Where Are Nomz and Christine Now? Is Samuel Bateman in Prison? Trust Me: The False Prophet Documentary Update

Trust Me: The False Prophet follows cult psychology skilled Christine Marie and her videographer husband Tolga Katas, who moved to Short Creek, Utah, to doc and help a group in disaster. In 2011, Warren Jeffs — chief of the breakaway Mormon sect referred to as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), whose members follow polygamy — was convicted of kid sexual assault and sentenced to life in jail. His imprisonment left the insular group fractured and adrift. As Christine and Tolga obtained to know their new neighbors, a well-known face resurfaced: Samuel Bateman, a former rank-and-file FLDS member who now proclaimed himself a prophet and started to amass followers and take a number of wives, together with minors.

Directed by Emmy- and Peabody Award–profitable filmmaker Rachel Dretzin (Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey), the four-part documentary is constructed largely from footage Christine and Tolga captured whereas embedded in Bateman’s inside circle. Believing they had been making a documentary that might unfold and uplift his message all through the world, Bateman welcomed the cameras — unaware they had been secretly gathering proof of his crimes, together with the sexual abuse of underage ladies.

The docuseries culminates in a dramatic FBI raid on Bateman’s compound, his arrest, and later a brazen kidnapping plot he orchestrates from jail.

In December 2024, Bateman was sentenced to 50 years in jail for conspiracy to commit transportation of a minor for prison sexual exercise and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Several of his male followers at the moment are serving prolonged sentences. Some of his grownup wives not affiliate with him; others nonetheless stay loyal. All of Bateman’s underage victims testified towards him in court docket.

To unpack the documentary’s aftermath, the place its topics are at the moment, and what comes subsequent, Dretzin sat down with Tudum — alongside Christine Marie and Naomi “Nomz” Bistline, a survivor of Bateman’s sect. 

Where are Nomz, Moretta, and Julia now?

At its peak, Bateman’s group included not less than 20 wives, almost half of whom had been minors as younger as 9. Christine first heard rumors that Bateman was married to kids, however confirming what she’d heard proved tough. “I was not permitted to be alone with the underage girls,” she says. 

As seen in the sequence, it wasn’t till a November 2021 automotive trip that Christine captured one thing concrete on audio: Bateman admitting to crimes with underage ladies, along with his victims in the backseat confirming his account as he coached their responses in actual time. While even this wasn’t the smoking gun that might deliver Bateman down, the second illustrated the depth of the psychological management the ladies and ladies must overcome.

“Groupthink is so powerful,” Christine says. “It’s like superglue. You can’t just wake up when you’re getting your thoughts reinforced by other people you respect and love.” 

Even after Bateman’s eventual arrest greater than a 12 months later, the dynamic endured: the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, or DCS, positioned all of his underage wives in the identical group residence. “The power dynamics continued because you had the stronger girls making the younger girls terrified of speaking to law enforcement,” Christine says.

The scenario escalated in November 2022 when Bateman, from jail, orchestrated a kidnapping plot in which eight minors vanished from state custody. After they had been recovered in Spokane, Washington by police, they had been positioned in separate foster houses.

“All the minors have come out [against Bateman], and the reason for that is very simple: They were all removed from the community and from their other sister wives and put into foster care,” Dretzin says. “Once they had the perspective of being outside the group, they were able to see what had happened to them and speak out.”

But the image is extra sophisticated for the adults. “The vast majority of the adults featured in this film are still followers of Sam Bateman to this day,” the director says. “All of the minors [in the documentary] have finally separated from Sam and ‘woken up,’ as we call it, but in many cases, their parents have not.”

Three ladies, nonetheless, broke free. Their tales reveal what it took to flee Bateman’s grip.

Julia

Julia Johnson’s involvement in the investigation was pivotal, and got here at monumental private threat. She was the spouse of Moroni Johnson, an early Bateman follower who urged her to provide 4 of their daughters, two of whom had been underage, to Bateman as wives. In July 2022, she started secretly assembly with Christine, sharing firsthand accounts of his crimes. 

“Julia did not give her children away,” Christine says. “Julia fought it and didn’t know what to do about it. She was crying, having mental breakdowns over it.” 

