PHOENIX (CN) — Three Arizona women were sentenced to a total of seven years in prison Wednesday for obstructing an investigation into child sex abuse among members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Brenda Barlow, Marona Johnson and Leia Bistline are three of more than 20 wives of Samuel Rappylee Bateman, a self-proclaimed prophet and leader of the Mormon Church offshoot, who rose to power after former leader Warren Jeffs was imprisoned. Nearly a dozen of Bateman’s wives, whom he took between 2019 and 2022, were minors at the time of their marriage.
Barlow, Johnson and Bistline regularly participated in group sex with Bateman and his other wives, including child brides as young as nine, according to an FBI investigation. After Bateman was arrested in August 2022 on child endangerment charges, the three deleted messages between Bateman and themselves and attempted to hide other evidence.
They each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit tampering with an official proceeding, a class C felony, earlier this year on the terms that other charges, ranging from kidnapping to transporting minors for sexual activity, be dropped.
Shirlee Draper, who grew up in Colorado City, Arizona, where the FLDS community mainly resides, now provides social services to women and girls who have been abused in polygamous communities. She testified before the sentencing to the unique circumstances of women in the community.
While the FLDS has always been patriarchal, Draper said, Warren Jeffs’ rise to power in 1998 came with a new level of subjugation and indoctrination.
“He started to use women as currency,” she said. He would take a woman from one man as punishment and give her to another man as a reward.
He also eliminated public schools and libraries, restricted access to the internet, and started taking brides as young as nine years old, Draper testified. With no access to information outside the immediate community, young women and girls born into the religion around Jeffs’ rise to power had little agency to question authority.
“There’s no opportunity for thinking,” Draper said. “There’s only obedience. Obedience is right and disobedience is wrong. Going to hell is a huge, huge concern.”
Sociologist and social worker Mari Loring, who evaluated the three women in prison, added that each of them suffers from severe trauma and PTSD due to childhood sexual abuse. Barlow also shows psychotic tendencies, she said, and often experiences hallucinations of herself or others being killed.
“The neglect is appalling,” Loring said about Barlow’s childhood.
While cross-examining Draper, federal prosecutor Jillian Besancon pointed out that most of Draper’s clients are women who left the community, implying that the defendants could have rejected the behavior but instead chose to fall in line and harm children in the process.
“The defendant seriously endangered children and left lasting harm,” Besancon said of Johnson. “People who hurt kids will be held responsible, even in this religious community.”
U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich said she tried to balance the women’s painful upbringings with the severity of the crimes they admitted to, including sex with minors. All three of them apologized for their actions, telling the Donald Trump appointee they’ve learned from their mistakes.
Brnovich sentenced Johnson to 24 months in federal prison, followed by 36 months of supervised release, adhering to the government’s recommendation. During her supervised release, she’ll be banned from communicating with Bateman or any of his victims and will be required to receive mental health treatment.
Johnson was given to Bateman in 2019, when she was 21 years old. Before that, she was regularly sexually abused by her father, her attorney told the court.
Because Bistline still considers herself a spiritual wife of Bateman, despite acknowledging the harm she inflicted upon his child brides under his orders, prosecutors recommended 36 months in prison. Brnovich conceded that Bistline demonstrates a higher risk to reoffend, but said the symptoms of abuse she displays are also more severe than Johnson’s, giving her an identical sentence of two years in prison and three on supervised release.
“You have to get some counseling,” Brnovich told Bistline. “If you don’t you will be unable to resist if this situation comes up again.”
Brnovich sentenced Barlow to three years in prison, rather than two, because she played a more active role in hiding evidence and was involved in planning a kidnapping of eight underage girls from Arizona Department of Child Services custody soon after Bateman was arrested. She will also spend three years on supervised release.
“I want to be a law-abiding citizen,” Barlow told Brnovich before receiving her sentence. “I want to live an honest and truthful life. I’m sorry for what I did. I ask for your forgiveness.”