Hidden True Crime - Part 1 RUBY FRANKE/JODI HILDEBRANDT | Hidden True Crime x Mormon Stories Podcast React to Shari Franke's New Book

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Lauren Matthias sat down with John Dehlin, Megan Connor and Mindy Caldwell as they reviewed the book "The House of My Mother" written by Shari Franke, the oldest daughter of Ruby Franke. About Hidden True Crime: Lauren Matthias, a former television reporter, and her husband Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lately, I've been trying to be more intentional about what I wear, intentional about everything, just choosing pieces that feel effortless, still put together, timeless, but also not overthinking it every morning. It's why I keep going back to quince. Their pieces just make getting dressed easier and I feel so classy. I feel elevated. The fits are flattering. The fabric is really high quality. Everything is wearable day to day. I actually got this really, really, beautiful yellow V-neck midi dress from them, and I paired it with some Italian leather sandals. It's one of those outfits that just works. It feels polished but still comfortable. It's exactly what I've been looking for. What surprises me, though, is the quality for the price. Quince uses

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We're getting the band back together. We have Lauren Johnson Matthias. Did I get the order right of your name? You did. You got it right. Lauren Johnson Matthias from Hidden True Crime. We've got Megan Connor. Hey, Megan. Hi.

From third verse slash midlife, what? Midlife Revolution. Midlife Revolution. And we've got Binder Mom, dear friend, Mindy Caldwell. Hi, everybody. And today we are going to be covering the brand spanking new book that just hit the bookshelves, The House of My Mother, A Daughter's Quest for Freedom, Sherry Frankie. And of course, Sherry Frankie is the daughter of Ruby and Kevin Frankie.

And this is an amazing, powerful book. I'm just going to start off at the top. I recommend everyone needs to go buy this book right now. I went in a little bit skeptic wondering whether it was going to be a good book. Lauren, do you agree? I agree. I didn't know either. I went in with a very open mind and I couldn't put it down, which is I think why we're all able to do this today because it just came out like two days ago

and we have all read it cover to cover. I think Megan, I think you bought your airfare like yesterday, right? I literally bought my airfare yesterday morning. Yes. Ed flew here. Yeah. And then Mindy, is there a thumbs up for you? Oh, absolutely.

Flew through it. I was like you. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I'm very, very proud of Sherry for writing this book. I think it's important for her to take her power back and write this story and highly recommended. Yeah. Absolutely. So go by this book. That's the first thing we want to say.

Thank you, Sherry, Frankie, for writing such a great book. And it's not just Sherry. Let me just give a couple disclaimers right off the top because I think it's good. First of all, trigger warning, right? Mindy, that was your idea? Yeah, meaningless to say. Do you want to say why or anything about that? I mean, I think if anyone's familiar with the Frankie case, there's talk of abuse and neglect.

And yeah, and then there's other parts of the book that I think we weren't aware of before this book came out, that there's a trigger warning for most of the topics in the book, I believe. So, yeah. There's a major storyline that none of us, I think, anticipated. Sherry shares a story of hers. Sherry shares a personal story of hers that none of us were aware of until this book came out. And I think people need to be aware of coercive control and sexual assault. And grooming of minors, I think, in sexual ways.

a vulnerable person at the very least. Yeah. So a couple just disclaimers that. Spoiler alerts, we're going to be talking about this book in depth. So if you don't want any spoilers, go buy the book, go read the book, and then come back over and check us out. Margie wrote a couple extra notes. We want to honor Sherry for writing this memoir. It was co-written by Caroline Ryder.

So I can tell it's just so well written. I couldn't write a book like this alone. So anyway, Carolyn Ryder, credit to her. Yeah, and we're going to just be digging in, kind of going chronologically. Let me just take a minute to welcome all of you who are joining us on the live stream. Thank you so much for joining us. And I'm going to ask Julia and Maven, if she ends up joining us, to, if possible, when possible, to star any questions or comments.

