Trust Me: The False Prophet Netflix's Christine Speaks
by Natasha JokicBuzzFeedBuzzFeed StaffI'm a Senior Staff Writer at BuzzFeed covering pop culture, entertainment, and politics.
Trust me when I say two things. One, I watch a lot of true crime. Two, Trust Me: The False Prophet is one of the best true crime docuseries I've ever seen.
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The new Netflix series follows a recent offshoot of the polygamous Mormon sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). It begins almost a decade after former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was convicted of child sexual assault, a man named Samuel Bateman proclaimed himself a prophet and took in new followers and wives — some as young as nine.
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It's directed by Rachel Dretzin, the same woman behind Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, which is a good place to start if you're completely new to the world of the FLDS.
Much of the documentary's footage comes from cult psychology expert Christine Marie and her videographer husband, Tolga Katas, who embedded themselves in the community in 2016. As such, the framing is more about one survivor helping another, which is unfortunately rare in the true crime genre.
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I had the pleasure of catching up with Christine after the series was released. She told me that her DMs had "exploded" in a "worldwide outpouring of support." People have approached her in tears at the airport, detailing how the series has changed their lives. "People are sharing [...] the actions they took as a result of being inspired by Julia, Nomz, or me. People went and reported their abuser when they were fretting over it for two years. They finally decided to do it, things like that. It's making an impact in the real world," she said.
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Something that Christine hasn't seen online is victim-shaming. She explained, "When it comes to stories about people who've had cultic experiences, the victim-shaming is usually over the top because everybody thinks they're superior. They say, 'That would never happen to me. I would never do that.' But the way that the director unpacked the story and let the psychology of it unfold — people understood these women did not get into that situation because there was something wrong with them, but because there was something wrong with the situation that they were in. And any one of us in that situation would have likely responded the same."
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One of the decisions made in the docuseries was to use deepfake technology to change the faces of minors so that they are unrecognizable, rather than blurring them. Christine said that she agrees with the take she's seen online about the move: "Because so often they dress the same, they have similar hairstyles, to blur them would be to further dehumanize them. Seeing their faces, you still see their emotions, and that makes it more real."
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Another moment that has sparked a lot of chatter online is a scene in which a local cop admits how little time he's devoted to a crucial piece of evidence from Christine. "When I saw that, my heart went down to my stomach because I thought, 'Wow, this was so important to me, because it was so important to those wives and children to get free,'" she recalled of watching the series herself. "To think that it wasn't studied and immediately acted upon, it hurt a little bit. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to cry."
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To cope with the stress of the situation shown in the series, Christine credits her "menagerie of emotional support animals," her friends (including FLDS women), and her family. "I had to get therapy to be able to manage living a double life, because it was not natural for me, and I didn't enjoy it. It was so, so much conflict," she said of her days undercover. "It was rough. I did a lot more crying than the docuseries shows."
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I asked Christine what people get wrong about cults. "I think people think that you have to be a weak-minded person to be in a cult," she replied. "But, in reality, cult leaders target people who are assets to them. People that are smart, that have some financial wherewithal, that could benefit them, people that have a lot of influence. Nobody joins a cult, and they don't join simply because they're in some vulnerable state in their life."
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"We all have vulnerabilities. If we love our children, that can be used as a vulnerability if you have the right manipulator," she continued. "Say your goal is to help rid the world of poverty, and there's this cult leader that says he's doing that. People think they're joining a movement for good that matches their ideals, and it's only later that they realize it's gone too far. Anybody is susceptible to finding themselves the victim of undue influence in a cultic situation."
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Christine offers a lot of educational resources, and gave some advice on what to do if a loved one is in a cult situation. "Understand that the relationship with the person who's in a cult is more important than what they believe. People go in and try to attack the per