Son of infamous cult leader Warren Jeffs said new FLDS leader 'took a page out of my dad's playbook'

• Samuel Bateman, an FLDS leader accused of child abuse and polygamy, is repeating history.
• The son of the sect's longtime "prophet" told Insider that Batemen is following his dad's footsteps.
• While most FLDS members still follow the imprisoned Jeffs, some now follow Bateman, he said.

Wendell Jeffson, the 22-year-old son of the infamous cult leader Warren Jeffs, told Insider that the up-and-coming FLDS leader being accused of keeping 20 wives — most of them under 15 — "took a page out of my dad's playbook."

Jeffs, the longtime "prophet" to the Fundamentalist Church of Later-Day Saints, is serving a life sentence on child sexual abuse convictions related to marrying off young girls to his older male followers, including himself.

Samuel Bateman, 46, also preyed on young girls, including his own teenage daughter, who he told he wanted to marry and impregnate, according to an FBI affidavit. The document was filed in a federal case for which Bateman is awaiting trial on charges he impeded the bureau's investigation into sexual abuse.

"He's taken the same message that Warren Jeffs used, but is putting it in his own words," Jeffson said. "It's the same thing repeating itself."

In recent years, Bateman started calling himself the new prophet to replace Warren Jeffs and has collected a small group of FLDS followers. Still, most of the FLDS still believes Jeffs is the prophet, and he continues to give orders from prison. 

Jeffson told Insider that Bateman was always trying to get close to his family, which was treated like royalty among the FLDS, with the community tithing to the family to keep them in luxury cars and living an elite lifestyle. 

"You know when you have a group of friends, and you have that one person and they really want to join the group of friends?" Jeffson said. "That's how he was toward my brothers, trying to get into the circle of the Jeff's family." 

Now that Bateman has a following, Jeffson said he has taken the depravity even a step further than his father, who he is estranged from and condemns. That's because Jeffs never married any of his daughters — though he talked about it.

The FBI affidavit that details allegations of child abuse by Bateman doesn't say he married his 14-year-old daughter but reports that he kissed her repeatedly, sent her sexual messages, and told her mother that they were meant to be married.

Jeffson, however, said it was understood by some members of the FLDS that Bateman "married" his daughter by FLDS standards.

Plural marriages are illegal in the United States, though they are practiced unofficially by some groups like the FLDS.

History repeating itself

Jeffson — who changed his last name from Jeffs to symbolize his new beginning — left the FLDS, which is largely considered a cult, when he was 18. 

In the FLDS community in Colorado City, on the Utah-Arizona border, his father married off couples — some of whom were children, according to court records and media reports. When police began investigating the rape of a minor in the community, authorities began looking for Jeffs as an accomplice in the abuse.

To avoid law enforcement, Jeffs built the "Yearning for Zion Ranch" — a massive FLDS compound in a remote part of Texas, according to court records seen by Insider.

There, Jeffs took on dozens of additional wives as young as 12 years old. Jeffson said he grew up in a home as large as a hotel with more than 50 siblings and was made to call those 12-year-olds "mom."

While Jeffson's immediate family — his mother and sister — left the community, several of his brothers remain in the sect. 

Bateman's followers, though, tend to be people who remained in Colorado City. Jeffs' followers and children largely grew up in Texas at the ranch, Jeffson said.

"We're separated from it entirely," he said.