They say that spirits all have something that they want. And ever since Jodi Hildebrandt moved into the Frankie household, just weird things have been happening. People are hearing footsteps inside of the walls. That's what it sounds like. It's hard to explain, but it sounds as if someone is inside of the wall, just walking around through the wall. The Frankies obviously didn't check inside the wall, but it's starting to freak some of them out.
Whatever it is, it feels like Jodi brought it into the house with her. Whatever these spirits are. And now she's sitting on the bathroom floor while the dad, Kevin Frankie, is shoving a camera in her face documenting this. allegedly torturous situation while Kevin's wife Ruby is sitting next to this middle-aged Jodi Hildebrand holding her so that Jodi doesn't accidentally harm herself. This happens maybe once a day, maybe a few times a day. It's like another being just...
enters Jodie Hildebrand's body and starts controlling her movements. And it's so easy to tell because immediately Jodie Hildebrand's eyes get pinched closed and she starts breathing heavily. She looks like she's in pain. Perhaps even constipated. Today she's on the floor with her hands fisted into balls and she's slamming it down onto her chest.
Ruby is gently trying to stop her, but nothing's really working. By this point, they've tried everything. I mean, Kevin was known as the resident exorcist for a minute, trying to cleanse Jodie of whatever evil spirits are following her around. He says, I would place my hands on her head and then I would command the demons to depart. And then I would state every name of Jesus Christ that I could possibly think of. And those evil spirits. We're very reactive to those names.
it became very clear. The minute he would start saying those names, Jodi would thrash and hiss and wail and growl at people. It was like she was being hurt every time Kevin said one of those names. What is it that the spirits even want? It doesn't make sense why Jodie Hildebrand. Jodi lays there. Her eyebrows are crunched up in pain. And this new voice comes out. And it comes out like a deep, aggressive voice. She's mine. What did she just say? She's mine. She's mine. She knows. I own her.
These are all recorded? Yeah. Who is she that Jodi Hildenbrand is talking about? What does she want to do with her? Perhaps she's talking about Ruby Frankie. Maybe she wants Ruby Frankie to be hers. And maybe she's going to do everything in her power to make sure that she is her. This is the case of Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrandt, the therapist and the YouTuber that were arrested for child abuse for holding two kids captive in the basement and torturing them.
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to directly support a survivor, Jesse Hildebrandt, who endured abuse at the hands of their aunt, Jodi Hildebrandt. Their information will be in the show notes if you'd like to share your support as well. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mingo's growing team. And we would like to thank you guys for your continued support.
As always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com. Today's case involves some very well-known names in the family vlogging world, Ruby and Kevin Frankie, plus their six children, best known as their channel name, Eight Passengers. All the minors in today's case have been protected and will simply be referred to as either boy, girl, or just their first initial.
We will be using the names of the two eldest children, Sherry and Chad. They are of legal age. They've publicly spoken out about Ruby and Jodi. And additionally, Sherry recently published a book that I read. And like I said, you need to get 10 copies of this because...
No coverage of any news station, any documentary even compares to the... truly visceral way it's like such a vulnerable way that sherry is able to convey her feelings about everything that's happened and she does it without i mean there's so many points where it's very depressing to read But ultimately, the amount that she's shown to have grown from this is...
It's one of those books that I think we will all be thinking about two days after reading it, two weeks, two months, and even two years down the line.
Also, I believe she narrated the book herself. So if you're more into audiobooks, that would be a great way to listen. As for content warnings, there are descriptions of food restriction, child abuse, CSA, religious abuse, therapy abuse, as well as just... overall abuse and torture in general now side note there is going to be a lot of conversation about the lds church in these episodes
Ruby and Jodi were devout members of the LDS church, or at least they claim or they thought they were, but they should not be used as representations of what the faith means or how it should be practiced.
We are also not here to discuss the LDS church or faith as a whole. I personally don't have much experience, but like with any religion, there's going to be bad people that do bad things, and sometimes, if the establishment protects them, I do think that there should be consequences for all those parties involved as well.
With that being said, this was originally supposed to be a three-part series, but with the addition of Ruby's personal journals detailing the torture, Kevin's claims that he did not know the kids were being abused, as well as just all the online conspiracies discourse, There's another woman that a lot of people want to be arrested in connection with Jodi and Ruby. This is like the three musketeers and people online are saying you've only arrested two of the three musketeers.
So there's a lot of discourse there. Now this is going to be part two of the now four part series. Please go watch part one if you haven't already. And that's in depth onto Ruby Frankie's YouTube career, the channel eight passengers, how they go from making millions of dollars to just being canceled for suspected child neglect. And all of the video proof that Ruby Frankie is.
a pretty horrible mom. In this part, we will be going over Jodi Hildebrand and how she likes to force divorces as a so-called marriage counselor and how she likes to ruin people's lives. In part three, we go over the torture house that is her $5 million mansion in the middle of nowhere. And in part four, we will go over all of the online conspiracies as well as
The prison calls. How passionate netizens have been that something needs to happen to both Kevin Franke and Pam. There's a woman named Pam. So with that being said, let's get started. Do you think that you can pinpoint when exactly you made the worst decision of your life? Because marriage counseling is ruining Adam Paul Steed's entire life, including his marriage. Not even in the, oh, the marriage counselor is biased and she keeps siding with my wife that a lot of husbands like to argue. It is.
So much worse than that. Marriage counseling will kickstart a chain of events that has Adam kicked out of college, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, hated by every single person he knows, and in jail. He's holding his little daughter in his arms when the officers arrive. This is a protective order. We're going to have to take your child.
The little girl starts screaming, daddy, no, daddy, no. And the authorities, they more or less just rip her from Adam's arms. He has no clue what the hell is happening right now. In exchange for his child being taken from him, Adam is now branded the most evil person in the entire campus of BYU in Utah. How old is Adam? He's in his early twenties. He's a college student.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Now, if you see him on campus, it's like seeing Satan himself just walking casually through the corridors. He's evil. You know, he's got like a 500 page honor code file in his name. Okay, side note. BYU is a religious institution. So while a lot of institutions, they have honor code offices, they're typically for policing the academic integrity of students. Whereas BYU... You could basically start a file for your roommate if you caught them watching thirst trap.
or if you catch them secretly drinking coffee, because BYU is sponsored by the LDS church. The honor code includes behavioral standards established by the church, like caffeine intake. There's not a single drop of tea or coffee that you're going to find on the entire campus. Yeah. So what do you drink? Energy? No, you can't even drink energy drinks. They love soda. Yeah, that's why soda shops are a big thing in Utah.
Like sugar? Just sugar? Yeah, just straight sugar, I think. Now, Adam's file is now 500 pages long. The notes on his file are dated. There are detailed notes of phone conversations between the honor code office and witnesses that are calling in to explain Adam is too predatory to be left in this university. Which is a very bold statement to make. I mean they're saying that the longer that he's a student here, the more people are in active danger.
Adam and his wife, let's call her Mary, that's not her real name. She's also a student at the university. The two of them, they have a one-year-old daughter and another baby on the way. And Mary is actually the one that starts the honor code file in her husband's name, Adam.
She walks in one day and she reports that Adam, her husband, is delusional. He is controlling. He has violent tendencies. She tells the honor code office that she's concerned about her husband taking baths with their young daughter. She says it's because he's a victim of sexual abuse when he was a kid. He does not have a healthy understanding of boundaries. Again, this is what she said.
And one time he asked that I take the baby out of the tub. They're taking a bath together. I take the baby out of the tub. And he was trying to hide his erection. That's what Mary is claiming. She said from then on, she had to be in the bathroom at any given time that Adam was alone with any of the kids.
And Mary is just scared of him now. And it's not even just Mary that Adam is scaring. Mary claims that she has this marriage counselor, a therapist. And Adam is threatening the therapist too. Like they're both terrified of Adam. naturally the honor code office they want to talk to the therapist and she's an open book she tells them well listen adam and mary came in for marriage counseling and it was very clear from the get-go I mean, due to Adam's behaviors, it was just gonna go downhill.
The therapist advised and explained that Mary wanted marriage help. At first, the story was a common theme of a wife struggling to understand her husband's problems with self-pleasure and porn consumption. However, the therapist quickly became alarmed. Because Mary had been convinced that by Adam, that whatever Adam was doing was not anything wrong. That this is just the way that men behave.
The therapist states she believes Adam is manic, and with the encouragement of therapy, Mary has been trying to set boundaries and be more assertive with herself in the relationship, and Mary had, quote, began to waken up. to what was acceptable behavior and how confused she had been and how off track Adam has been. The therapist is explaining to the honor code officer, I mean, Adam is masterful at keeping Mary in this constant state of confusion.
The notes continue. The therapist explained that Mary felt too threatened to comprehend or connect with the seriousness of some situations. But once Mary started putting in boundaries, Adam did not like that. And that's putting it mildly. The therapist states... He's psychologically unstable. He has an intense delusional fixation on me, the therapist. And he keeps saying that I'm the Antichrist. which sounds alarming, right? and he's violent
The therapist strongly asserts that she's just scared that the two of them have kids at home. One example that the therapist gives to the honor code office is that Adam held their infant daughter over the third floor balcony and he was just giggling. He was like, oh. Holding you over the third floor balcony. Ha ha. He thought it was a funny joke.
The therapist claims she would not be surprised if he does anything drastic to Mary or the kids so that they don't leave him. He is just so extremely manipulative, pathological, narcissistic, and dangerous. The therapist explains that out of all of her years treating thousands, honestly, yeah, thousands of married couples, I've never been terrified of a client. One instance where they were both in my office and I was so physically threatened by him
I had to position myself between him and the door so that I could make a hasty escape if I needed to. This was the first time in all the years that I've been a therapist that I've ever had to do that. She goes on to allege that not only has Adam Paul Steed essayed his own wife, but also their one-year-old daughter. She states confidently with her whole chest, Adam is the most dangerous person that I have ever met in my life. He is very clearly a predator.
That therapist's name is Jodi Hildebrand. When Adam first looks into Jodi, his potential new marriage therapist, he does like a quick Google search on her just to see what's going on. She is one of the most recommended therapists in the Wasatch Front of the Mormon Church from... For like the past 20 years, honestly. Her website sounds good. It says, my style is compassionate yet direct and clear of what is necessary to fully change and champion any addictive or self-destructive behavior.
whether it be ravenous addictions, feelings of inadequacy, conflicts in relationships, intimacy problems, communications and breakdowns, and frankly, block anything that prevents having and creating peace and joy. At the bottom of her website, the banner reads, what you do is not who you are. I don't even know what that means.
Her resume on paper seems great. Bachelor's in English, graduate work in educational psychology, earned a master's degree. Then she worked at Cirque Lodge, which is a nationally known drug and alcohol treatment center, which is frequently visited by celebrities. It's expensive. It can range from $30,000 to $100,000 to get treated for one month. One month.
And Jodi would not stop talking about it. She claims that she treated Paris Hilton not for drugs, but for bad behavior at the school that... the camp, if you will, that Paris Hilton was sent to that was terrible but she was there working there yeah that's what she claims now adam did think that it was a little strange how little she cared to protect clients information but maybe it's because
Paris Hilton's personal life has been all over the tabloids since forever, so it's not actually breaking any patient protection laws. It is weird though, and Adam did think it was weird. Besides, it's fine because Adam and Mary, they're going in for marriage counseling. They've been married for two years when they're recommended by a church bishop to go see Jodi.
