Why Did The Women Christine Marie Saved Walk Back To Samuel Bateman?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today.
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:15)
You'd think the end of the Samuel Bateman story is the 50 year sentence. You'd think the believers scatter. When the cell door closes, that's not what happened. A meaningful number of the women Christine Marie risked everything to pull out of Samuel Bateman's house have walked right back to him by their own choice. Some still call him their prophet. He picks up the phone in federal prison every single day. And the certainty he was feeding them before the raid keeps flowing right through the line.
Christine Marie is the cult psychologist at the center of Trust Me, The False Prophet on Netflix and a survivor of coercive control herself years before she ever met Bateman. This final segment is one of the hardest pieces of this whole story.
How they went back, at least some did. The some that still have not seen their way out.
Robin Dreeke, retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. My co-host with me as we continue our conversation with Christine Marie. I want to go over here. Some of the people you risked everything to get out, went back to Bateman even though he's locked away. The same way Warren Jeffs followers never let go. I mean, after everything you did to help them see it, how does that land with you?

**Christine Marie** (1:51)
Do you mean the people who still believe in Sam? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I get it.
I get it. I understand cognitive dissonance. Yeah. And your viewers know what that is? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, their brains create a workaround.
But I do think that this documentary series is making some of them think. I know a couple of them watched it. I think that it's really difficult because this is so frustrating too. Okay. So most of the people who still believe in Sam are in one location, one house. And I don't know why the land trust that decides who gets the houses, allocated this house to one of the faithful followers of Sam. I mean, I do know why, but I don't agree with it. So now this one big house is basically their own kind of cult compound. So they're subjected to group think and pressure from each other and reinforcement and validation from each other. So they could have more easily been able to wake up to reality, had they not all been in that one house. But if they were forced to go live somewhere else on their own, so they could do their own thinking. So that's very, very frustrating to me to see.

**Robin Dreeke** (3:23)
Isolated from critical thinking.

**Tony Brueski** (3:26)
You yourself escaped a relationship like that and thinking like that and coercive control like that.
There comes a point where you see reality for reality's terms and you're able to see the errors in the ways of the way you were thinking.
And I'm sure this is probably run through your mind, especially while you were with them, of how do I take what I've learned and help them see that? How do I help get them there? How do I help inspire them to see what reality truly is? How do you do that? I guess is my question. How would you want them to see it? How can they get there to see the reality of what's going on around them? Certainly, a documentary does help. But how do you think they can get there? And can, I guess, can all of them truly get there? Or are some people just, I mean, I guess, not not helpable because they don't want it. They won't see it. Maybe they're not capable of seeing it. I don't know. What's your thoughts?

**Christine Marie** (4:34)
Well, I did try to help them engage their critical thinking in small steps. And one of these was I wanted them to read The Gift of Fear.

**Robin Dreeke** (4:46)
Gavin De Becker, great book.

**Christine Marie** (4:48)
Yeah. So they put that scene, which I forgot about in the documentary. The Gift of Fear will help you know how to stay safe from predators. And I said that right in front of Sam. So that was risky. I guess that could have been a little leakage there. Yeah.
So because I thought, you know, the patterns in a predator are evident in this relationship that they have with Sam. So if I could get them to read it and think, oh, this is how I'm going to stay safe from outside predators, then maybe they would put two and two together. If I went straight in and said the truth, they would have just put up a wall and I wouldn't have access to them anymore.