PHOENIX (CN) — An Arizona woman and member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was sentenced Thursday to house arrest and probation for her role in protecting the leader of a child sex ring from FBI investigation.
Donnae Barlow is one of the 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 regularly witnessed and one time 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, Barlow and others deleted messages between Bateman and themselves and attempted to hide other evidence.
Barlow also helped kidnap eight of Bateman’s nine child brides from Arizona Department of Child Services custody, taking them to an Airbnb in Spokane Washington where they were found a few days later.
Prosecutors dropped kidnapping charges against Barlow in exchange for her guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit tampering with an official proceeding, a class C felony.
In a sentencing hearing in a federal courthouse in Phoenix Thursday afternoon, sociologist and social worker Mari Loring said Barlow was given no choice but to participate in Bateman’s criminal fantasies. She said Barlow believed she was rescuing the young girls from abuse at the hands of the state when she aided in the kidnapping.
“Samuel Bateman gives new meaning to the term ‘emotional coercion,’” Loring told U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich.
Loring evaluated Barlow in prison, where she’s already spent 20 months awaiting sentencing, and found she suffers from extreme PTSD and Stockholm Syndrome.
Raised in the FLDS community of Colorado City, Arizona, Barlow was taught from birth that complete obedience to the men in her life was the only way to live a fulfilling life and find salvation in her afterlife, Loring said. That obedience extended to sexual acts with minors, which Bateman and other spiritual leaders taught her was good and proper.
Barlow’s father was banished from the community when she was just 12, and she was eventually married and impregnated against her will by an uncle. Her child, who is now four, has a rare and terminal condition found only in those born of blood relatives. Her attorney Sandra Hamilton asked that Barlow be kept out of prison to spend as much time with her daughter as possible.
Barlow said she has no recollection of the only time she was found to have participated in Bateman’s various group sex acts, though she doesn’t deny it. Loring said she suffers from severe dissociation in which she forgets everything that happened to her in a given amount of time.
“She’s used to people telling her what happened,” Loring said.
Barlow said she’s learned more about the world around her in the 20 months she’s spent in prison.
“I understand that I made a huge mistake,” she told Brnovich. “I know the world has a lot more to offer. I’d like to go out there and explore the world and see what else it has for me.”
Brnovich, a Donald Trump appointee, went against prosecutors’ recommendation of three years in prison, instead giving Barlow time served plus six months on house arrest and three years probation so she can rehabilitate herself and spend time with her daughter.
She will be required to participate in both a general educational development and life skills program, and is prohibited from having any contact with Bateman or the victims or living with any active members of the FLDS.
Bateman, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit transportation of a minor for criminal sexual activity and conspiracy to commit kidnapping in April, was scheduled to be sentenced Friday, but a last minute change pushed the date back to Oct. 28. He was indicted on 52 felonies, but the rest will be dropped according to his deal. The agreement recommends 20 to 50 years in prison.
After fellow defendant Naomi Bistline’s guilty plea on Wednesday, only three other defendants — one wife and two male followers — remain headed to trial, which is scheduled for Sept. 10.
Brnovich sentenced three other wives of Bateman in July. Marona Johnson and Leia Bistline were each given two years in prison followed by three years of probation. Brenda Barlow, sister of Donnae Barlow, was given three years in prison because she helped plan the kidnapping.
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