If you guys happen to share your questions or comments as super chats, I can promise you we'll make sure and include them. That's just a way you ask a question with a little bit of a monetary donation on YouTube. We want to thank all of our donors on Mormon Stories that make this episode possible, of course. And yeah, we look forward to the interaction with our live audience. We also welcome our asynchronous audience as well. you are listening later, not live, either audio only or video. Please like and subscribe to this episode, to this channel.

That really helps with the algorithms. It helps us stay alive. So please subscribe on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and wherever, but mostly YouTube. So without any further ado, let me reintroduce or have my illustrious co-panelists introduce themselves. So Lauren, tell us, remind us how, awesome you are.

I don't know if I'll do that. Can I just say your channel is now officially like 100,000 subscribers bigger than Mormon stories, which I'm thrilled about. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. I think I'm still in the 200, 270, 280? I'm, no, then you know, you have more. You have more subscribers.

So we're about the same, but we're about the same. Yes. Yes. Okay, tell people how awesome you are, or I will. I'll skip that question, but I'll share who I am. I am the host or co-host of the hidden. True Crime podcast and YouTube channel. We cover, as our channel says, true crime.

And I'm always grateful to collaborate with Mormon stories as we've covered in depth the Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrandt case. We've covered in depth the Chad, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow case and continue to cover that. The band, as you explained, that's back together. We went deep into the book Visions of Glory, which, you know, a little foreshadowing there. Look, it appears in the book. Foreshadowing, put a pin in that. There's going to be a moment of like, we told you so.

You know, and hence the man. We literally did. She even mentions Tom Harrison. She mentions Tom Harrison. It's, you know. So I know we, I think should be proud of your work there and all of us should be when it comes to putting something that ties all of these crimes together. And we have delved deep in our podcast as well on Tim Ballard, as well as the Shannon Gardner case, in several other cases that actually do are part of this sort of LDS.

I don't know, is there an LDS crime genre now? Yeah, true crime. MTC, right, Mindy, Mormon True Crime? You made that up, John. But this is a case, you know, we care greatly about, like I said, we've covered in depth. And so I was looking forward so much to reading Sherry Frankie's book. And I'm so grateful to just discuss it with friends today. So yes, Hidden True Crime YouTube channel and podcast.

And some of the big cases you've been covering lately or have covered historically just to get people a flavor? Yeah, we cover beyond LDS crimes. We cover all crimes. We don't just specifically cover those that have an LDS tie in. I just got back from Delphi, Indiana, where I covered the entire trial of Richard Allen, Many know that Abigail Williams and Libby German, two best friends that were teenagers were brutally murdered in 2017, and their killer was just convicted, and I spent every day going to that trial. I also covered both the Chad Daybill and Lori Valo trial. I've covered the Alec Baldwin trial. We have several trials we're about to cover this year, including the James Craig trial, who also, unfortunately, was an LDS family hit with tragedy. But we just, We care about justice. We care about being victim-centric on our podcast, and we care about understanding.

We always say we're not a who-dunit channel. We're a Y-done-a-channel. That's what we're interested in. And my husband is a clinical and forensic psychologist, and so we delve deep into the whys behind the crime and criminals. Love it. All right. Well, and you have a TV journalist background, right? I was a TV reporter for 10 years.

And then. In like Idaho and Utah, right? All over Idaho and Utah. Yes. Yeah. And couldn't put it away, obviously. I quit to stay home and then here I am. What's more fun?

TV journalism or doing a cool YouTube channel? Definitely this because I get to choose what cases we cover every day. And I get to delve deep into them. When you're a TV journalist, every day you're on a different case. And when you care about something and there's other. you know, local crime you have to cover, you have to put that one aside. And so to be able to finally dig deep and be a real investigative journalist and then say, this is what I care about.

This is what I need to focus on. It's been a bit of, I'm very grateful for that. Yeah. Well, so thrilled to have you. So thanks for coming, Lauren. And a shout out to if there are any hidden true crime, viewers or fans out there. Welcome to our channel.

Thanks for joining us. Megan, you're next. Megan Connor. Tell us about you again. Remind us about your awesomeness. Oh, I just like hanging out with you guys. Friends of Lauren, basically. Yeah, just doing book reviews and, you know, change in the world.

