Trust Me — The False Prophet

It was a much better documentary than I expected. My opinion on the blonde and her husband doing the documentary, and the sister-wife Julia flipped completely about 3/4 of the way through.

Spoilers:
They came across as vapid and indoctrinated in the beginning, but completely redeemed themselves and more by the end.
I mean, how strong of a person is Julia? For her to pull herself, and others out of that trap is inspirational. For the blonde filmmaker - damned if she didn't save all those women. There are people who do good in this world, and they deserve all the respect.

Watched this and while I’ve seen the doc on Warren Jeffs, it is amazing to me that this is still going on and it seems the local authorities are complacent. Sam is SUCH a loser but his narcissism really played to their advantage. This was very well done. It amazes me that these people can be convinced of such atrocities without drugs. Hell I don’t think the Mormons can even have caffeine

This one is even wilder, because the prophet is pretty obviously an idiot. Basically, though, he was giving these other men spiritual permission to do what they wanted in still having sex and marrying wives when Jeff’s had commanded they not do it. So he basically told them what they wanted to hear and absolved them of the FLDS guilt.

That being said.. these poor girls were kept so ignorant and half of them appear to have seriously poor genetics.

What’s wild to me on this one was how much money the three men who followed him evidently brought in (one of them had a “Green energy” company). They’re rolling around in Bentley’s and putting up 100k cashier check for bail and shite. Crazy.

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It amazes me that these people can be convinced of such atrocities without drugs.

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They are born into it. From birth, they are taught that the "outsiders" are all out to get them and that their way of life is the only way to get into heaven. It's not hard to imagine warping the minds of young kids when they are taught these things at a young age.

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Where do these guys get the money to feed all these people and dive a Bentley ?

Do the men go out and work, then donate all earnings to the church ?

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I wondered the same thing, and I still have questions. That being said: the one dude who always wore a bluetooth speaker evidently owns a "green energy" company that was evidently very successful.

They ALSO mentioned that the women were out cleaning hotels and doing work all the time while living in a single household. I also believe that it was Under the Banner of Heaven that talks about how the FLDS community participates in "Bleeding the Beast" where they take as much government assistance as possible, often to very high levels due to the polygamy where the households look like there are a ton of single mothers and unsupported children, since all the marriages are off the books.

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take as much government assistance as possible

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Great - more fraud

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i have only watched the first two episodes, so this may be answered at some point, but one thing i'm not clear on is the scope of Bateman's following. the FLDS "church" has quite a large congregation i think, at least a few thousand. was Bateman the nominal head of this church? it seems like he claimed to be, but really only had a following of three dudes and a couple dozen women.

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Yes. That was the "core" of his offshoot. The majority of the FLDS/Jeffs followers saw him as an apostate still, I believe. However... they clearly had ties to men in other areas, as that's why they were transporting kids across state lines, to have sex with other men. There is also mention of them filming sex acts that were being shown to people in other places. Now whether these "customers" of the Samuelites were also memebers of their offshoot, just random FLDS dudes looking for some action, or just random men who weren't even FLDS isn't really clear from the research I've done.

My old job i had half of Texas and had an account 10 minutes from the El Dorado, TX compound of Jeffs.

I drove by it and went up to it and it had 3 guys with machine guns guarding the gate. I panicked and rolled down the window and just said I took a wrong turn and GTFO.

Its a great area BTW. Lots of deer leases

Also probably pays little to no taxes since he likely has all monies funneled through his church