‘Trust Me: The False Prophet’ Tracks A Cult Leader’s Power, Control And Fear
(REVIEW) It’s the late-2010s and people living in the Short Creek community straddling the border between Arizona and Utah aren’t allowed to get married or have kids.
Short Creek is known for its large number of Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a an offshoot Mormon group known to promote polygamy and maintain tight control of the everyday lives of its followers.
The group hadn’t heard from their prophet, Warren Jeffs, who was serving a sentence of life in prison for child sexual assault, in years. The last time his followers heard from him, he instructed them to abstain from marriage.
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Enter Samuel Bateman, a FLDS member with an SUV full of wives and children. He’s claiming to be the community’s new prophet and receiving new messages from Jeffs and God. It seems like a repeat of the Jeffs scandal, but with one key difference: this time, cameras are rolling.
Netflix’s new four-part docuseries “Trust Me: The False Prophet” gives viewers never-before-seen access to the inner workings of a high-control religion and cults. Cult psychology expert and former mainstream Mormon, Christine Marie and her filmmaker husband, Tolga Katas, move to the area to support the FLDS community and document their lives. Their initial goal was to demystify the group and help outsiders understand their way of life.
Once they got to know Bateman and learned that he may consider the children in his care his “spiritual wives,” too, their goal became to investigate.
The couple builds trust with Bateman, and he welcomes them into his inner circle, believing that a film about him and his large family of more than 20 “wives” would help spread his religious message worldwide.
The communal life of Bateman, his wives and three other FLDS men who follow him (and who recruited their own wives, children and female relatives to marry him), swings from quaint to bizarre. In one episode, the family is gathering around a table full of food, with laughter in the air and several babies toddling around; in the next, the whole crew is orchestrating a music video in a bid to get the Queen of England’s attention — Bateman was convinced that part of his calling as a prophet was to marry Queen Elizabeth II, then in her 90s.
There are red flags everywhere. Minors wore wedding rings. Bateman confessed he felt called to give away the “virtues” of the young women to other men while he watched. The women wrote line after line in notebooks pledging their undying love for Bateman, and telling Marie (and the camera) that following Bateman was the only way to heaven.
Marie contacted the local police, who, throughout the docuseries, proved woefully incompetent.
Every scene ratchets up the viewer’s concern and raises more questions: Will Marie and Katas be able to gather the evidence the FBI needs to finally indict Bateman? Will local police or the state’s child protective services fumble the case again, exposing Marie as the mole? Will the woman who came forward as the first witness be able to admit her own wrongdoings while extracting her young daughters from the mind-control of Bateman?
Interestingly, the main storyline of Bateman and his wives isn’t the most compelling in the series. Marie’s backstory and inner turmoil unfold as a riveting subplot.
Visually, she stands in stark contrast to the FLDS women she hangs out with: they wear uniform, stiff, long-sleeve dresses with their hair in elaborate braids or buns. Marie is a vision of liberation, wearing colorful vintage clothing with fun bandanas in her hair. We learn that she, too, was once totally controlled by a religious leader, but managed to break free and eventually earn a PhD in psychology.
She considers it her life’s work to create more awareness about human trafficking, and the combination of her cheerful personality, personal history with cults and professional psychology training turns out to be the perfect combination to become close friends with the women, despite her status as an “outsider”.
She’s also not an objective documentarian, but rather a trusted friend and helper. In the opening scenes of the first episode, we learn that Marie helped some of the women open a shop to generate income amid an economic downturn. When FLDS members were being evicted from their homes, she organized donations of clothing and school supplies. In some scenes, she’s braiding their hair. Later, a woman names her daughter after Marie.
This close relationship lends itself to the sort of access to information that law enforcement officers could only dream of — but viewers can tell that the friendship is not an act. Marie has genuine concern and care for the FLDS women. It makes it all the harder to be an FBI informant. The women trusted Marie with their secrets, and now, for their own good, she has to turn them in.
I don’t typically watch true crime movies, but this series had me glued to my TV all week. It’s a fascinating true story of danger, moral conviction, sacrifice, redemption and justice. It explores both the fragility and resilience of the human mind and relationships.
“Outsiders” like myself have long been fascinated by religious cults. However, this series challenges us to consider the forces of control in our own lives, and when we see injustice in our own backyard, not to look away.
“Trust Me: The False Prophet” can be streamed now on Netflix.
Cassidy Grom is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Her award-winning reporting and digital design work have appeared in numerous publications.