there's always been lots of hiding places.

House of hiding is just somewhere they rent

and you don't have a car or anything

you just are stuck in that spot.

It was usually like up in the mountains

or out in very rural areas.

I am so upset that kids are missing.

And honestly, they just-- they don't see

anything wrong with what Warren does.

So, you don't see this changing.

You see the cycle continuing with Sam,

another one is going to come up.

All right. The three of us are sitting at this table

right now, what's step one?

More publicity brought to it, the more it's going to bring it

to light and the harder it makes it for them

to just do what they want, unchecked.

[Matt] Okay. You guys have more of a voice

than anybody within these communities

to talk to people and to have people contact you.

Just let me know if you hear anything about Helaman

and this house of hiding. Give me a call.

Yeah.

[Matt] We'll stay in touch.

[Brandon] If we hear anything, we'll definitely get in touch.

[Matt] For sure. Let me know and I'll get out of your hair.

All right, take care of your families.

[Brandon] Take care, Matt.

[Matt] All right, we'll see you later.

[Matt] I'm extremely glad that we took the time out

to talk to Rachel and Brandon because in talking to them,

we were able to connect some dots up

and talk about some -- some places in North Dakota

that are being looked at as meeting places

or houses of hiding.

These guys, the FLDS are so god at hiding people.

And to me that's-- that is extremely frightening.

I want to find out if there is a connection

between FLDS and the kids that have been reported missing.

[music]

Because, Warren's still locked up.

And, and Rachel and Brandon were able to tell me

everything that's going on,

it's not just Warren causing these problems,

that with a missing prophet,

other prophets are gonna come in.

And I think it's very important that I reach out to people

who know about Sam Bateman

and see what they've experienced,

what they've learned, so we can look at this whole picture.

There's nobody who knows more about what's going on

with Sam Bateman right now than Faith.

We are in the Phoenix area and getting ready

to meet with Faith.

She left the group in 2011.

After Faith left, her family actually fell into

the Sam Bateman School of Religion.

I don't even know what to call it.

They -- they bit the apple that Sam was giving them

and they became part of his group.

Even though Sam is not in the Jeffs' line,

and was not part of leadership in Colorado City

or within the FLDS, Sam inserted himself

into a place where people were, were needing something

to latch onto. And it became Sam Bateman.

To get the meeting here with Faith

has been kind of nerve-wracking to say the least.

[music]

Hey.

What's up?

Oh wow did she say why? What's the big switch?

Wow that's awesome!

That's good, that's great news.

Love you too. Bye-bye.

I think she's got some huge courage

in doing what she's doing.

This is a person who has survived

the FLDS community

and now she wants to help her family get out.

All right. Here we are.

Go and see what Faith has to say.

Faith. - [Faith] Hi.

[Matt] What's going on?

Are you nervous?

Very much so.

[Matt] Why?

Because growing up we were trained

not to trust law enforcement and so I'm scared

that by talking out, my family will no longer trust me.

Do you think they trust you now?

No, but this is going to make it harder

for them to get to that point.

[Matt] Then why talk out?

Because there's some really bad things

happening to them and something has to be done.

My first name is Faith and my last name is Bistline.

I was born and raised in the FLDS.

We were a polygamist family.

My parents were both born in the FLDS

and so were their parents.

So, it goes back generations.

I have three moms and one dad and then there's 28 of us kids.

So, I'm the ninth kid in my family.

[Matt] Tell me about your parents.

[Faith] My birth mom is the first mom.

Growing up, it was difficult to have

a close personal relationship with my parents.

As you can imagine, there's a lot of kids.

My dad, especially, he was very strict

and he ran his household that way,

but then my dad was kicked out by Warren Jeffs.

So, at the time that my father was sent away,

Warren Jeffs was already on the run from the FBI.

So, he was already in hiding.

My oldest brother Lud stepped in,

basically he became the head of the household.

When did you find out about Sam

and what he was doing to your family?

I found out about him in 2020.

My oldest brother, Lud, is a part of Sam's group.

He was the first one to get convinced by Sam

to be the prophet

and then Sam Bateman has convinced my family

that Warren Jeffs is dead,

and that Warren Jeffs came to him in spirit

and told him that he was going to be the new prophet.

Last I heard Warren is sick,

but he's still in Texas in prison.

How -- how can they believe this?

It's easy for my family to be convinced of this

because they're not allowed to get on the internet.

They can't look up the fact that he is in prison.

[Matt] First of all, how did you find out?

[Faith] The majority of my sisters,

no longer speak to me except for one,

who recently, within the last couple of years

started to talk to me again. She just turned 18.

[music]

She's been messaging me and she's been telling me

some really concerning things.

So what -- what is concerning?

Um, all three of my moms are with Sam.

My oldest brother, Lud, has some underage daughters

who he gave to Sam as wives.

And Sam married those daughters?

[Faith] Exactly.

Yeah and he married them when they were underage.

Wow. Are they consummating their marriage or?

I don't have any firsthand knowledge

of that happening.

I do have the FBI affidavit now, which mentions

that he did have sexual relations

with a lot of these underage girls.

The FBI affidavit that was released

detailed a certain ceremony, I guess you can call it,

that happened at the end of 2021.

How it was explained to me by another family member

was that Sam decided that he needed to atone

for the sins of the FLDS people who would not agree

to follow him.