No, I've got a podcast as well. My podcast is called The Midlife Revolution. It just launched this past April, April of 2024. So I mainly talk about making small changes that end up becoming revolutionary. And most of it is about healing and about being kinder to you. yourself, loving yourself better, and just starting to question things that, you know, maybe I shouldn't do things this way. Maybe I should do them a different way. So it's all about investigating new ideas and new things. And I'm having a lot of fun with that. But I'm also covering,

unfortunately, the case of my crazy cousin, Lori Valladaybill. She's about to go on trial at the end of March. And she's been having some hearings and motions. Unfortunately, she's representing herself, which adds another level of crazy to the whole thing. So I've been covering that, and I will also be at the trial, Lauren, and I will have to hang out. But that's what else is going on. And I also just launched an e-course that the first module just launched last Tuesday. It's an eight-module course on how to recognize manipulation and control and how to defend against it. And that's one of the things I'm most passionate about, and the reason why I keep talking about Lori and her cases is because I always said that Lori had this veneer that she put on

in public and not everybody could tell that she was not really like that in private. And that's not who she really was. She was a master manipulator and she's still manipulating people. And I think the more people who can learn to identify those tactics and defend against them, the less people are going to be victimized. And I think we just are seeing a rise in people who are exhibiting manipulative behaviors, narcissism. And it's in this book, too, throughout the entire book. So I think the more aware people can become, the more healthy we can become as a society, the better our relationships will be. So that's what my e-course is about. And people who want to take the course can email me at ask megan at gmail.com. Megan with two e-e.

Excellent. All right. And of course, last but not least, we have our dear friend, Mindy Caldwell. Hey, Mindy. Hi, John. Yeah. Tell us about you. Oh, I'm happy to be here. I've been on the podcast a few times. I'm grateful to be back with these lovely ladies. I always have mixed feelings because the topics that we're discussing are usually, you know, around crime and around people who have been hurt or harmed. So there's mixed feelings about saying that I'm excited to be here, but I am happy to be with my friends that I've met through following these stories. And I did not follow the Frankie family before the news broke of the children being rescued. And I didn't watch their YouTube channel, but of course I've gone back and tried to catch up on some of those things. but I do have an interest in true crime and in particularly ones that have an LDS tie,

and this story certainly does. So I loved Sherry's book. I'm very happy to be here and promoting her book, and it's an important story. So thank you for having me. I want to say something about Mindy really quickly. What people can't see, and that we often joke about it, we call her binder Mindy, is what people can see is she has a big binder in her lap right now. She's a super sleuther.

She's incredible. We joke about it, but it's actually... Yeah, it's incredible. And of course, clearly we all read this book very quickly. Again, you can't put it down. We recommend everyone reading it. But not only did we all have to just quickly read it, you know, to understand. She has an entire binder with notes and sent all of us this incredible outline.

So she's... Mindy's brilliant. And so we can't do this without her. I just want to say that. So we joke this binder. Mindy thing, but it's real and we are very grateful for it. Oh, thank you, Lauren. I second it for sure.

We couldn't do it without you. Thanks, ladies. If Mindy were mom and a bunch of young kids, she would have her own YouTube channel more successful than all of ours. My kids aren't that young, but yeah, I still have a busy, busy house. But yeah, happy to contribute in this way. And outlining things with my brain helps me to stay organized and to not, hopefully not miss anything important that I think needs to be discussed today.

So happy about that. All right. Well, let's dig in. So many questions that I was going into this book wanting to know. I'll just share a couple. And then y'all can also share any things you were excited to learn about. The ones that I had, I don't know if y'all ever saw Grapes of Wrath or Red Grapes of Wrath, but there's this point where the farmers are like out with their guns, ready to kill because they're being evicted from their land. And there's this moment in the book where one of the farmers has a gun. And he's like, well, who do we shoot. And he wants to shoot, you know, the person that evicted him from the land. But someone explained to him, well, the bankers, you know, and okay, how to shoot the bankers? Well, it's not the bankers. It's, it's Congress. Well, let me shoot Congress. Well, it's also the president. You know, who do we shoot? Like, is this, is this pure Jody Hildebrand? How much is Ruby complicit in this? How much does the Mormon church play a role? What's, you know, Kevin's, you know, what was going on with Kevin? How complicit is Kevin? Like where, where, to what extent do we distribute