Adam says Jodi was very charismatic right off the bat. Mary's instantly obsessed. She's really happy that she's working on herself. And Adam was just excited for his wife because he thinks maybe Jodi is a good fit. She's firm, but she seems very wise in a fun way. She doesn't mind laughing and making jokes so that the message gets delivered. I mean, for a church recommended therapist, she doesn't seem like she takes herself too seriously, at least in the beginning.
As for Adam's relationship and marriage itself, there's just a lot to work through. They're trying to balance being new parents while also being college students. They have a one-year-old. Mary is pregnant with their second. They're both students at BYU. They're both Mormon. But for Adam's wife, she's not even just religious.
It's not, oh, church on Sundays. Her dad has a very high standing in the church. So there is pressure for them to be the best LDS church members out there, which naturally is not the healthy. Adam says that whenever he Googled something, if he even saw for like 20 seconds.
Okay. Maybe he Googled it. Maybe he Googled a naked woman's picture for two seconds. And if he looked at it for two seconds and he had a quick lustful thought about it, he would call his wife and apologize profusely. Like you would think that he met another woman at Motel 6. He's saying, I feel terrible. What I did was terrible. This is terrible. It probably doesn't help that Adam's entire start to their marriage.
is just rough. All of Mary's family members hate Adam. They were against this marriage to begin with from the get-go. Adam was one of the biggest whistleblowers of the LDS church. And it's not that he turned against the faith. He's like a devout LDS member, even at that point. He was assaulted by a higher up in the LDS church when he was a child. He was one of the first few victims to kickstart a decade-long chain of almost 93,000 victims.
who have come forward with essay claims against the boy scouts of america wait 93 000 victims have come out against the boy scouts He's one of the person who started this whole chain of events. Looked down upon. Yeah now It gets very complicated because you're like what is the Boy Scouts have to do with the LDS Church? He was Adam was one of the first people to try and get some justice so quick context
The LDS church was the largest sponsor of the Boy Scouts of America. Scouting was considered a big part of the youth development in the church. So about one out of every five Boy Scouts were of the LDS faith. They were essentially sent by the church as part of their church youth activity.
Now, there are LDS higher ups that also hold significant positions in the Boy Scouts executive board. If you are an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts, which is like the top 5% ranking, it is a badge of honor at church. So they're two separate organizations, but not really. They're very merged together. Adam Paul Steed grew up in the LDS church. In fact, his dad works as a seminary teacher for the church. They're very serious.
When he's 14, he goes to a Boy Scouts camp in Idaho where he is essayed by a scout leader, but who also happens to be an LDS church leader named Brad. After the essay at the camp, he tries to report it to the Boy Scouts leadership. They don't care. Adam straight up calls the police himself. He's like come get this guy
He's very brave. He's 14. Now, Brad admits and confesses to molesting not just Adam, but 24 boys, and he pleads guilty. He receives a dainty little 150-day jail sentence. That's about a week per boy that he abused. About a week. That's it. What kind of jail sentence is that? But how did he get away with essaying so many boys?
Adam and his father, they go to the church higher-ups to report the abuse because he's also a higher-up church leader, Brad the abuser. I mean, he's not just a scout leader. He's heavily involved in the LDS church. He has a leadership position. So according to Adam, when he brings this to the church to report it, The church does practically everything to shut Adam up, which why? Why? Because apparently years prior to essaying Adam, Brad confessed to essaying a six-year-old boy.
His LDS bishop, church leader, sent him to quote counseling and then later stated, you are cured and allowed him to keep working with children. So they're not allowed to drink coffee or even look at photos. But here you are, someone who's essaying boys. And you are cured.
That is so bizarre. Yeah. Now, I think with any massive organization, at least... I think religion is beautiful, but sometimes it can provide ways for people that should not be around children to be around children and that's going to happen anywhere in any religion and I think in this situation the chain of command they all should be punished
i don't think that this is representative hopefully of the lds church as a whole but this whole chain of command whoever his bishop was i was like you are cured is crazy as well. No, it's alleged that even after he was, quote, cured, there were more reports, more warning signs that people have reported, hey, this Brad guy is really creepy. But the Boy Scouts and the church, they ignore it. They even cover it up.
So when Adam and his dad, they try to get justice from the church because how do you let him still be around children? The church turns around and allegedly pushes the family out. They fire Adam's dad from the church as a seminar teacher, and they're just pushing this issue too much. They don't like it. They feel like if other victims come and seek help, it's just going to start getting messy, allegedly.
And Adam, this little boy, instead of getting the support that he needs, he starts getting treated like a money hungry liar. Like he is just out here to get money from this. church that has about a billion dollars I think they're worth like a billion dollars the church yeah
Adam and his dad do not give up. There's a lot of respect, honestly, for the two of them now in the LDS community and just everywhere else. Adam and his dad not only fight tooth and nail for justice and they help other victims come forward, they fight to get laws passed. So this gives an extension of the statute of limitations for SA victims in the state of Idaho. Prior, if a child was SA'd, they would have to report the abuse before their 23rd birthday.
Adam's advocating. His dad is advocating. They get a law passed in Idaho that you can report it at any point in your life now. There is no statute of limitation. which the LDS church allegedly really hated. Really hate it. Just curious. Why would you not like that? No accusations, just thoughts. Just kind of weird.
now even though adam is a victim of the abuser that belonged to the lds church it appears nobody cared to help him nobody wanted to do anything the backlash to telling the truth demanding justice trying to get other victims to get help This is, I mean, his whole entire family has to relocate from Idaho to Utah because it was that bad. They were shot. That is where Adam meets his future wife, Mary, at BYU.
They get married. They have two kids now. And everyone is telling his wife, even before the marriage, that Adam is a terrible person. I mean, he did all of these weird, shady things to try and make money. I mean... the alleged church leader that tried to suppress Adam, President Hillam, he ran the whole Boise, Idaho temple.
He was in a leadership position. He also was heavily involved with the leadership of the Boy Scouts. He did everything, allegedly, to cover up the abuse. Coincidentally, Hillam is very close friends with Mary's parents. who are also very high up in the church. So they're doing everything to try and prevent these two from getting married.
When Adam heard that his fiance's family hated him, he said, I was depressed for a couple of days. And then I remember just being like triggered because I was a victim of child abuse. I just remember thinking, I'm not. I mean, I don't have problems. I'm not like that. I'm a good person. And I remember some terrible moment. I went online and I looked at Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
And then I called my bishop and I went into this repentance process. I called my wife. I told her I wasn't worthy to get married. But nevertheless, the two get married, they have a one-year-old, and now she's pregnant with their second child, and their lives are about to get harder, so they need guidance. It is natural to seek help. It's admirable to seek help. They get referred to Jodi Hildebrandt, and that's when everything starts falling apart.
At first the changes are really small, but Adam does notice it. So Jody likely knew Adam's history, like this whole thing. Yes. And she's involved with all these leaders, right? Yes. She wasn't as involved with all these higher-ups, but... It's alleged that she saw Mary as a way to get even more influence in the LDS.
i see adam says his wife would just confront him all the time just out of nowhere confronting him with abstract things like very vague accusations you're in self-denial about your own addiction What does that even mean? Adam says, I just have a million questions. I mean, it doesn't even make sense. What addiction are we? I was never diagnosed with any sort of addiction, nor was I actively struggling with one.
Sure, he has PTSD from the abuse he suffered as a child, but what the hell is his wife on about? But Jodi starts telling them that everyone has an addiction. Every single person. Whether it's food or reading the Book of Mormon too much. Yeah, you can do that apparently. Every single person has an addiction. She's explaining to these marriage counseling classes that Adam and his wife are a part of that every action that you have.
It's rooted in addiction. Most of the time, you don't even know that. It is the cause of every action that you take. Are you jealous about your friend doing something? It's an addiction that's causing the jealousy. Are you gaining a few pounds on vacation because the food is delicious? No, it's actually an addiction. It may not be obvious at first, but that's what Jodi's here for, right? To get to the bottom of your addiction.
For example, Jodi would teach if you have to spend time not thinking about something. Like a picture of a naked person. The fact that you have to not think about that proves that you're an addict. In other words, all this resistance of white knuckling not to think about the magazine on the aisle of the grocery store, the fact that you have to not think about it means you're a sex addict. Which, by the way, she's talking about like Playboy magazine. She's not even talking about Hustler magazine.
Another huge belief that Jodi teaches her married couples is, from the beginning, Jodi tells every single married couple, relationships have to die so that it can be reborn again. It's like a resurrection. how do you do that separation It's the concept of only if... your relationship dies. Only then can it be reborn. It kind of makes sense. Adam says because of the worship of Christ and his resurrection in the LDS faith, in theory, this whole theory of relationships dying is almost too perfect.
But Adam soon realizes, quote, if the relationship or marriage didn't die on its own, Jodi would kill the relationship in any sociopathic way alive. After a few weeks of being in a big group setting with a bunch of married couples and Jodi, now it's time to graduate to the next step. Split the couples up.
Husbands go off into the men's counseling group. Wives go off into the women's counseling group. And that's where things just start going off the rails bonkers. Adam is placed in a group setting with other husbands. Jodi is leading it. These other husbands week after week are just confessing in the man's group.
They're just confessing to the most heinous predatory crimes. They're confessing to having thoughts about SA, child abuse, incest. Adam is traumatized. He's a victim of CSA. He does not feel safe in this group, but Jodi does not care. She tells him, actually... you're on the same level as these people he's like no I'm not I don't have predatory thoughts these people are predators because they're confessing to these predatory thoughts
I'm a victim of CSA. I feel triggered when I'm in this group. She's like, no, you're in denial. You're just as bad. I'm gonna help you see the truth. This escalates until three weeks after giving birth, Adam's wife is understandably in a very sensitive state. She's vulnerable.
Adam says, Jodi starts digging her claws just deeper. She starts helping Adam's wife identify how she's the victim. Mary was likely very confused. Like, what do you mean I'm the victim? It's the, oh, sweetie, you just don't know it. That's what Jodi's saying. Jodi would tell Mary that she had been conditioned by Adam to believe that a husband who looks at a naked picture here and there is normal. It's not normal. It's basically the same level as cheating or domestic violence. If not, we're-
So of course you cannot trust him around your kids. She's trying to tell Mary it's the same as if Adam killed someone, you know? Would you forgive him and just hope that he doesn't kill someone else? Or maybe he doesn't kill you or your baby? Adam is so taken aback to be treated like a predator. I mean, he had to uproot his whole life after being victimized as a child and he's still trying to work through the trauma and his own wife is treating him like a perpetrator.
Mary eventually tells Adam, it's your sex addiction. You just don't see it. Side note, Adam has only seen about two hours of corn in his entire life, but his wife is acting like he is an addict of these videos. Mary tells Adam that he was never a victim of child essay. The wife is telling him? That never happened to you. You're in denial because you have an addiction. You made up that story because you have an addiction. By this point, Adam is trying to convince his wife
That's crazy. Like, that's crazy. I'm not an addict, especially not for sex. And she knows that he would never lie about what happened to him. So in this desperate attempt to try and save his marriage, Adam agrees to his wife's conditions on how to save their relationship. which is they need to break the relationship.
