Polygamous sect leader guilty of abuse after girls found in trailer on highway

According to the Guardian World, polygamous sect leader Samuel Bateman, already serving a fifty-year federal prison sentence for orchestrating sexual abuse of children, was convicted Friday on additional state charges. In twenty twenty-two, authorities discovered three girls, ages eleven to fourteen, confined in an unventilated trailer Bateman was hauling through Arizona. A witness spotted small fingers reaching through gaps in the trailer doors and alerted police. Officers found the girls with only a makeshift toilet, a sofa, and camping chairs inside the enclosed space. Bateman now faces state child abuse charges related to the discovery.

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