sort of causality? That's, that's the main question that always comes up for me. And because this is Mormon stories, I'm always thinking about systems more than individuals. And so I just want to know, is there any way the Mormon church could improve to make it so stuff like this doesn't happen? But also, you know, was Ruby abusive before she ever met Jody? That was a question that Margie had. You know, again, how does Sherry view Kevin's complicity in the abuse and or the neglect? And to what extent does Sherry hold Kevin responsible? What is the nature of Ruby and Jody's relationship?

Of course, there's a lot of people who wanted and still want to know to what extent was that relationship. As Sherry says in such a Mormon way, intimate, right? Which is Mormon code for sexual, right? And then, you know, to what extent are Sherry and Ruby even going to have a relationship in the future? Those are some of the questions that Margin had going into this book. Any other ones you all want to add in terms of anticipatory questions that we're going to, were really on your mind or do we kind of cover it? For me personally, I never watched eight passengers.

And so the first that I heard of this case was when the children were found. And so for me, I had a lot of questions about how the channel came to be and how widespread it was and how in depth they really did get. And, you know, how was it for the kids? And so even though I knew that Sherry was the oldest daughter, I didn't really know how much her involvement was. And so for me, the question was more about how the kids were being treated during the eight passengers time and what that was like growing up as a YouTube kid. And, you know, how did that lend to this whole situation? Because I did know that the channel sort of lost,

you know, a lot of its notoriety when Jody came into the picture. So I also wanted to know how that happened and what the dynamics like that were, as well as a lot of the same questions you had, John. I think for me, I was very curious about the belief system. There was clearly a belief system in the back of all of this, right? There was storage, there was prepping. And as someone that's delved deep into the, someone that's dealt deep into the extreme belief stemming from the LDS faith, the ones that seem to be growing, it's sort of like,

my hyper focus in something we've covered a lot in all of the crimes and cases we've covered, I think I was really interested to learn more about Jody and Ruby's belief system and what exactly they were believing about demons, about prepping, about the apocalypse. And I think that Sherry did shine light on that as well. Absolutely. Yeah, very good. Mindy, any final anticipatory things? I was just curious to hear just how this story evolved. And to be frank, No pun intended. At the outset and on paper, I probably saw myself a little bit in Ruby. You know, I had the kind of classic Mormon upbringing, married young.

I had six children myself. And, you know, my parenting style, I'm, you know, I'm proud that it's not like rubies. And I learned more about that in the book. but so I initially related to Ruby and her the model of her life that she had developed with these children and having them young. And so I was curious to see how it could all go so bad and so wrong. And I just was, you know, grateful for Sherry for telling the story of how, you know, the problems started right away in her childhood.

But of course, when Jody comes on the scene, everything escalates. Yeah. Well, let's, should we dive in? Let's dive in. All right, so let's dive in. So the first section that I have to talk about is just kind of like Ruby and Kevin's, you know, formation of their relationship and kind of the early family life. And we're just going to go through kind of in different periods and just give everyone a chance to share their comments.

So let's start with kind of. Ruby's, Ruby and Kevin before they started having kids. Anything surprising or interesting there that y'all want to mention? I'm always interested in the family of origin. I mean, we are on Hidden 2 crime, actually. John is always like, we need to learn about the family of origin. That would probably be actually another thing that was interesting to me. How was Ruby herself raised?

At what point did this idea of this strict, you know, authoritarian parent model come from? And I think we did learn a little bit more that she also had strict parents herself, that she was raised to be perfect, the oldest daughter of a brood of kids, to be the example, to help raise her siblings, to be the perfect Mormon LDS daughter, and that she wanted more than anything else to be a mother. She wanted to be a mother because that was her role in how, she saw herself to emulate. There was one interesting part, actually, I remember I underlined it,

where Sherry said, and I'm paraphrasing, that her mom essentially wanted more than anything to be a mother, because as she raised, as she helped raise her siblings, she maybe couldn't wait for a time to be able to say, this is how I'm going to do it. And now it's my turn to do it. I'm going to have this control. Let me try to find the exact quote, because it's really interesting, that the reason she wanted to be a mother is she wanted the ability to have control and say, this is how I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it best. Because it is interesting to think of this woman that's now in prison for, you know, abusing her children, wanted children so bad and wanted to be a mother so bad.