So it can be resurrected, remember? Jodi instructs them that they cannot talk to each other. They can only talk to each other in a group setting and they need to break the relationship in order to rebuild it. Adam suggests getting a second opinion because what kind of crazy therapist even suggests that as a marriage therapist? But Jodi tells him, see?
That's your addiction speaking. The addiction knows that you are solving your addiction by coming to me. Of course, the addiction doesn't want you to keep going to me. Addiction is a parasite and it wants to keep being fed. Mary rejects his idea. She's like, no, I'm going with Jodi. Now, again, this is just from Adam's perspective. Mary has not...
said her side of the story, but it seems like there are, I mean, he's got files of evidence. He was on a big podcast called Mormon Stories, where they've been really covering the Jodi Hildebrand, Ruby Franke case. That five-hour long interview with Mormon Stories with Adam has been taken down due to a court order. So it's a little... Why? What's going on? There are speculations that...
Mary did not like being spoken about. But Mormon Stories, when Adam went on there, he gave every single file that he had. police reports, the 500-page honor code office file. He gave lawyer statements, every court order. He gave everything. He gave Jodi Hildebrandt's therapy notes that he subpoenaed. He gave everything. But I just, just putting that out there. Now, Mary allegedly rejects this idea. From this point forward, she says, we're not going to really live together.
We're going to live together in the same apartment because we have two kids together, but we're not going to speak unless Jodi is present. she even goes as far to allegedly give adam a letter that says as of today i am no longer willing to take upon me the responsibilities that come with being your spouse I set the falling in boundaries in order to protect myself from expectations that are not being met in this relationship. I will no longer do these things for you as a wife.
cooking, cleaning, laundry dishes, picking up stuff after you, reminding you of any of your responsibilities or appointments, assisting you in your schoolwork, spending family time, sharing intimacy, sharing a bed, engaging in any kind of physical touch beyond the social, acceptable boundaries of friends.
I will consent to share our apartment as living space. I will consider to have my responsibility to take care of myself and our two children. And I will not consider it my duty to inform you of my daily activities or plans. They have no physical, emotional, mental, or even verbal contact for weeks.
And then one day out of the blue, allegedly, Mary, the wife, asks Adam to give their baby a bath. So he goes, gives the baby a bath. And he says, quote, she totally walks into the bathroom in her lingerie.
Like, I just remember thinking, oh, my God, she's finally listened to me. We're going to get back to our normal life and stuff. And she starts teasing me and acting like she was going to hop in the tub with me. And I'm holding our baby, our one year old. And I was like, hey, you got to get the baby out of the tub. And I'm laughing, thinking it's funny.
She leaves with the baby. She comes back into the bathroom, looks at me. She looks at my private parts and then she looks at me in disgust and just turns her back and walks away. That is wild. What is going on? That is the alleged honor code reporting of he had an erection in the bathtub. If it's true, then this whole thing is like a setup. It's entrapment. is if yeah but even why does that even is that even necessary to you know I don't know it's weird
This bathroom incident, the motives behind it become even clearer later, but Mary, his wife, is turning into a little soldier for Jodi, is what it appears to be. Adam doesn't even recognize her anymore. For example, Adam and his wife had this trip planned to go to Yellowstone. They're bringing some friends there, one couple from Brazil. They just had a baby, the couple from Brazil, and they don't have much money because they're exchange students on top of all of this.
So Adam really wants to do something special for the Brazilian couple. And he's like, we're going to go on this trip and I'm going to help you guys pay for it. Like I will pay for all the food on the trip. It's a big moment for Adam to be able to finally do something like this and to. Don't know do something special for his friends
But when they get to Yellowstone, Adam promised his wife that they were going to stay within an entire budget for the entire trip. Now, I believe most of the money that they were spending was Adam's. He did get settlement money from the Boy Scouts of America. But it wasn't a lot. It's not like he's rolling in it. And he also does not spend lavishly. At this point, he's hundreds of thousand dollars in debt because of Jodi. At this point? So at this point today. Oh, today. Yes.
But at this point when they're in Yellowstone, he has a little bit of money and he doesn't spend it lavishly. And this is one of the times that he just wants to spend money on his friends. Like this is a good reason to spend money. They realize when they get to Yellowstone that all the food prices are astronomical there because it's a tourist zone. Everyone is hiking up the prices of all the food. Adam says it's fine. But Mary starts freaking out.
telling him that he is violating the boundaries of their relationship because he wants to feed his friend. He says, a grocery store that was cheap enough so that we could feed my friends and her baby and her baby was crying. And finally I got so upset. I said, I can't listen. I have to do this.
And my wife was screaming at me. I went into the grocery store and I bought a bunch of food to feed this, you know, feed all of us with and her newborn baby that was crying. I mean, they were just humiliated. Adam is like, I don't know who this woman is, but it's not my wife, Mary. And I'm going to get my wife back. But three phone calls is what ruins everything.
The first call to the police happens after a big fight between Adam and Mary. Mary is on the phone with the police frantically telling them that her husband is physically abusive. Okay, ma'am, what's going on? What happened? He violated the boundaries of the relationship of the marriage. What did he do? He left his backpack on the couch.
A few things. I mean, one, the police were just like mouth agape, shocked. Secondly, I think this goes to show how far off the deep end Jodi has Mary. Because to confidently call the police... and say that this is a transgression that is an act of domestic violence, if not comparable.
Like you cannot be in a place where your brain is functioning normally. That's how bad things are. She genuinely believes the cops are going to handcuff Adam, log in his little backpack into evidence. It doesn't even make sense.
The next day, Mary calls the police again on Adam. This time, she allegedly states that he physically abused her by pushing against her, which is very interesting wording. Like, did he push you? What do you mean he pushed against you? She states, yeah, well, I was standing here by the door. And they ask were you blocking him from being able to leave the apartment? Well, yeah. Did he hurt you? No.
The police leave because Adam has been incredibly patient during all of this, but he finally decides, okay, that was the second time. I'm not going to do this anymore. Like you got to stop calling the police on me. You're publicly humiliating me. I mean, not even if the police do anything, a lot of people are just going to assume that he's violent and abusive and that the police are just being incompetent.
So Adam decides he's just going to get his life back. And that means sleeping on his own bed for a while. He had been sleeping on the couch. He says, I paid for the house. I paid for the apartment. So I went into my bedroom and I slept on my bed. I said to my wife, if you don't want to sleep next to me, you don't have to, but I'm not going to sleep on the floor or the couch anymore.
He was just tired of being treated like this subhuman being. Adam's wife calls the police and states that Adam attempted to essay her that night. What did he do? She says, well, she felt like he might have. The police don't do anything because again, it's not a threat. He didn't say it. He didn't try it. All he did was sleep in his own bed that he has every right to and she was just having a feeling.
When this does not work the way that Mary and allegedly Jodi likely intended, Mary just disappears with their two kids for a little bit. Now again, this is... alleged at this point. I think, like any video, you have to come up with your own conclusions, do your own research, listen to Adam share his story, and Mary has not publicly spoken out about it, so it's... But you get it. Now, Adam's one year old baby, three week old baby, his wife, they're just gone.
So after a few days, he files a police report because he thought they'd been kidnapped. And Adam says he went and talked to Jodi about what was happening and how heartbroken he was and what's going on with the kids and Mary. And he says... I just remember being in this agonizing pain, feeling it intensely. And I remember looking over at Jodi and she was smiling. Her cheeks were blushing.
So at this point, he's not resentful of Jody yet, right? Does he think something is wrong with Jody as well? It's like a mixture of... He knows that Jodi is telling her a lot of things clearly that aren't making sense, but at this point, he's kind of confused more than anything. He doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes between Jodie and Mary, but it's just confusing.
So from there, Adam's wife starts reporting Adam for actually trying to abuse her and the kids, likely just making up insane stories that Jodi is feeding her. She gets a protective order against Adam and lures him to meet up with her afterwards. So he gets served this temporary protective order. And then she's like, hey, come meet up with me because I like you. Like, maybe we can work this out. but he will be in bigger trouble right he goes and she reports him for breaking the protective order
She's also going to the BYU honor code office to report him for violent and predatory behavior. So not only is Adam facing expulsion from college, he's facing a likely divorce and 20 years in prison for breaking his protective order. He's trying to tell his church leader, you have to help my family. I mean, you have to read through these files because none of this is true. Like this protective order is not true. I don't know what's going on. To which the bishop just responds.
A woman doesn't just run away from her husband unless there's something. Adam is just looking at him shocked like what are you talking about? You know me. The bishop is just staring at Adam.
do i know you what are you talking about like you think i'm like physically violent or i'm sexually abusing her he says the bishop smiles the fact that you just said that makes me know that you're guilty of those things It is like every single person in Adam's life had just decided to turn him into the devil.
He starts looking online, trying to figure out what Jodi's problem is. Why is she suddenly on this war path to kind of destroy his entire life? And reviews for Jodi Hildebrandt, the negative ones read. She reminds me of an abuser, an abusive relationship. She isolates her clients by setting up unrealistic expectations so they believe all their friends and family are toxic, leaving them to only depend on her and her, quote, support phone calls.
It makes me sad to think about how many relationships she has poorly hurt. Another. She's not worthy to be trusted with your marriage or relationships. My wife went to her counseling and classes and the main result was that Ms. Hildebrandt brainwashed my wife that I had an addiction when I did not.
My wife was so certain that I was hiding something as a result of this woman's lies that we had to go to an honest counselor to help dispel the dishonesty that Jodi Hildebrand had told my wife. Do not go to this woman. Go to a specialist. who respects both members of the marriage and does not spread so-called empowering lies.
And another, I have a very different history with Jodi than most. I'm a pretty well-known therapist and I trained under Jodi Hildebrandt for a year. As I trained under her, I saw her tear apart families and destroy relationships. I believe she is truly evil and I don't say that lightly. I have done so much therapy for people coming out of her quote cult.
who were traumatized by her therapy. I don't have an axe to grind, but I am tired of people getting hurt by her work. I'm reluctant to speak out against colleagues and other therapists, however. I wouldn't mind somehow, some way helping people see how dangerous this woman is. But nobody is willing to listen to Adam or anybody else that has said anything negative about Jodi. Adam was referred to Jodi by the bishop from the church.
Jodi works as a therapist for this massive company called Lifestar, which side note, the bishop, the church bishop that recommends Adam to Jodi, the bishop's brother owns that chapter of Lifestar, which is already a massive conflict of interest.
It just adds to all the foul characters in this case. Because the sick part is, Adam gets money from the settlement from his abuse case for things like therapy. And the bishop knows that. And it's like he's thinking, well, why not give that money to my brother?
by going to his business where they employ a bunch of therapists. And it's not cheap or affordable. It's like $500 a week per person. And that's not even individualized therapy. That's to join a men's group with a bunch of other husbands. And then you have... personal sessions that you have to pay for. That's one to two additional sessions per week between Adam and his wife, Mary. I mean, they're spending thousands of dollars per month to work with Jodi.
lifestyle itself has its own controversies it's known for being a network of lds therapists and some have said if you go to lifestyle And you've ever seen like a naked body depicted on any sort of media. God forbid that you've ever watched explicit videos. You're an addict and you're going to need to enter a lengthy 12-step program.
