Three children from Utah who went missing two years ago are found living in a rural town in Arizona. The children later returned home with their mother.
It was around August that Fredonia Police Department Chief Jason Peterson received information about the children missing since October 2022.
Authorities suspected that the father of the children was behind the disappearance and hid the children with the help of family members from the fundamentalist church of the Latter-day Saint (FLDS). After a two-year search, the children were found in Fredonia, Arizona, a small town less than five miles from the Arizona-Utah border.
Authorities from several Utah and Arizona agencies safely rescued the three children and returned them to their mother on September 1. The children’s grandmother and sister were taken into custody.
The town of Fredonia is also 31 miles from Colorado City, where the leader is polygamist and self-proclaimed FLDS Samuel Bateman, the prophet, lived before him.
Bateman, who took office in 2019 after the arrest of prominent FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, faces 51 felony counts, including allegations that he sexually abused girls who he said they were his wives.
Arizona state troopers arrested Bateman in August 2022 while driving in Flagstaff with three girls between the ages of 11 and 14 in his trailer, who married Bateman, who has married more than 20 wives. , including 10 girls under the age of 18, trying to start a branch. of the fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in at least four states. Officials say a sprawling network has been created. It has historically been based in the nearby communities of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hilldale, Utah.
He and his followers practice polygamy, a legacy of the early mainstream teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it. Batman and his followers believe that polygamy leads to heaven.
#children #missing #Utah #years #ArizonaUtah #border
2024-11-24 21:44:00
