After two years of being reported missing, three children from Utah have returned home to their mother following their discovery in a rural Arizona town.
Chief Jason Peterson of the Fredonia Police Department was informed in late August regarding the children who had been missing since October 2022.
Officials believed the children’s father played a role in their vanishing, allegedly concealing them with assistance from relatives affiliated with the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint (FLDS) church.
Following an extensive search lasting almost two years, the children were located in Fredonia, Arizona, a quaint town situated just under five miles from the Arizona-Utah border.
On September 1, officials from various agencies in Utah and Arizona successfully located and brought the three children back to their mother. The grandmother and aunt of the children have also been apprehended.
Fredonia is located 31 miles from Colorado City, the former residence of polygamous leader and self-styled FLDS prophet Samuel Bateman.
Bateman, who assumed leadership in 2019 following the imprisonment of notorious FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, is now confronted with 51 felony charges, which include allegations of sexually abusing young girls he referred to as his wives.
In August 2022, Arizona state troopers stopped Bateman while he was driving in Flagstaff with three girls aged 11 to 14 in a trailer.
Officials report that Bateman, who has married over 20 women, including 10 minors, established an extensive operation across at least four states in his efforts to form a splinter group from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, traditionally centered in the nearby towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah.
He and his followers engage in polygamy, a remnant of the original teachings of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced the practice in 1890 and now enforces a strict ban on it. Bateman and his supporters hold the view that engaging in polygamy leads to a higher state of bliss in the afterlife.