Many therapists in the network also believe that if you ever self-pleasure, you are technically cheating on your partner. And this is a grave instance of infidelity and you need to join a support group. There have also been accusations against Lifestar that they will, if you have health insurance, they will diagnose you with an actual DSM-5 recognized diagnosis because porn addiction is not one. I know that a lot of people do struggle with it, but porn addiction is technically not one.
So they'll diagnose you with other things in the DSM-5 so that your insurance will pay for it. Allegedly, that is the accusation that has been levied upon them multiple times by internet users. Which side note, I think it's fine if someone believes it's not in their beliefs to take part in self-pleasure or consumption of explicit materials. I think we should respect everybody's choice, especially, well, only if they're adults, right?
But to actively go around shaming everyone, condemning them to the deepest, darkest depths of hell for doing it, I think causes more harm. And for Adam, it was kind of like that. There was this never-ending idea that self-pleasure is one of the greatest evils in the world, like right up there with murder. He says, you know, there was a lot of guilt and shame behind self-pleasuring and explicit material in the church.
I mean, I had a lot of guilt and shame. As a kid growing up, I discovered self-pleasuring a few weeks before I met Brad. And just on my own quietly from then on, I just always believed that God had sent this pedo into my life to punish me because I was sick. So that's how ingrained and how damaging it is. That it made him believe that he deserved to be a victim. And now he's recommended by the church to Jodi and she's telling him that he was never abused, that he's the addict here, the bad one.
And now he has to show up to court to refute accusations against him about the whole bathtub incident. He thinks the whole thing is crazy. I mean, Mary walked in with lingerie. He wanted her to put the baby to sleep so that they can have consensual adult time. And she accuses him of CSA of his own child. He is a victim of CSA. He walks into court and the worst conflict of interest is sitting right there. Right next to Mary, there's Jodi Hildebrandt, the therapist, but also Elder Halam.
The higher up in the LDS church that when Adam was 14, he tried to allegedly shut Adam up for the abuse. Then later, he tried to prevent Adam from marrying Mary. He's just sitting right there, right next to Jodi Hildebrandt. Which, you know what? With all disrespect, we hate Elder Halam. And unfortunately, if you want to send him a non-threatening but scathing message of how his soul will burn in the depths of hell for the rest of eternity, he's dead.
Fortunately, he's probably there burning. Why is he there? They just all kind of linked up. Exactly. Adam is facing four felony charges. Each is a third degree for violation of a protective order, domestic violence enhancement. And Adam states, these are all the lies. He has to now spend $250,000, go through all this trauma, fighting all these allegations, just to plead guilty to an attempt.
To break a protective order. Which is a misdemeanor. He had to pay a fine. No jail time. He did spend like a few days in jail. Because. They briefly arrested him right when he broke the protective order. But he technically pled guilty, which means everyone in Utah and the church thinks that he's this crazy abuser that was never abused as a kid, just creating chaos wherever he goes. But later, they will find evidence that some really dark things were happening between Mary and Jodi.
They allegedly found evidence that they were trying to manufacture evidence on Mary and Adam's child to accuse Adam of SA. So remember the incident in the bathroom. They were trying to enhance that with evidence, allegedly. what did they find like text messages um obviously these are not available to the public just descriptions of it make it seem like there is evidence
that shows Jodi and Mary trying to get the daughter to pose in a way and to say like, daddy did this to me. Training her, if you will. Mary and her attorneys used Adam's psych evaluation that showed how bad the abuse he endured in childhood was. they use those documents to now try and take his children away from him. So a side note, they also just go around showing his documents to everyone.
just with extensive details of the trauma he endured, just letting everyone read it like it's book club. And Adam says the worst part is they used it against him to say that he's not fit to be a dad. He says, think about it. A victim comes forward, tells the truth about the hell and the trauma. Maybe he's a decent person, but this is really traumatic and they use it to punish me. Try and take the kids away.
He says they kept arguing that because I was a victim of sexual abuse, I wasn't able to be a safe parent. They twisted it into something heinous to just stab him with. Now, an additional side note, Mary at one point accuses Adam of being gay, which in itself is obviously not offensive. but Adam has SA trauma from when he was a child and it's likely that he has a very complicated relationship or did have a complicated relationship with his sexuality because
He was abused by a monster who happened to be male. And being from a faith that typically condemns gay relationships, it's likely further complicated things for Adam as a victim. There was just no bar too low, no bar in hell too low for Jodi and Adam's now ex-wife, Mary, to just target Adam.
Emails between Jodi and Mary were uncovered in Adam's fight to exonerate himself from the accusations. So the two, Mary and her therapist Jodi, are writing to each other about the contract that Mary is going to give Adam. They're going back and forth of like, oh, you should say we're living together, but technically separate. This is crazy.
Mary emails Jodi, I wrote up this contract yesterday afternoon after our meeting. It's still a work in progress. I'm open for any suggestions. Thanks. Jodi responds, this looks good. The more specific you can be, the better. But this looks good as a starting point. I will share this with him this evening if you would like. They later add stipulations that Adam cannot withhold funds from his wife and that he is not allowed to see any other therapist outside of Joe.
Now, side note, since we're here, fuck the honor code at BYU. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. Adam had a few friends targeted by the BYU Honor Code Office just because they were friends with Adam, allegedly. One female friend was called in because Mary reported her for adultery with Adam since their divorce had not finalized yet.
She was asked about extensive... Okay, so this female friend of Adam's is also a survivor of CSA. The Honor Code office asked her for hours, grilled her about the essay that happened to her during her childhood.
We don't even know how they knew about it. She never told the honor code office that. So maybe they got church records, church files about it, which is crazy. She was interrogated over her past trauma. Then she was accused of having an adulterous affair with Adam, to which she adamantly denied.
But they called in Mary, Adam's wife, and she confirms, no, I know they're adulterers, okay? They're having an affair. To which point, the Honor Code office is trying to ask, like, do you know what adultery is, right? Like, it's been... People do it like they're having physical relationships. Mary just responds. Oh, well, then maybe they don't have an affair. Maybe it was just spiritual and emotional.
The next friend targeted by the honor code office is Seth, one of Adam's best friends. Now, by this point, it feels like anyone who is friendly with Adam is going to suffer too. Truly, to try and alienate him is what I think. Adam was sharing custody over the kids. Not legally, but I think it was more so. agreed upon. And Seth came with him to see Mary. Mary grabs, allegedly, a giant shell the size of a cinder block.
and throws it at Adam. He quickly dodges because he's holding their baby in his arms and Seth wrote a statement about it to the honor code office saying, hey, you know how everyone is reporting Adam? Well, guess what? Mary just tried to kill him. Maybe not that dramatically, but you get the point. They turn around and the honor code starts questioning him if he's a sex addict.
Also, Seth is a chef. He cooks with wine sometimes, as one does. They accused him of hiding an alcohol problem and being addicted to sex. They told Seth if he keeps hanging around Adam, they will kick him out of the universe. They go after like five of Adam's friends for, again, the sole reason that Adam is around them. And also, at one point, the BYU police sent by the honor code office came and grilled, interrogated Adam for about two hours, asking incredibly intense questions.
About the abuse he suffered when he was 14. What does that have to do with anything? But it was traumatizing. He said I felt so filthy and gross after that. It seems like the honor code office did not realize that Adam could subpoena their record. which he does. Adam says he will never forget the day that he was accused of essay of his own child. He says how I couldn't even breathe. I mean, I had a panic attack in the parking lot afterwards.
So there's a clear conflict of interest everywhere here. He subpoenas the BYU honor code files on him, which Jodi clearly breaks patient confidentiality by talking to them about Adam. But not only that, She has nothing to back up any accusations, suspicions or statements that she has uttered about Adam. He subpoenas her therapy case notes and the case notes about Adam, whom Jody Hildebrandt has reported for being this.
sexual predator one of the most dangerous people that she's ever met that he's r-wording not only his wife but his one-year-old daughter he's so sick and twisted and so great at manipulation that he is an active danger to the public you would think Jodi has two novel-length spiral notebooks on him detailing his sick perversions, but when he gets her notes,
It's like this long. It's one page, not even. Adam is in here for marriage counseling, has some sexual issues that he wants to work on, aka staring 20 seconds too long at a picture of an unclothed woman on the internet. that's about it these are being used in court yeah because he's like i mean this is not a good therapist like she
this is crazy. She's levying all these accusations against me. And these are her notes on me. Like I've told her nothing. She wasn't even Adam's personal therapist. He was part of group sessions, but he never really sat with her one-on-one. Wow. So he's like suddenly you're just coming out accusing me of like the world's most heinous crimes out of the gate for no reason at all.
There are also logs of emails between Jodi and Mary where they collude on how to take Adam down, allegedly. There are emails of Jodi coaching Mary on how to talk to authorities to make Adam look worse. It's not even just like, say this, but she's all present things as an inquiry, not an anger. coaching her on her tone her delivery she writes give the authorities the right thinking because they're not going to come up with those thoughts themselves
It's difficult when you begin to see what is really going on to be patient with those who don't. Be direct and act inquisitive, not angry or defensive. Make them think that they came up with the idea themselves. Mary would email back, those suckers, they totally fell for it.
Ultimately, Adam would not get custody of his kids, although he's in their lives now. Netizens theorize it's mainly because Mary and Jodi are no longer in each other's lives, and Mary allegedly wants to focus on dating rather than her kids. So it's just better for Adam to take care of the kids, I guess, allegedly from her perspective. So he is in the kids' lives. But he doesn't have custody as of right now. He was also placed in jail for seven days for breaking that restraining order. He was...
kicked out of university. He was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from legal fees. His reputation has been ruined. He has much more extensive PTSD than before. before his entire life was derailed by Jodi Hildebrandt. I mean, the magnitude of courage and empathy that Adam has is pretty awe-inspiring. Even when talking about this incident on the Since Taken Down podcast by Mormon Stories, he never really blames his wife. He expresses a lot of pain and betrayal from her, but
He actually shows a lot of understanding for her. He believes that Jodi told his wife about all these unhinged, deviant crimes that Adam was allegedly committing, which he wasn't, which Adam has denied all of them to his wife, but... She just thought he was lying. Adam says Jodi would just have everybody just chopping off all the arms of support in their life until there was no one left to support you except for Jodi Hildebrand.
Adam says Jodi Hildebrandt is like Ted Bundy. She is completely pathological. And that lady is going straight to hell. He's not suing Jodi or going after her? No, he... Hopefully he will. But he thought about going after BYU. They admitted him back into the school, but he didn't have time or money to hire babysitters or time for anything at that point. He was also too traumatized to go back to BYU.
He thought about suing BYU. He asked, how would the settlement be paid? He asked an attorney. He asked the assistant dean of BYU, I believe. And she said it would be paid using type. which is offerings from the church. And those are supposed to be used to help people that need it. And he said that he didn't want to. so he says Jodi is going straight to hell and there's a road to hell actually it's called hellhole pass road
Yeah, Hell Hole Pass Road. That's the road name. It's dry. It's hot. It's like hell. The road runs through the Beaver Dam Mountains on both sides of the road. You just see mountains, dry red rock mountains and desert scrub bushes. The road is gravel. It's completely uneven. And there's usually not a lot of cars going up and down the road. I mean, one does not choose to drive up and down Hell Hole Road for fun.
