Eight underage girls who were rescued from an Arizona polygamist cult leader by child welfare officials ran away from their group homes and hid in an Airbnb in Washington state, according to a report.
The eight and one additional daughter had been taken from the homes of Samuel Bateman – the leader of a small offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – and placed in group homes under the care of the Department of Arizona childhood. Security in September.
Last Sunday, however, the eight girls, ages 11 to 16, disappeared from homes outside Phoenix on Salt Lake Tribune report.
They were found four days later at an Airbnb in Spokane, Washington with a Bateman follower named Moretta Rose Johnson, 19, who has since been charged with kidnapping, according to a federal complaint obtained by the newspaper. Johnson reportedly married Bateman when she was underage, aaccording to KXLY.
A 24-year-old woman was also arrested in Colorado City, Arizona in connection with the missing girls. She was incarcerated in the Mohave County Jail on suspicion of kidnapping, obstructing a criminal investigation, resisting arrest and witness tampering, the outlet reported.
FBI agents had traced a credit card linked to a business of one of Bateman’s supporters to the reservation on the Airbnb rental site, according to court documents.
The girls were considered runaways, according to the Tribune.
The nine children and teenagers were removed from Bateman’s homes on September 14 when the FBI searched his properties for evidence that he had underage wives or engaged in sex acts with minors, according to an affidavit. from the FBI.
Bateman, 46, has been accused of marrying more than 20 women, most under the age of 15, including his own daughter.
Bateman allegedly made sexual advances to his own daughter, first bribing her with two bags of Doritos and $50 and saying “if his feelings were right he would do what a boy does to do [her] having a baby,” KXYLY reported.
Although he has not been charged with sexual abuse or other related crimes, the affidavit claims that the FBI has probable cause to believe that he and others transported minors between Arizona, the Utah, Nevada and Nebraska for engaging in illicit sexual conduct between May 2020 and November 2021. .
Bateman has been in jail since late August, when authorities found three young girls, ages 11 to 14, locked in a cargo trailer he was towing near Flagstaff.
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