It clearly states in the affidavit,

Sam Bateman had three different men pair up

with three of his wives and conducted a ceremony

where they basically had intercourse in front of Sam.

One of the girls was only about 12 years old.

What? For-- I'm sorry, I'm just kind of speechless.

What does that do to you knowing that your older brothers

are I mean--

It's a mind [bleep] because I grew up

with my brothers. Very close with them.

I'm really upset at my brother, Lud, I'm really upset at him.

I don't know, I don't know how else to say that.

He has little children. I just can't fathom how a father

could give his baby girls to a predator like that.

I can't fathom it.

[Officer] Alright, sir. Put your hands behind your back.

[Matt] You know, Sam is sitting in jail right now, right?

[Faith] Right.

[Matt] How can he have any control

when he's sitting in jail?

Up until recently, he's been able to FaceTime with them,

actually.

So, he's still-- he's still doing like

what Warren does. He's still calling the shots from jail.

Right, exactly. I still believed Warren was the prophet

when I left.

Even sitting in prison?

Especially sitting in prison.

[Matt] Really why?

That elevated him to a whole other level.

Now he has this religious persecution.

So, then that's the same--

[Faith] With Sam. So, I can see that.

Yeah, they probably -- my family probably elevates him

to a whole new level now that he's in prison.

To more of a God status.

Because now he's basically a martyr.

-[Faith] Exactly. -[Matt] Wow.

You left at 18?

-19 -[Matt] 19?

[Faith] It took a few years before I came to the realization

that Warren Jeffs wasn't the prophet.

[Matt] Wow.

[Faith] Because when we grew up in the FLDS,

every single thing was enveloped by this religion

and Warren Jeffs was our connection to God.

What he said mattered more than anything,

more than our dads, more than our moms, more than anyone.

So, we looked at him as basically like a god.

It was taught to me that it was a woman's duty

to bring children into the earth.

And you were you-- when were you taught that?

Since birth.

Warren Jeffs started to make strict rules

here and there and they just got stricter and stricter

and so, I remember that making an impact on me.

He got rid of the community events that we had.

He made socializing-- the term socializing a bad word.

He's the one that made the rule, no internet.

For education in the FLDS, they had private schools

and we would have the typical first grade through high school.

But when I was 13, the year that I was supposed

to enter into freshman year of high school,

Warren Jeffs decided that we no longer needed

high school and so he got rid of that.

I was very disappointed because I-- I loved school.

So, I got this algebra book and so I started teaching myself

and then I went to my oldest brother, Lud,

And asked him if I could go to college.

He said, "Well, I need to get permission."

And so supposedly, he talked to Warren in prison

and he got back to me

and he said, "You're welcome to go get your GED."

And so I went and I got my GED at age 16

and then I just enrolled in college classes right away.

Growing up we were not allowed to engage

with the outside world at all.

So when I was in college, that's when my --

the wheels in my brain really started turning.

I started displaying outward signs of rebellion,

like I no longer wore the big poof in the front of my hair.

I pulled my hair back and not caring.

There were no fights over these little rebellions.

My family just kind of started to ignore me

and that was excruciating.

I was always told that anyone who had left was very miserable

and they all wanted to come back and I had an older brother

who left who I had no contact with,

because we were not allowed to talk to anyone who had left.

I knew that if I left that my family would cut me off

because I saw how they reacted to my older brother leaving.

[music]

[Matt] Why did you leave?

[Faith] I got a hold of my brother who left

and I-- I said, "Hey, I just want to know,

I'm thinking about leaving and I want to know

if you regret it. If you regret leaving."

Like just be -- just be upfront with me

and he said, "No, it's the best thing

that's ever happened to me and I would recommend it

to every single person there."

And that was another mind blowing moment.

Because I was like, wait, I've been lied to.

Like, what is going on here? I've been lied to.

My parents have been lying to me.

You know, I heard -- I heard it

straight from my brother's mouth.

He didn't-- he didn't regret leaving.

That's the moment that I decided I wasn't--

I wasn't going to stay.

I had no plans when I left.

I had a total of $60 cash in my pocket.

My first job was a 911 dispatcher

with the law enforcement agency in Williston, North Dakota.

I didn't know normal things like you have to be on time.

Yeah there were some rough patches of me

Just figuring out how you are suppose to operate in a job.

I made it through nursing school.

I'm a career woman.

I like to take vacations. I have friends.

[Matt] Kids are hurt, you know, people want to protect kids.

So, why within Sam's organization

or the FLDS religion

don't people report things to the police?

So, I genuinely believe that my-- that the people

who are a part of Sam's group

do not believe they're hurting kids.

They see what's going on as a sacred ordinance

and so I believe that that's the reason

they are not reporting.

So, for my little sisters, I want them to get to a point

where they can choose what they want

in their own lives.

It's not going to be easy.

I remember being told that, you know, misery loves company

and so the apostates are going to tell you whatever they can

to get you to join them in their misery.

So, I know that that's what they're thinking of me,

but I'll never stop trying to get them to leave.

[Matt] Keep doing what you're doing.

You're doing amazing work. Just keep doing it.

The fact that Faith would come forward,

with everything riding on her, with her family and her career.

Hopefully law enforcement will see this

and they'll want to take action on it

and when you bring somebody wanting to speak out

about injustices happening to people

in her own family,

I hope other people catch on and want to do the same.

[music]