She likes to bring her niece to Hellhole Pass Road, her 14-year-old niece, and make them run up and down. Run up and down the road until I tell you to stop. I don't care. That it's 100 degrees in Utah. You have no shade, no water. Just run. Run for your sins or you'll go to hell.
Licensed therapist Jodi Hildebrandt has taken on the courageous task of helping her 14-year-old niece, Jessie, who goes by they-them pronouns, by the way. This is before Adam Paul's deed. They were also interviewed by Mormon Stories. How old is... Jodi at the time, she was much younger. Not Jodi, the niece. Oh, they were 14 when they first got taken in by Jodi. What about today? Today, they're probably... Fully adults, right? Yes, yes.
Now, Jodi is itching for a big project and Jessie is her biggest one yet. Jessie is probably one of the biggest sinners that Jodi has ever laid eyes on. What is the grave sin that they committed? Being too Mormon. Jesse, now adult, tells Mormon Stories podcast during an interview. I've always been a very curious person and always...
I think very challenging in that way. So both of their parents are super religious in the LDS faith and obviously very well connected. Jodi is Jesse Hildebrand's aunt. Jesse's father is Jodi's brother, who also happens to be an attorney. So Jesse's father is Jodie Hildebrandt's brother. And Jesse's father is an attorney. Now, they say that they had a very typical, strict, conservative, LDS faith-filled upbringing. They say...
This is talking about Jessie's mom. My mom is very docile, sweet, obedient, very efficient housewife. I mean, everything was... Always very clean and very organized and very efficient. I think I was kind of a wrecking ball to them. Always asking why about everything. No answer was good enough and it wasn't coming from a place of disrespect. It was genuinely I didn't understand and I was very curious about things.
In Jesse's mind, this is true. The LDS faith is true. The Book of Mormon is true. Their entire family are devout LDS church members. Their logic is true. And they're thinking, I just need to find all of the supporting evidence to back it up now. I know a few people like that as well. Like they grew up in super religious.
You can't watch Marvel movies because they're not rooted in faith. And there are just certain people that grow up like that but still want to know, but why? It's not that they're trying to be mean. It's not that they're like, I don't believe in this. It's just...
I feel like you're kind of like that. You always ask why for a lot of things. And it's not that they're challenging anything. Their brain just functions in a way where they want to know the reasoning behind every single thing that's done. Every tradition, there must be a reason for it. So Jesse says, asking questions, especially maybe higher, esoteric, unanswerable questions or...
Questions that point out skeletons. Why weren't black people allowed to have priesthood? Why weren't they allowed to be at the church for the longest time? What about sexism? What about race? Those types of questions you don't ask. You don't talk about it. So this podcast also, are they dedicated to? Mormon stories. I believe the host, I don't think they're ex-Mormons. I think they've been ex-communicated, but still hold.
a degree of faith. I think that they just don't like the established religious aspect. So they interview a lot of ex-Mormons or current Mormons and talk about their experience with maybe things that have been happening in the church that... I see. Yeah, they're a great resource, I think. Now, it's not like Jesse is challenging their parents for the sake of trying to prove them wrong or rebelling against the religion in a snarky teenager kind of way.
Jesse says, by the time I was 16, I had read the Book of Mormon six times. I believed it. So in my head, this is true. My logic was just backwards. I started with the belief. Or I was like, okay, this is true. So I will find the evidence to support it instead of following the evidence to the eventual truth. But also I was a total nerd.
And then, you know, the ADHD, you know, they say that they have ADHD and they say this was a hyper fixation. And then the layer of wanting familial acceptance, it's very powerful. I was emotional. I was. strong-willed. I questioned everything, and neither one of my parents, I think, knew what to do with that. They were not prepared because of the culture of the church. Jesse also likes to experiment with their clothes and makeup, which makes everyone in their family freak out.
As if they had just brought home a two-headed seal and said, this is my new best friend. Yeah. Jesse gets ambushed at a family gathering. They're all gathered at Jesse's grandparents' home. So this is Jodi's parents' home. And Jodi happens to be there because Jodi is Jesse's aunt. This is Jesse's father's.
father's home when everyone leaves including jesse's parents jesse didn't even know that their parents had left jesse was down in the basement they just left them yeah now it's just jody and their grandparents and they sit them down and explain that their life is going to change forever. Jessie will not be going home. Jessie will be going with Jodi, and Jodi is going to fix them. Because Jesse asked too many questions that they can't answer. Yeah.
And Jessie likes to wear strong eyeliner and not super feminine, modest clothing. And how do they fix Jesse? By making them sleep out on the balcony in the middle of winter. This is January in Utah. Nighttime temperatures are anywhere between 8 to 30 degrees. Sometimes it can be in the rural areas drop to zero degrees. All Jesse would get to sleep on the balcony every single night would be this flimsy $5 sleeping bag from Walmart. The risk of hypothermia is significant, but Jodi does not care.
She even lies to Jessie's parents, telling them that Jessie was given this high-end, sub-zero type of sleeping bag. This just feels extreme. Why are we putting a 14-year-old through this? Jodi would tell Jesse that this is the start of getting Jesse to confess to their sins and addictions. Jodi is saying, Jesse, you are in denial. You have not come to terms with how evil you are yet.
Jesse has ADHD and at the time when they were 14, it was undiagnosed. Jodi would sit there watching Jesse. If Jesse moves their hand back and forth or if they tap their feet, Jodi would snap, look at you. Look at you. You're tapping your foot because your body is so... full of shame so much shame is in there and it has nowhere to go in that little body so it comes out like this by you tapping your foot this is
All the shame just itching to leave. Like I said, if you are angry, if you are depressed, if you are anything, it's all a result of shame. Shame is the cause. Shame is the result of sin. Sin causes shame. Shame causes mental health issues. Your body and spirit are full of shame. What I am doing for you is to make you physically so uncomfortable that it forces the sin out.
Just remember a lot of this verbiage because it comes up in the next episode. This comes up when Jodi is torturing Ruby Frankie's kids. I have to make you so physically uncomfortable that it forces the sin out. Eventually, Jodi moves Jesse in from sleeping out on the snow on the balcony to this little bunker of a room in the closet in Jodi's office. Maybe it's a little bigger than a closet, but no windows. It just has like a table and chair shoved inside and there to sleep on the floor.
This is going to be Jesse's life from now on. How long was that already? Oh, I think they were with Jodi for years. they tried running away multiple times it wasn't until the third time that they were able to successfully break away And even then there were instances where they were brought in by family members to do these family events and Jodi would be there and they would be terrified. Like they were terrified that this would be another way to facilitate them going back with Jodi.
What's Jesse's emotion towards this whole incident? So much trauma. I mean, the... They're very eloquent. In the interview with Mormon Stories, they're able to articulate exactly what they felt in the moment that makes you feel like you were there with them. At the same time, it's pretty clear that they're still working through a lot of the trials.
And not in like a, they're breaking down, which that would not be like a shameful thing or anything like that. But in the sense of they state that over and over, like it has impacted every aspect of their life. So this is going to be Jesse's life from now on, just the inside of this room. Jodi tells Jesse along the lines of, you're no longer going to school. You're not going home to your parents. As your therapist, it is my duty to fix you. You're going to live and work here full time.
But the first rule, rule number one, you are not allowed to leave this room. All you can do every single day is write your sins out on a piece of paper and every day you will tell me what you have written because I need to get the sin out of you. Jesse doesn't even know what other sins to come clean about. Jesse has told Jodi a few things. The reasons for them being taken to Jodi, one of them included that they had kissed a girl before, which is like a huge thing, I guess.
So it's not like Jesse is uncooperating, which even then, this is sick and cruel. Jesse just doesn't know what else to write down. So Jesse's sitting there trying to think, and they're trying to think back to every single living action that they have ever done in their entire lives. I mean, maybe once while drinking from a public water fountain, they accidentally...
Press two seconds too long. Like they're thinking that hard. Like, is there anything that I've done that I'm preventing the evil from coming out of my body? Just see sitting there writing down one time, I lied to my best friend, Scotty. Like just the stupidest thing.
These are the types of things. And at the end of the day, Jodi walks in, snatches the paper out of their hands, reads it out loud, and makes Jesse get on their hands and knees, beg, beg for forgiveness while I read all of your sins back to you. When she's done reading the piece of paper out loud, she looks at Jesse, who is still on their knees. No, that's not it. This isn't it. There is more, and I need to know there's more. I know you've had multiple abortions.
Jesse would even say later in the interview, I mean, Jodi would rationalize and validate these types of behaviors through dreams and vision. Like she would have dreams that God came to her and told her that I had abortions. And so no matter what I said, I was a liar. She was convinced that every word that came out of my mouth was a lie. That gave her rationale to put duct tape on my mouth.
That's why I was always duct taped. Everywhere Jessie went, she had duct tape on her mouth because every word I said was a lie. Which is like the most unhinged accusation. So first of all, Jesse has never had intimate relations that could result in pregnancy at that age. They didn't even really know or understand how it works. Also... Jesse likes girls. And that's what Jesse told Jodi. so jesse's like how would i what are you talking about
I mean, they've known for a while now. There's just no way that they got pregnant, let alone terminated multiple pregnancies. Also, Jodi accuses Jesse of terminating, like, I think it was like 14 pregnancies. It was a lot. It's just a lot. Even though Jodi knows that Jesse is gay. Jesse says, I was struggling with my relationship with my father. I was struggling with self-hatred. I knew I was gay. I knew I was queer. That was a huge part of my internalized shame.
Eventually, Jesse learns that the only way to even get Jodi to calm down is to just make up things. And this is going to become really important in part four, the final part of this episode, because Ruby starts accusing her own children of doing some heinous things. Jodi forces you to just make up sins. Like the craziest sin that you can think of, you have to say it out loud or else she's probably going to torture you.
It's like no matter what they did, Jodi just wanted Jesse to be the devil. There was no way around it. You could not prove that Jesse was not the devil to Jodi. They say Jodi was convinced that I was a drug addict, that I was a sex addict. She was convinced that I had multiple terminations. She was convinced of so many beliefs.
Never allowed privacy. I was never allowed privacy when using the bathroom. I had seven minutes to shower, two minutes to use the toilet with the door open. I wasn't allowed tampons because she was convinced that I was an addict and I was self-pleasuring with them.
I was never allowed to have the bathroom door closed because she was convinced that I was constantly self-pleasuring in there. She was convinced that I was addicted to explicit material. I mean, I'd never seen porn at that point in my life. I didn't even know that people with my anatomy could self-pleasure.
This is Jodi's manual on complete destruction of a human being. How to take a human and break them in every aspect. Physical, mental, emotional. The physical is likely the easier part for Jessie. And that's saying a lot because... It's just torture, plain and simple. Jodi would make Jesse run up and down hellhole pass road for hours. The concept being, quote, for the reason of making me so physically uncomfortable that I would confess to Sid.
I mean, if you also made me run up and down a road for hours in this fluttering heat, I would confess to anything. I'd be like, okay, I just need a cup of water. You're right. I have reincarnated as the spawn of Satan. I would say whatever you wanted me to say.
That they finally stood up and said, no, I'm not doing that. Jessie says, that was the day that I walked away. And I was like, no. And I turned around and she punched me in the back and knocked me down. And Jodi, she's not tall, but she's sturdy. She's a powerhouse of a woman. Very strong.