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by using code Hidden True Crime at checkout. That's True Diagnostic, T-R-U-D-A-G-N-O-S-T-I-C dot com. Just use code Hidden True Crime to save 20-R-R-E-R-R-R-E-R-R-R-R-R-R-E-R-R-Rine to save 20% off. Plus, if you subscribe, you'll get an additional 20% off. Discover your true age today. Sherry says Ruby's entire self-worth was built on exceptionalism. And I don't know if that's the quote that you're referring to, but that's how she describes her mom's goals of not just having the family, but kind of having the perfect family. So. And I can't help but, but think about the church when I think about exceptionalism because obviously the way the Mormon church rebranded in the

20th century. It was all about families. It was Donnie Marie Osmond. It was those, those commercials, those Mormon commercials that was like family. Isn't it about time? And so, and just the traditional gender roles, like stay at home mom, like Mormon moms, that's their main goal in life is to be great moms, right? And so, but then also the Mormon church claims to be the one true church, you know. And so, all of that exceptionalism feels kind of Mormonish to me. It's a lot of pressure, but it felt very Mormon, you know? Yeah.

What did you all make of, so, so Sherry and Kevin both go to Utah State University. I'm an Aggie, so go Aggies. Ruby, Ruby and Kevin. Sorry, I'm going to keep doing that. So thank you for correcting me. So Ruby and Kevin both go to Utah State University. And there's this scene where they're courting and they're holding hands under a blanket. And Ruby is holding Kevin's hand, but she's also holding the hand of another boy on the other side.

Now, that offends my ego sensitivities. But is that a big deal or is that not a big deal? You know, I was going to mention the same exact story because I think it's a big deal. But I can also see how somebody like Ruby growing up, you know, in this sort of Mormon exceptionalism, as we're talking about here, trying to find a husband. When finding a husband is the ultimate goal. And that's what she's focused on more than anything else. She seems like a person who wants to keep her options open, you know. And I don't think it's that unusual looking back at my own, you know, adolescence, thinking about.

sort of the dating scene in Mormon culture was very different from the dating scene, I think, outside of Utah, because I listened to my cousins, you know, on my mom's side who all lived in Utah, talking about, you know, going on dates with multiple people. And where I was growing up in Connecticut, that was not a thing that was done. It was like you were dating one person, and that one person was who you're going to go out with. You don't go out with somebody on Friday and then somebody else on Tuesday and then someone else the next Friday. That was really seen as kind of playing the field. But I think my Mormon cousins talking about their dating experience, that was absolutely what they did. So I don't know, maybe you guys can help me understand that better.

I mean, yeah, I put her age into context to 18. It is odd. But to put another perspective, and of course, maybe this isn't Ruby though, because she definitely has some narcissism that Sherry talks about in the book. But I think that being an LDS woman who dated for many years, it's very hard to learn how to reject men too, because we are taught to please and to make them feel good and to make sure we don't hurt their feelings. And so I remember, you know, myself at one point in my life having two guys like me and we're in the screen group and they're both and feeling like this anxiety. I probably doubt that that's what Sherry was. sorry, I'm going to do it too, John, that Ruby was thinking, but just to give that perspective, that it can be hard to, if it's happening and you don't know how to say no. But it's also, I just also thought it was just very BYU, right? It was just very, or they weren't in BYU, it was Utah State, but it was very, I guess, young LDS dating.

