Meet Christine Marie, the Hero of Netflix's Trust Me The False Prophet
Christine Marie in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'
Courtesy of Netflix
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Jesus Christ (of Latter-Day Saints), there are some terrible things (still) going on within the FLDS community.
Netflix‘s Trust Me: The False Prophet (2026) is a four-part documentary series that captured the rise of Samuel Bateman, the self-proclaimed heir to convicted child abuser Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). If you thought Jeffs was a bad guy, well, you’re right, but cult expert and sexual abuse survivor Dr. Christine Marie tells The Hollywood Reporter her friends inside the community say Bateman was even worse.
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A decade before Rachel Dretzin‘s 2022 Netflix docuseries Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, which chronicled Jeffs’ crimes against children, arrest and life-plus-20-years sentencing, Marie, who has a PhD in psychology and a specialty in media psychology, and her videographer husband Tolga Katas moved to the tiny community of Short Creek, Utah, to help. They ended up helping more than they ever could have imagined.
Over several years there, the couple went undercover, kind of, to infiltrate Bateman’s cult and expose his despicable behavior. After gaining Bateman’s trust under the guise of filming footage for a straightforward documentary on his teachings, Katas’ camera captured evidence of continued awful abuses, including more sex crimes against minors. Footage was provided to the local police and the FBI, and then to Dretzin. The result was a number of arrests leading to lengthy prison sentences — Bateman is doing 50 years — as well as Trust Me: The False Prophet.
Read THR‘s interview with Marie, the docuseries’ undisputed breakout hero, below.
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Trust Me has a lot of producers (Jeff Skoll, Courtney Sexton, Miura Kite, Dretzin, Dorin Razam, Zachary Herrmann, Jamila Ephron, Katas). Your husband is one. Why aren’t you?
I didn’t want to be. [Katas] was an executive producer probably because he shot so much of the footage. He had no creative control and neither did I. We were just too in the middle of it and we wanted to trust experts. We were not experts, by any means, on documentaries. We had never done one before — I wanted to my hands clean of it and let them do whatever.
Since I knew I was a character, I didn’t want my own ideas to infuse it, so it wouldn’t seem like some sort of motive on my part.
What has been the response to the documentary — and to the popularity of the documentary — from the FLDS community?
Well, that’s an amazing question because — understand that the FLDS are still an isolated, sort of reclusive community that doesn’t go on the internet as a general rule. I don’t want to get any FLDS people in trouble, but they have been watching this and word has been spreading. Some FLDS, they have family members that have watched it or that send them screenshots of some of the comments, and it’s been surprisingly positive because it’s like the first real documentary that shows the FLDS for who they really are. It’s not all about their own crimes, or it’s not all about Warren Jeffs, and a lot of the comments have been that it has helped people break their stereotypes and realize that these FLDS people are different than they thought based on all the media coverage from the past. I’m very happy about that.
What has the response been from the non-fundamentalist Mormon population — the regular LDS community?
The mainstream LDS church is very sensitive about being portrayed as polygamists. They stopped that more than 100 years ago. Throughout history, since they’ve banned polygamy, they have had animosity towards this group down in Short Creek, Utah — and all polygamist groups. But in more recent years, like maybe the past five years, I have seen the LDS church pitching in humanitarian support down here. So that’s been incredible.
I’m so excited about the worldwide reception to this film because I’m getting positive feedback and stories from around the world. Someone said, “This series changed me, and it gave me strength, and I already made arrangements — tomorrow, I’m going in and filing a police report against my abuser.” Somebody else said, “I see myself in this. I know I need to fight and walk out of it now.” The series is