Then she ended up going inside. I stayed outside. I went to a neighbor's house. The neighbor didn't know what to do. Jodi found me, came. And again, the neighbor was like, I don't want to tell her, but I have to because you're a minor and she has power of attorney. She's your guardian. And I can't like her. Mentally, it's confusing though. Jessie says they ran away three times only to end right back up at Jodi's house and the punishment for running away would be to be blindfolded.
tied up by their arms and legs, roughly thrown into the back of a car. Jesse had no clue where they were being taken. They're driving for like an hour before finally they hear the car shut off. They're in the mountain. Jesse will be forced to run up and down the mountains as repentance for running away. The worst part is, it gets to the point where the torture and the life is so bad that once they're done running up and down the mountain, Jodi would start showering Jesse with praise.
I knew you could repent and my niece is still in there. Jessie says after attempting to run away three times, hating life, wanting to be in jail rather than with Jodi, but once they hear that little bit of praise, Mentally, your brain is so starved, so desperate, it gives you a high. Like you want to work harder for praise from Jodi.
They say in the other part, that type of abuse that I don't... think is talked about as much is that 90% of the time you're evil and horrible and wrong and the abuse is almost unbearable but then there are moments where you're rewarded and you're Now the best thing in the world. And so after these six hours of running up and down the mountain, the reward that Jodi gave me of acceptance of you did it. You did the thing. It creates this cycle, which I think is.
Already the foundation and the prerequisites of this is instilled in the Mormon church of having to earn love. So it's like this very sick cycle of abuse. But emotionally, Jesse says they thought about jumping from the balcony to break their legs because they felt like that would be less painful than the torture. Even going to jail, if they're so bad, just call the police.
they would ask jody just like let them arrest me please if i'm that bad let them arrest me jesse says i would rather be in jail And the isolation was the worst part. Jodi would tell everyone that Jessie is a nightmare, a terrifying nightmare. Jodi told family members the reason that she has Jessie sleep out on the balcony is because, quote, I'm scared.
I'm scared Jessie is going to murder me in my sleep. You don't know. She's going around saying, you don't know what I'm dealing with. I have to do this for my own protection. The worst part is, Jessie believed it. They believed maybe she's right. Maybe I just don't see it because I'm young and I'm not connected to God, I guess. but like why am i so evil? why is everyone so scared of me?
What about Jesse's parents? Believed it. That they're evil. Does Jesse have resentment towards the parents? Yes. I believe right now Jesse is no longer in communication with their parents. I think even some of their siblings had reactions of like, get over yourself when Jesse spoke about the trauma that happened when they were with Joe. Jessie says, again, I believed all of this. I trusted these people. I trusted the church. The isolation got really bad. It's like Jodi is
just practicing on Jesse before she evolves into trying to throw Adam Paul Steed into prison to isolate him. Jesse constantly had duct tape on their mouth. And they were told because you're a liar. Every single word you say is a lie. You need to be physically reminded that everything you say is a lie. Sometimes Jodi would make them go to family functions with duct tape on their mouth. So people are seeing this.
Jessie says everyone around me my cousins my parents everyone was terrified of me I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone I wasn't allowed to speak to my parents Which, it's not even the fact that they had duct tape on their mouths and can't physically talk. It's the fact that nobody thought this was crazy.
If you have duct tape on your mouth and your family members are acting scared of you, it almost makes you feel like some sort of animal. Yeah. It doesn't make you feel human anymore. It's so bizarre. I mean, it gets to the point where Jodi is convinced that Jesse is contagious. rubbing off evil onto everyone around them. If Jessie is in the kitchen because Jodi is making them do something for her, if Jodi's kids, Jodi has two kids.
Judy's got two kids. Oh yeah. They're no longer on speaking terms with her. They're adults by the time that she gets arrested. But more on that later. But if they go into the room, these are Jesse's own cousins. If they want to use the kitchen, they would have to report to their mother that Jesse is in the kitchen. And then Jodi screams at Jesse to get the hell out of the kitchen.
And Jesse would be forced to stand on the perimeter of the kitchen with duct tape on their mouth, just waiting for them to be done. Jodi would stare at them and say, see, no one loves you. You're a manipulator and you destroy people's lives constantly. You destroyed your parents' lives. You're destroying your own life. And you're trying to destroy mine for trying to help. Jodi would tell Jesse, no one actually cares about you. And you just manipulate them into caring.
Nobody believed Jessie, not even their own parents. Jessie says, she destroyed my credibility. I mean, I was an angry teenager and now... She made me into this emotional, angry teenager that she had told people that I destroyed my family's life, that I destroyed my dad's life.
And that every person I come in contact with, I destroy. So she sets up the premise. And then when I come forward and I try to tell people what's happening, what she's doing to me, she can be like, oh, see, Jessie's trying to destroy my life. That's what they do. It's all just. It adds up. So she's so good at protecting these loopholes and discrediting people.
Eventually, Jesse manages to run away without getting caught. They go straight to the police station where they lie about their age and get taken to a shelter for those without homes. They say that was rough too. It was traumatizing, but it was still better than being with Jodi. Now, a big question everybody has, though, is why the hell is Jodi Hildebrandt so goddamn angry?
Like, it doesn't make sense. Why is she so upset with everyone? Why is she so angry? Why is she such a vile person? Maybe this. jesse remembers one very interesting conversation they had with jody because jody makes it her entire life mission to make sure that jesse is not gay but they stay
She did say something to me when I was living with her. That was very strange because I've known I was queer since I was seven and I was experimenting with girls and friends since I was seven or eight. She knew about it and that it was very bad. It was very, very evil. But then she said something to me.
She had this friend, her name's Bev. She said something to the effect of, yes, being gay is evil and pleasures of the flesh and yada yada. But if I were to have sexual relationships with my friends, If we were to, it would be different because there's a deep emotional connection there and that's different.
We were sitting in someone's living room and she said this and I was just like, what? Yeah, that's called being gay. Like, what do you think gay relationships are like? They have deep emotional connections. Jessie was taken back by Jody's comment of saying that, oh, if I were to have a relation with another woman, it's because we have this connection. And Jesse is like, that's literally called being gay. So Jesse believes that Jodi is gay as well. Yes.
Now, there's a lot of quizzes online with names like Am I Gay Quiz? They're all like fun, goofy. They ask, what's your favorite Beyonce song? What you order at the bar? It's goofy. It's playful. Don't take it too seriously. But to therapist Jodi Hildebrand, it's not funny. It's not funny. This is not cute. As the world's worst life coach, Jodi will give advice to viewers who submit their life worries to Jodi.
In one particular clip, she's responding to a viewer who states that she's going through her 13-year-old daughter's phone, comes across her search history where she's talking about taking a quiz. It's called the Am I Gay Quiz. Jodi explains, there is no such thing as am I gay? Because that takes choice away. It says I am something period the end.
I didn't have a choice in it. And so that on its face is a lie. It's not the truth. It's a distortion. So mom, the truth is that your daughter is a daughter of God. The end. She's not, I am bad or I am fat or I am unloved or I am gay. which is like the collection of words she uses there is also unhinged. All these things are lies. All of them. It's a choice. I know that people get crucified when you say that to the world.
But that is the truth. Being gay is a choice. It's about protecting her. You are a mother. Your job is to protect your young. If there was a lion coming at your young, you would stand in between and you put the baby behind you and you would defend that child with everything you have. Well, that's what's coming at you. It is worse than a lion. It is here to snuff out the life of your child and kill her spiritually.
what is? being gay so lesbians you heard it here first your aura is stronger than a lion Yeah, Jodi continues. I heard a song the other day called We'll Convert Your Children, We'll Convert Your Children. And it was a song about homosexuality and how they're coming for your children. It was the most evil thing I've heard. Which side note, the entire song is tongue in cheek.
They're singing about converting your children, that phrase, because it has always been, and still to this day, is used against the LGBTQ community. The only people that I've seen take that song seriously are both homophobic. and dents up here. That's it. In another video, Jodi sarcastically says, LG...
I think there's now an I plus, plus, plus. Okay, it's another one of these movements that are going in our world that is divisive. I mean, I work with three people every day and not every day, but probably once a week, somebody says a word like... Cisgender. You know, that was a word I learned. I'm like, what in the heck is that? It's just a made up word that someone placed meaning on. Because of what happened with Adam Paul Steed.
Jodi actually does get her therapy license suspended briefly. That's the only negative thing that comes out to what she's done to Adam, ruin his life, completely shatter and disassemble his entire family and re-traumatize him. She just gets her therapy license suspended on probation for like 18 months. So she starts this new life as a life coaching business. everything gets more extreme in her beliefs. The coaching business is called Connection.
And she preaches about living in truth. And it's a lot more extreme than when she was a therapist because when you're in therapy, you are still governed by certain guidelines. But as a life coach, there's no governance. Oh, so she got suspended and now she's a life coach. Yes, a counselor.
She can do whatever the hell she wants. Yeah. They call themselves mental fitness trainers. They say like how you would need a fitness trainer for your body, your physical body. You need one for your mental state. And it's all about living in the truth with a capital T. Living in truth and not distortion means having impeccable honesty, rigorous personal responsibility, and humility. which I mean, those are like really vague words. I feel like you could apply that to anything.
Whereas living in distortion means you are addicted to something. That something could be as serious as drugs and alcohol, but it could also be hobby. entertainment, receiving compliments. You could be addicted to that. You could be addicted to mirrors. You could be addicted to driving, driving, going on drives. I don't know if... i don't know where that came from you are also living in distortion when you know that you are not enough
Which, by the way, Jodi Hildebrandt has a memoir that she titled You Are Not Not Enough. And everyone's like, I keep reading it as You Are Not Enough. Which, like, yes, Jodi, you are not. They also say that you are living in distortion when you are living in lust, which includes being sexually attracted to your own spouse.
That's living and lost. So these principles get built upon through the years and they actually do get worse as they develop. If Jodi was not against drugs, I would think that she developed her ideas while super high on some random couch. and elbow deep into a Pringles can because her ideas of truth and distortion, these cannot be sober thoughts.
I'm like, this doesn't even make sense. We can only assume that the idea of formulating a coherent thought is too big of an obstacle course for Jodi because it doesn't make sense. Truth is always loving. Distortion is never loving.
control is never loving so remember if you really want to love someone you'll reflect truth to them if you love someone you can be yourself around them and you don't have to tiptoe around what you're saying When you love someone, you hold boundaries with them and your boundaries won't offend them.
Anyone who is offended by a boundary is in distortion. Anyone who is offended by a boundary is someone who is being selfish and wants what they want. So with these principles of honest, responsible, and humble, you will have calmness, permission, peace, and a willingness to hold boundaries for you and your child.
Who needs a lobotomy when you have Jodi Hildebrandt's great teachings? I think fortune cookies make more sense and are less vague than her so-called teachings. She would also hit couples with the, Jesus said, having the thought is the same as actually doing it. So if you think about your hot coworker, you actually did your hot coworker. One therapist who was training under Jodi says she was excellent in exploiting Mormon anxiety, being pure, being sinless, being perfect.