She was 18, right? Yeah. But dating in Utah, kind of going to what you were saying, Megan, about dating one person. It was highly encouraged in my upbringing in the 80s in Utah to not steady date because then you're going to get in trouble with the law of chastity. And so it was very encouraged to maybe have dates in between. I had friends. I didn't have this role myself, but I had cousins and friends who couldn't go on a date with the same person until they had seen somebody else in between. Just I think to prevent steady dating pre-colle.

times. And then I find it so interesting that she goes to Utah State and she is on a mission. And Sherry says in the book that she has a color-coded vision board of the requirements that she's looking for in a husband and very specific height and occupation and car paid off and handsome. And it was funny because Kevin checks all the boxes and and, but I also thought that the handholding story was interesting. I think she's keeping her options open and and he's, poor Kevin. He's like tenderly talking about how nice it is to feel Ruby's hand as they're holding hands. And then he realizes that she's holding hands with another guy on the other side. It just felt so Mormon and just like so innocent.

Like he's 22 and she's 18 and it just feels very innocent. But then they go on to a very quick engagement, two weeks till engagement and three months to marriage, which probably sounds crazy, you know, to people outside of the church. But if you've been following Mormonism, that's actually. actually not super uncommon for a quick engagement in marriage. That was pretty crazy to read, though. I was like, wow. Yeah, pretty typical Mormon to be engaged within a few weeks to a month or two and married

within three to four months. Right. And I think it's to prevent law of chastity issues, as they call them. You know, it's to prevent young couples from having sex too soon before they're married. I think a lot of people do that quick engagement, quick marriage thing, because they want to make sure that they get to the temple because that's the ultimate goal. And if they have sex before they're married, they can't go to the temple or they have to wait a year before they can go to the temple. And that's embarrassing. It's shameful for families. It's shameful for the couple.

And so to avoid all that shame and embarrassment, we just get married really quickly. And probably a lot of times get into relationships where we don't know our partner well enough because it was such a quick whirlwind kind of thing. Now that I think about it, let's turn to two- This is a quote that I'm sure all of you wanted to read from the book. And normally I wouldn't jump to a quote at the very end of the book. But I think this is a really useful time to bring it up. And I think y'all will all know what quote I'm talking about. Let me just set it up, though.

If you think about it, so here's a question. Was Ruby in some ways set up at a disadvantage by traditional Mormon gender role? And here's what I mean. She wouldn't have been allowed to date seriously in high school. She would have been allowed, let's just say that there is some sexual ambiguity in terms of her sexual orientation. She would have never had a chance to explore that, right? She would have never even been able to have normal dating practices in high school because in Utah, Mormons are discouraged from dating.

So then she's at college. And then as I understand, BYU and Utah State and other places to be, it's like this meat market where you're an 18-year-old young woman and you're trying to get the hot return missionary guy before some other girl snatches him. And you've got your checklist that you've been filling out of the perfect Mormon boy in young women's for like six or eight years prior. So you've got that checklist locked and loaded. You get there and you're on the hunt to nab your return missionary before someone else nabs it because that's the whole reason you're in college. You're not in college to build a career, you're in college to find your boy, right? And so I could see her

not only jumping into a marriage way too fast, which we've already talked about, but just literally wanting to like feeling the pressure, hurrying it married, but also wanting to keep as many options open until you can pull the trigger. Because what if Kevin were to dump her? Then at least she would have some backup. So that's my best attempt at a charitable interpretation of a story you've probably already spent too much time on. But how would, can you all resonate with that at all? I put more charity on Kevin in this situation that he was maybe, you know, he could have had some more time himself.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, it's super short for Kevin as well, you know, but he's a return missionary. And so he's under a lot of pressure to get married right away as well, because that is literally something that the prophets and apostles have talked about from the pulpit, that once you get home from your mission, you should. shouldn't be waiting too long before you find a spouse, take her to the temple, and, you know,

start a family. That's, that's the goal. Yeah. Well, Mindy, why don't we have you read that quote on, uh, I'm going to, 291? Yeah, do you know the quote I'm talking about, right? Sometimes I find myself. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Yep. That whole paragraph. Yeah. Sometimes I find myself tumbling down the rabbit hole of what ifs. What ifs? What if Ruby hadn't felt like. motherhood was the only path to fulfillment. What if she'd been encouraged to explore all facets of herself beyond what her family told her was right for someone born a woman? Maybe if she'd had the chance to pour herself into a high-powered career in banking or physics, fields where empathy isn't exactly a priority, she wouldn't have seen her kids as employees and extensions of herself,