Julia’s choice to interrupt from Bateman meant confronting her husband straight. In the documentary, she recollects telling him, “We’re following a false prophet, and he’s leading us right to hell, and I’m not going to go there anymore.” 

“Julia is extraordinary,” Dretzin says. “In many ways [she’s] the heroine of the film, because it takes so much for a woman at that age to turn against her husband and to risk what she risked in going for help.”

Julia and Moroni are not collectively. Moroni pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit trafficking of a minor for sexual functions and, in May 2025, started serving a 25-year jail sentence.

Christine and Julia stay in contact. “I have nothing but praise to heap upon her,” Christine says. “I am so proud of her.”

Moretta and Nomz

Moretta Johnson and Naomi “Nomz” Bistline had been two of Bateman’s most devoted wives. Moretta, considered one of Julia Johnson’s daughters, was a minor when Bateman took her as a spouse. Nomz, who’s interviewed in the sequence, had been introduced into the sect by her guardian, LaDell Jay Bistline, after 10 years in his care. Both had been vocal defenders of Bateman earlier than in the end turning into the one two of his grownup wives to testify towards him in court docket. 

“There was nothing compelling about him,” Nomz tells Tudum. “Every one of us really hated him at first. And then he would break us down and make us into what he wanted. It was a lot of abuse and coercion.”

Christine affords context for the fierce loyalty they displayed whereas below Bateman’s management. “If you are in a relationship with your abuser, you’re safer by doing whatever they want … by convincing yourself that you’re buying into it when, deep in your heart, you’re really not,” she says. “When I watched the documentary and I saw them, I could see the trauma bonds and I knew that that was not who they really were.”

Moretta and Nomz had been arrested for his or her roles in the kidnapping plot and sentenced to jail time. For each, the separation proved transformative.

“Moretta had spent a year in prison,” Julia says of her daughter in the documentary. “Her words are, ‘Prison set me free.’ It helped her get into a thought process of her own.”

Nomz describes her time equally. “Prison was the best and worst thing that happened to me,” she says. “It forced me to start thinking for myself. It forced me to start questioning things.”

Since being launched from jail, Moretta has absolutely left the group, married, and began a household. “She and Nomz are very close,” Dretzin says. “They really support each other.”

Nomz has additionally dissociated from the FLDS group, and, after devoting so a few years to the wants of others, is now discovering pleasure in nurturing her personal passions. “There’s so much that I didn’t even know I had a knack for,” she says. “I still draw a lot.” She’s dabbled in modeling as nicely, however music has grow to be her focus. She’s been working with a vocal coach and assembly with producers and songwriters. “Music helps me process things,” she says. “It helps me let it out.”

Dretzin describes Nomz’s transformation as “breathtaking.” “She’s the only one of the young women who’s come forward publicly, and it took an immense amount of courage,” she says. 

Nomz’s reconciliation with Christine — whom she had likened to the Biblical Judas after a DCS doc leak revealed she was an FBI informant — got here unexpectedly, when she listened to a podcast in which Christine shares her personal story of surviving abuse by the hands of a false prophet. “That was when it all clicked,” Nomz says. “The parallels of our stories were so similar. … Since then, we’ve been really close friends. She’s a godmother to me, and Tolga’s a godfather. They’re the best people in my life sometimes.”

To hear extra from Nomz, learn her unique in-depth interview linked under.

Can Samuel Bateman nonetheless contact his followers from jail?

Yes. According to Dretzin, Bateman has maintained an unsettling stage of entry, and is able to make many daily calls from prison. While he’s not abusing them, imprisonment has solely strengthened his maintain on his followers, who contemplate him to have been “martyred.” And he reinforces that standing by each day calls along with his wives. 

“That communication with him is like an IV of indoctrination,” Christine says. “It’s like they’re getting fed certainty right into their veins, their belief that he is talking to God so they can hold onto what they believe is certain.” 

Christine believes that if Bateman’s entry is severed, the spell will be damaged: “Once they break from him and from the other people who believe in him, then they can say, ‘Wait, maybe I’m not so certain. Maybe he did make all this up so that he could get money, power, and sex — like every other cult leader.’ ”

What’s modified since Bateman’s arrest?