But Connections was more than just therapy. It was a whole community that she created, a whole platform of people drinking her Kool-Aid. It was like a church within a church and Jodi was the prophet. That person also didn't like the way that Jodi would treat clients entirely differently according to their status. He says, a client would come in who is well known and had a lot of money and she would say to me, we really got to take care of this one. And I thought,
That's odd. So this was when Jodi was a therapist. And he would say, like we're therapists. We're trained not to care about if that person has money. I think she was just salivating. She was salivating about money and power. Like that excited her. What can I do with a client with a lot of money, influence, and a lot of power?
Jodi was a businesswoman. She really has a lot of addictions, huh? Yeah, yeah. She knew how to hit on a pain point and the biggest pain point for people in order to turn a profit. jesse says this is the crazy thinking about it now but i used to do her billing so jesse is jody's niece remember and they say i used to do her billing she would force me to do it like free labor jody's billing for the therapy session jesse says
I did her billing and she bills the LDS church. So every client, essentially, I would say the vast majority of her clients were from Bishop recommendations, just based off the billing that I would do. So the host of Mormon stories mentions, in the Mormon church, if somebody can't afford a therapist, sometimes tithes and offerings might be used by the bishop who recommends his ward members to Jodi. He will then foot the bill.
from the church offerings. Pay Jodi. She's making money off the church, allegedly, right? But they pay the bill. Now, here's the problem with that. One, Jodi is gaining a lot of wealth and success from the church itself. And two, a lot of victims have come forward to state that another insidious way that Jodi ruins people's lives is once your bishop pays for your therapy, they are entitled to all therapy notes.
what that like there's no such thing like you usually have to sign things that say my bishop can also know what i talk about in therapy so it's this jody will alienate you from your bishop accuse you of doing some heinous things allegedly Is the allegation against Jodie. I mean, multiple allegations against Jodie.
Even when Jesse's physical state started changing because of the physical torture that their aunt was putting them through. I mean, a lot of people at the church could see them in this mental and emotional anguish. people start going to the bishop about them. And the bishop then turns to Jodi, gives Jodi a full rundown. Like, these are what people are saying about Jesse. Jesse says, bishop went to Jodi, told her, gave her the names of the people.
what they said the reason why these people thought anything was wrong with me and according to Jodi it was because I was emotionally manipulating them into thinking that that I would go to church wear a long face and manipulate them into feeling sorry for me Jodi would facilitate meetings with the bishop and with Jesse to tell them, no, tell them, Jesse, nothing is wrong, right?
which is already highly unethical. Okay, side note, already unethical. If you are a therapist, every single therapist, at least the ones that should be licensed anyway, they say if their family member, a niece, a cousin, a cousin five times removed, Doesn't matter. They would never be their therapist. They would recommend someone. That's it. You do not become the therapist for your niece. And not only that, but you don't have them move in with you.
And since, you know, Jodi is in competition for the worst person alive and just bring the gold home, Jodi would facilitate meetings with herself, Jessie, and Jessie's bishop. And the church leader, the bishop, would tell Jessie, you're like a whore. Jessie says, we drove to all the people's homes, all the church members that were concerned for me, and Jodi sat me in the car. She told me exactly what I was going to tell these people, and I would go in and apologize.
to them from manipulating them into thinking that Jodi was doing something wrong to me when she was actually saving my life. Jessie says, also Jodi hates men. She hates men. She thinks all men are pretty much, vast majority of men are evil, including church leaders. She thought church leaders were idiots. And she had the answer and that she understood it. She thought she was fighting tooth and nail on the front lines of Satan.
But somehow, there are still people that believe Jodi is the all-knowing oracle to the truth. One review reads, Jodi's one-on-one calls and the group classes have been life-changing for our family. Years of false beliefs were surfaced in weeks. what years of therapy failed to do. I will say anyone who believes Jodi's tactics are questionable are simply not ready to take responsibility for their choices.
Five stars for Jodi Hildebrandt. Review left by Ruby Frankie. 18 year old Ruby is not looking for a degree. which seems counterintuitive because she is a student at Utah State University. But where else are you supposed to find the love of your life who is going to be athletic, handsome, smell good, comfortable to talk to, well-groomed, not skinny, five inches taller than Ruby, doesn't have anger issues?
is not snappy, is not sturdy, is good with music and teaching, wears khakis and collared shirts, Eagle Scout, is good with siblings, likes yard work, prays daily, reads scriptures daily, wants six kids, willing to help kids with homework, and is crazy about me. That is her list of what she's looking for in her future husband. And she's looking right now. 18 years old, in college, looking for a husband.
How do we know that? Her prerequisites? She has a whole graph of it labeled and detailed on a poster board that's hung in the back of her closet. She's going to go in and start writing the boy's names across and then coloring in the boxes. So if you're five inches taller, she'll color in that box. And then at the end, she's going to see who has the most colored boxes. And that's her future husband. What?
She's like efficient with her dating. That is crazy. Yeah. The boy that she's going to marry is going to check off the most. And one of the contenders is Kevin Frankie. It's not the most romantic meeting, but that's fine. She did not write love at first sight type of romance movie meeting on her chart. Ruby and Kevin Frankie, they bump into each other at a hot dog stand on campus and instantly he's a good contender. He's laid back. Ruby likes that. She wants someone to join her in life.
Not run her life, not lead her in life. She wants to drive the car. Which also, side note, a lot of netizens have been asking, eight passengers, then who is driving? And then a lot of netizens comment, Jodi. interestingly kevin is just as interested in ruby as she is in him maybe more so he was heartbroken when he realized that while watching a movie with ruby under the blanket he was holding her hand
Oh, and he looks under. There is another guy dating Ruby on the other side, also holding her hand. What? He's so pissed about it, but he becomes determined. And I don't know how he knew about Ruby's little graph of dating in the back of her closet. I don't know if he stumbles upon it by accident. But once he finds it...
He's ready. He jots down every single thing on that list. And this is the new Kevin Frankie. This is who he will be from this day forward. He says, I went home and I studied hard. I studied that list harder than I did my schoolwork, I think. I was very insecure with who I was. I was willing to change to become somebody that somebody else would appreciate and love.
After two weeks of dating, this is like two weeks after meeting each other, they get engaged. And within two months of being engaged, they get married. And at just 21 years old, Ruby gives birth to their very first child, New York Times bestselling author, Sherry. Yeah, get her book. One down, five more to go. six kids total, and Ruby Frankie is the type of mother who needs a scapegoat. She would be a perfect mom, right? Had it not been for this.
Everything would have been perfect had it not been for this one. A lot of narcissistic parents always find a scapegoat in the family, and it's usually okay. Every other kid is good. Every other kid is well-behaved in their eyes, except this kid. If something goes wrong, it's this kid. Does the kid shift? Yeah. The kid, it seems like in the beginning it is Chad. And then once a lot of the older children move out, once Chad and Shay move out and Kevin moves out, it'll be the youngest too.
chad is the eldest son the second born and in part one we go over ruby taking away his phone his bedroom his bedroom door even sending him to a troubled teen wilderness camp for over a month It seems like this was all done at the recommendation of Jodi, which Ruby meets Jodi through a friend who is telling Ruby, listen.
anyone can quote fix chad which by the way chad and i don't think any of the frankie kids needed any sort of fixing they just needed a mother who loved them and did not vlog all of their worst moments and put them online five days a week But she says if anyone can, quote, fix Chad, it's going to be Jodi. Now, the first Zoom meeting between Chad...
He remembers for some reason his parents were so nervous. Chad thought it was goofy. He's like, I'm just going to get through this Zoom meeting with this Jodi lady and I'm going to be done with it. They hop on Zoom. Jodi says, Chad, it's really good to see you. Are you ready to start living an honest and responsible and humble lifestyle? Chad says, absolutely. Let's get started. I'm so ready to live a responsible life. You're lying, Chad.
Chad said he went silent because he's never had a therapist or whatever call him out so directly. In front of his parents. Like, you're lying about that. It was just very aggressive. Chad looks over and he just knew that his mom is hooked. from that moment forward. Jodi is not taking Chad's bullshit. Is this like in the middle of their YouTube journey? Like they're already famous? Already famous. So do you think Jodi coming in already like, oh, I want these people as...
It seems like I want to latch on to this. Yes. Because they're famous. Famous, rich, influence. Everything is perfect. I see. Now, after the Zoom call, Jodi reaches out to the Frankies and she tells them, look, your son Chad, he needs an outcome. He needs an outcome for the way that he showed up to that meeting. He's running circles around you guys.
Immediately, they just start taking away everything. His phone, Xbox, no friends, Anasazi wilderness camp. He doesn't get a bedroom. Eventually, they take away football, which was, that was honestly Chad's, he was really good at football. Really good that he wanted to get a scholarship and just get out of there Chad says my mom was trying everything in her power to fix me But I never felt like she was doing it for me. It always felt like she was doing it for herself
At one point, my mom got kind of teary-eyed and she said, Chad, this is your last chance. Jodi and I found a military camp in Virginia and we are just waiting for one more time of you acting up. And if that happens, we're going to send you there until you're 18.
Chad says, I don't know. I think I really just sent something in my mom that realized that she's not going to let Jodi go. This is just how it's going to be. This is how it's going to be from now on. And I just decided to start listening. Ruby's thought is, if this is going so well with Chad, why not Kevin? Maybe Kevin Frankie, Ruby's husband, can benefit from some counseling.
Kevin Franke works as a professor at BYU in the civil engineering department with a focus on geotechnical engineering, meaning he teaches how soil and rocks and earth materials interact with...
structures and buildings and infrastructure. It's a lot of work pertaining to the soil. So they're really well-versed in fundamentally soil mechanics and just how rocks behave. So how certain soils respond to static and dynamic loads, how an earthquake can... have the interactions between the infrastructure and the soil specifically in that region and how they can learn to make the infrastructure better for the future.
It's a lot of smart stuff. It's indisputable that Kevin Franke is academically very intelligent. But in terms of teaching, some would argue he's not very good. His Rate My Professor rating is 30% would take again with a solid 2.2 out of 5. One review on Rate My Professor says, he's very rude and mean. He spoke down to students in a very condescending, disrespectful manner. I truly did not have a great experience in this class. It wasn't an insanely hard class.
I take schoolwork very seriously and I've never had issues with a professor before Professor Frankie. Hard professors are one thing, but downright rude, dismissive, and arrogant is another. Save yourself the misery if you can and take something else with someone else.
Another just reads, weird dude. Interestingly enough, another reads, unable to get in contact outside of class. He's very controlling and you can only have the same views that he has or you will be looked down upon. Caused me so much stress that I dropped out. Which we talked about this briefly in part one, but Kevin does not appear to be involved in his family life. One would assume that perhaps he was using all his energy at work.
But a lot of the students say he was impossible to get in contact with outside of class. So if he's not working, he's not with his family. What is he doing? Another rating reads, Professor Frankie was rude from day one. He does not respect his students at all. He was always in a bad mood and made class miserable. He would make horrible homophobic remarks and make us students feel incompetent. His classroom felt hostile and like a prison. I hate it there.
He started taking connections classes with Ruby. Group set. Actually, the first time he went was a full seminar. Like, you know, a whole workshop. It's like one of those hotel conference rooms that you book out. Jodi's hosting it. Jodi's up on the stage. And the whole workshop is love versus lust.
Jodi would say, love is giving. It's honest. Lust is about taking. It's about greed. It's about control. And you can lust over anything. If a man says he doesn't lust, he's lying. Many of them are lusting. Whether they're lusting sexually, they're being selfish. so we have a huge pop-up okay
That's what Jodi's saying. Kevin leans in, looks over at his wife, Ruby. He's about to roll his eyes. When he looks and sees that Ruby and every other person in this entire hotel conference room is laser focused. They're like on the edge of their seats. He whispers to Ruby, this feels like a cult, like a man-hating clown. You know, this is a bunch of man-hating women that are just looking for excuses to tear down their husbands. And I mean, that's what it felt like to me in there.
But it's confusing because there were a lot of people that I respected, a lot of people that were on that stage with microphones in hand giving testimonials of how great this was and how it changed their lives and their marriage. The seminar does come at a very vulnerable time. He says, to be honest, we were pretty lost and Ruby believed this was the roadmap back to the place that we both wanted to go.
So after the seminar, she sat me down and she said, I'm concerned about our marriage and I'd like to invite you to join a Connections men's group. which is a group of men that meet up on Zoom every week with Jodi so she can berate them about how they're ruining their lives if they ever place their eyeballs on a nude photo of a woman.
In the beginning, at least, Kevin and Ruby get sucked in. He says, we both felt like there was purpose again. Even the kids felt a change. Ruby was happier. She never shouted anymore. We were really happy, like a happy family again. Clearly, very quickly, Kevin gets very into connections. There are clips of Kevin Franke giving advice to other parents in the connections group.
He's sitting there right next to Ruby saying things like, There's so many culturalisms today that are just being promoted and celebrated and taught from the highest towers in every part of the land. That it's my job to make kids happy. It's my job to give my kids a magical childhood. It's my job to make my children smile and laugh. And it's my job to make my children successful. No.
Sherry remembers in her book, yeah, that's exactly what Ruby does. Ruby does not have time or patience for a child that wants to be happy or is even sick. He's like discipline, discipline. It's not my job to make sure that my children are emotionally stable. In the beginning, Ruby and Kevin are the stars of the new group sessions that Jodi is hosting. They become the teacher's pets, if you will, and everyone would do well to learn from them.
Many victims have come forward to say that Jodi is very meticulous about how she tortures people in these group counseling sessions. You could be in a group setting with all these husbands. But if you ever admit that you have been self-pleasuring, they will pair you up with an accountability buddy.
This is a non-mental health professional that you have to text three times a day at the very least. Anytime you want to self-pleasure or do anything that you shouldn't be doing, even if you just briefly thought about it for two seconds, you have to tell your accountability buddy. They take a full log. They're like an accountant. Excel spreadsheet this. And then there's these confessional meetings where you meet up with your wife and Jodi and you have to confess everything to her. And if you.
Maybe don't mention one thing on that list. The accountability buddy will rat you out. And then everyone in the group pressures the wife to punish the offending spouse in some way. Other victims who have come forward state that Jodi encourages the wife to punish husbands by kicking them out of the bedroom. No hugging, no kissing, no talking, no nothing, no intimacy, or even personal connection for months at a time, all for the unforgivable crime of self-pleasure.
Does Jody have a husband she did briefly an ex-husband for two years and it was apparently a very mess Now, Jodi would use that where the husband is now going through months of isolation and it's almost like she's waiting for the husband to self-pleasure again and have a relapse. That's when she pushes the wife to kick him fully out of the house. And start initiating. Aside from that, the group sessions are just group bullying sessions.
Kevin says, if Jodi piles on somebody, they all pile on. If Jodi praises somebody, they all praise. And so it really felt like a pack of dogs. And Jodi was the alpha. And whoever she sticks the dogs on, they would go. Whoever she prays, the dogs would just lick them up and down. That's just how these groups went. The revenue from these group counseling sessions alone is estimated to be on the conservative side, have brought in Jodi about $30,000 a month.
Now Kevin would start helping to lead these sessions. Yeah, he was very involved at this point. He would talk about how he was addicted to all sorts of things, sports, his phone, work. And how he always just made his wife feel like she had to hold the house down. And it was this whole conversation he's like leading and teaching. And it seems like the only one in the entire Frankie household that's really concerned. That's not a full-fledged child. that's getting concerned about this is sharing.
She's very suspicious of Jodi. Something about Jodi is cold, not maternal, but in the worst way possible. It's like the absence of any maternal energy. Sherry starts looking into who exactly Jodi Hildebrand is, and she seems like a grifter. Honestly, like a con woman. On our website, there's packages that you can purchase. Leadership training, six-week program, one person, 800. Team leadership program, 5,000. Company leadership training, 15,000.
Jodi learns the reason that Jodi switched from therapy to full-blown counseling and life coaching is because, yes, there's more money, but also she's on probation. Her license was suspended. At this point, Adam Paul Steed's story was not fully out. So it just was like Jodi was disclosing patient information to the honor code at BYU. It wasn't the level that we know today.
Even the way Jodi responds to criticism is alarming. In one video, Jodi demands people leave her better reviews. She starts ranting, all you have to do is click the link and give us a five-star review. It's as simple as that. But you guys aren't. doing it i think we've had five people from the last time i asked which is probably a
A month ago, five out of almost 9,000, five people to give us a review. That's five. And we've had probably 50 to 75 people give us one star reviews. So we started with a five. And in three months, we're down to like a two. There is a link underneath every single video that says give us a review. Click it and give us a five-star review, please. I don't understand why you won't do it.
Even if you put all of this to the side, Sherry is noticing how extreme things are getting in the house. Jodi would say extreme things like it's extreme, but it has to be because we're surgically removing the sin. We're surgically removing the sin from your soul. May 2021, Jodi calls Ruby freaking out. She's wailing and sobbing into the phone. This is Jodi, the life coach extraordinaire, crying to her client. She tells Ruby that it's happening. It's time.
The second coming, doomsday, the apocalypse. The shadow figures are coming for her. They're haunting her. They just surround her at night all around the bed. Jodie knows Satan is behind this. He has it out for her. He's the one sending them. We talked about this in part one, but Ruby and Kevin were prepared for Doomsday, the second coming. Kevin says, because we were in that state of mind where we were ready for something big to happen, we were expecting it. We just weren't expecting this.
So to them, this sounds incredibly rational, level-headed. Yes, of course Satan daddy is sending you demons at night. So they go to Jodi's house to be with her while she goes through these demonic possessions to give her support. So for months, the church bishop would come to help Jodi. I guess with exorcisms, but nothing's working. Bishop even suggests, maybe the demons are attached to your $5 million house. Maybe you gotta leave.
Which means maybe Jodi can stay with you, Ruby. Live with you and the rest of the Frankie kids until she's better. Move into the Frankie household. Kevin says, I was like, oh, hell no. I don't want this in my house. But I was beaten over the head with it. That's really insensitive. She's done so much to help our family. You're being selfish. She needs it and come on.
it won't be for long and so I relented and I was like okay actually this could be kind of fun let's make it fun and she needs a vacation so we'll just do all of this and it turned into um you know the The moment she showed up at my house, which was the weirdest crap started happening. Wait, so the church leader told Jodi to live with Frankie? Well, it was more so, I don't know how to help you. Maybe the demons are in your house. I gotta go.
Oh, so Ruby just took her in. Yeah, Jodi and Ruby were like, oh, let's go to Ruby's house. Okay. Now, Kevin says out of nowhere the lights would turn on and off. It sounds like people were walking inside the walls. You could feel there's spirits floating around. Kevin says he hated it, that it was weird. But he probably didn't hate it as much as Sherry hated it.
She just remembers her mom calling her. You have a couple of hours to take whatever you need out of your room. And Jodi's moving in. You're moving out in two weeks already to go to college. So I figured you only have to deal with it for two weeks. So it should be fine. Sherry says it was fine, but I thought it was weird that a therapist would move in with her patient.
But it gets worse. Sherry writes in her journal at the time. The house's spirits feel weird with Jodi here. Something's going on between her and my parents that we don't know about and the whole thing is super secretive. I'm trying to spend as much time out of the house as I can. This is the desert house? No, this is the Frankie house. No, that's Jody's house.
This is like their family home that they've been vlogging in. Okay. Now, Jodi is still suffering from her demonic possessions, her trances. Both Ruby and Kevin are trying to help her through it, but eventually Jodi starts responding best to Ruby. Ruby even volunteers. to stay in Jodi's room overnight, which is her daughter Sherry's room, to comfort Jodi because the demon spirits get more active at night. They start sleeping in the same bed.
Ruby tells Kevin, you know what? I'm just going to start sleeping in there and if I need you, I'll come down and get you and maybe if I'm in the room with Jodi, these things will leave her alone. Kevin says, I'm like, oh, that's kind of weird. That is when they started sleeping in the same bed.
Kevin says that's also when, quote, Ruby started having like trances and stuff. I would say it was probably around that time that she believed she was going to heaven and seeing God and Jesus talking with them. They would stay locked in that room for four to five hours and then they would come out all on cloud nine and Ruby would say things like, she just had this amazing vision. We're all bringing all this stuff into the world. We're doing God's work. Yeah.
kevin says i don't know the extent to which their interactions went but it was much more than a friendship much more than a sisterhood it was uncomfortably I never remembered her being that sympathetic towards me when I was having similar issues, aka nightmares as a kid, but I guess this was different with Jodi.
Also, Sherry says, Ruby and Jodi would stay upstairs all day and they would rarely leave the house unless they were going to Dairy Queen. Their diets were a cardiologist's nightmare, just sugar and ranch dressing. So after moving out for college, there's this very strange incident where Sherry has to go back home to get a few things from her room. She says, I pushed the door to my bedroom and I looked around confused.
The room was bathed in the soft glow of candles. The air was heavy with the scent of lavender and vanilla wafting from the massage oils in the dresser. I quickly grabbed what I needed and got the hell out of there, feeling like I just walked into someone else's honeymoon suite. The only thing missing was rose petals on the bed.
That is crazy. Sherry says the whole thing was made weirder by the fact that that night, Sherry's sleeping on the couch. She can't fall asleep. It's like 5 a.m. She hears something and she writes in her book, quote, I cracked one eye open, just in time to see Ruby tiptoeing out of my room, her hair messy, her cheeks flushed, and her robe hastily tied, heading back to the bedroom she shared with my dad. A strange smile on her face.
She looked mischievous. What the hell was going on? Why was Ruby sneaking around in the middle of the night like a teenager trying not to get caught by her parents? Were they really doing candlelit massages in my bedroom? How could all of this be happening with all of us in the house?
She continues, it was equal parts fascinating and horrific. Two women who preached quote truth while living lies, who condemned queerness very publicly in their connections videos while embodying it privately in my room, on my bed, most likely. Later, Sherry will find notes in Ruby's computer detailing how frustrated Ruby was about having to cater to Jodi's needs for physical affection without getting anything in return.
Which is a lot going on, but at the time, all Sherry is most concerned about is her family's safety. Sherry starts Googling, is my family in a cult? This is where I leave you with part two. And stay tuned for part three and part four. So part three, we're going to go over if people could have seen more warning signs.
Up until the day of the arrest, they're still posting podcast episodes, like 30-minute podcast episodes. And some of what they're teaching kind of lines up to what they're journaling about the torture that was taking place. And then in part four, we go through the arrest. Stay tuned, let me know in the comments what are your thoughts, stay safe, and I will see you in the next one.