Several of the lads closest to Bateman at the moment are serving prolonged jail sentences of their very own. Moroni Johnson is serving 25 years. Torrance and his brother LaDell Bistline had been discovered responsible on related fees and are serving 35 years and life, respectively. Of the lads who had been amongst Bateman’s followers, Christine says, “The only one of them to wake up is Moroni.”

But convictions alone don’t assure change. Dretzin, for her half, is cautious in regards to the vulnerabilities that stay in the FLDS group.

“Unfortunately, for people who are born into a patriarchal culture in which there is as much control as there is in the FLDS, it’s a dynamic that creates vulnerabilities,” Dretzin says. “We have to continue to shine a bright light on what’s going on in these communities because they’ve been ignored for a long time.”

Is polygamy authorized in Utah?

Essentially, sure. The authorized panorama is sophisticated, as polygamy among consenting adults was basically decriminalized in Utah in 2020. It stays a felony if fraud, abuse, or drive is concerned. 

“Polygamy — plural marriage — has gone from being a felony in Utah to being an infraction,” Dretzin says. “It’s not illegal to practice plural marriage in Utah. Most people do not know that.”

In her work in Short Creek, Christine, who was as soon as an anti-polygamy activist, has come to see the difficulty in extra nuanced phrases. “I decided not to [participate in anti-polygamy activism] anymore,” she says. “I wanted to just help [members of the community] in their journey wherever they were at.” And she’s cautious to notice that the FLDS group just isn’t monolithic: “Most FLDS did not follow Sam and thought what he was doing was heinous.”

In reality, a few of Christine’s closest FLDS buddies had been amongst her biggest sources of help throughout the investigation — bringing her meals, providing consolation, and serving to her by essentially the most emotionally intense durations. 

She sees the teachings from Short Creek extending far past the local people. “I hope that this documentary will help people recognize predatorial power dynamics happen when systems allow predators to flourish,” she says. “This isn’t just applicable in this community. Every city, every organization, every state, every country has groups where there was or is some sort of power-hungry leader that you can’t question, who then takes advantage of people.”

Where are Christine and Tolga now?

Christine and Tolga nonetheless reside in Short Creek, persevering with their work with the FLDS group. She hopes the sequence helps individuals perceive the distinctive place she and Tolga occupied — as outsiders who had been capable of bridge a divide that insiders couldn’t. “I had never been FLDS, so I wasn’t considered an apostate,” she says. “I was an outsider that could do something they would’ve done if they could, but they couldn’t because the people that were in shunned the people that were out. There was this big invisible wall between them. I just had this little opportunity.”

The mission was additionally deeply private. Christine, a former “mainstream” Mormon, had as soon as fallen sufferer to a fundamentalist man who satisfied her he was a modern-day prophet, and led her into an exploitative and traumatizing scenario. “When I got out of that, I spent a decade studying what the brain does that enables such irrationality to seem rational,” she says. While her personal false prophet was by no means held accountable, Bateman’s 50-year sentence introduced a measure of much-needed closure.

“It was so validating for me to make sure that these girls and women were safe. Even the women who still believe in him are a hundred times safer with him not in the house,” she says. “He could never rape another girl again. There was a sense of closure for me.”

For viewers who need to assist anybody caught in related cycles of abuse, Christine affords recommendation. “The relationship with the person they’re worried about is more important than trying to change their beliefs,” she says. “Keep that relationship strong. Rather than criticize their leader or their group, find out what’s good about it and what is keeping them there. Let them know that you’re there for them without judgment, no matter what — even if they stay. That way, if they want to leave, they can feel safe coming to you.”

And for many who might even see themselves in the story, Christine factors to Julia for example. “Draw from the power of Julia,” she says. “She risked everything to find a way to get everyone else safe. There might be consequences, but you still have to do what is right. Be the strong one to stand up, even if people hate you and judge you. Save yourself first — then you can save the rest.”

Trust Me: The False Prophet is now streaming.

If you or somebody you already know has skilled sexual abuse, data and assets can be found at www.wannatalkaboutit.com. 

Additional reporting by Natalie Morin