or maybe she wouldn't have had kids at all. It's impossible to know. Do you all resonate with them? Yeah, absolutely. Totally. There have been so many. many times since I left the church that I have wondered about what my life would have looked like if I hadn't been under so much pressure to get married and have kids. And I love, of course, I love all six of my children. I love being a mother. But I also mourn for the things that I couldn't give them because there were so many of them. And I think one of the main things that I look back on as a mom and think my kids were deprived of was one-on-one time with me. Very rarely did my kids get the chance to tell me how they were really feeling about a situation or have an in-depth conversation

about something. It was like, okay, let's quickly talk about this in the car on the way to practice because I have 16 other things I have to do in the next half hour. And I just don't, I look at, you know, large families and I think that's the biggest detriment is that one-on-one time with the trusted adult in your life is so pivotal and important that, you know, I wish that I would have had maybe somebody older, wiser talk to me about the spacing of my children and the size of my family in that way, in the way of like, what can you provide for your children if you only have a few rather than having a ton? Because the only messaging I was getting was when is the next baby coming?

It was like, you're going to be a lot more acceptable if you have more kids in Mormonism. because you're bringing spirit children into a true and righteous household, and you don't want those spirit children to go somewhere else where they're not going to get to non-Mormon, where they're not going to get light and truth. All right. Anything else, Lauren? I'm listening. I've actually talked to Megan and Mindy both about this because my life, as an LDS person,

actually took a different turn. I mean, I didn't get married, and I'm a mother to one. But so I've actually specifically said this to Minnie. that I in many ways imagine my life being like yours, getting married and having like six kids. And so in many ways I wanted your life. And so I think it's just one of those, I think it's also just, I think simply a life question, like the what ifs, you know, what if I had found someone younger? What if, you know, I think that I became a journalist and I did have a career because I was single. And I don't, you know, no, I don't know any other way. That's what happened.

but I think I did want the LDS fantasy, if I'm going to be honest. I did, and sometimes actually, I'm going to be honest, sometimes I still mourn it. I didn't have it, you know, I didn't have the option to have it. So I wanted six kids and I cherish my one. So I actually listened to this, but I also think that's just like a simple life question. And I did love that part of the book too because thank you for reading it because I think that's like the ultimate question about life. What if we had all been taught something different or what if something in life went a different way, where would we all be now?

You know, so I think it is an interesting question, and certainly Ruby knew what she want. And I think the entire theme of this book is Ruby knowing what she wants and getting it. So she was raised to get married young and to have kids and be the best mom, and she was going to get it no matter what. Beautiful. Thanks for being vulnerable, all of you. Let's talk about the personality dynamics in the Frankie household and specifically, you know, Ruby's emotional profile as a mom. If it's okay. And y'all jump in with anything you want to talk about. But the next place I was going to go was to page 10 where Sherry describes how much room there was for people's feelings.

Megan, do you mind starting at a yes, ironically, and just read for a couple of those paragraphs? Sure. I just want to rewind one paragraph before that and just say, Sherry writes, Ruby didn't believe in comforting me when I was a baby, not in the way most parents do. Why would she? Her family's philosophy had always been that it doesn't hurt a baby to cry things out, you know, and then just skip. Yet ironically, my earliest memories are of Ruby crying. She had tears for every occasion. Joy, sorrow, boredom, it didn't matter. Ruby wept through it all. A woman perpetually at all. A woman perpetually at all. with her own equilibrium. Perhaps that's why she wanted so many children.

A set of Russian nesting dolls, each one slightly smaller version of the last, who absorb the tsunami of her raging emotions. And then the part that I really underlined and that resonated with me was just at the bottom of the next paragraph where she says, even before I could form words or thoughts, I was learning that my pain didn't matter, that my needs were inconvenient. it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a point where she says the only person that was allowed to have feelings was Ruby in the family. Yeah. Yes, she had the feelings. I just think in general, the way

I keep explaining it is it was a very authoritarian child rearing. The emotions weren't okay. And she wanted a little army. You know, not only was she the only one to have feelings, I've got to pull this quote up, and I'm jumping ahead. I'm sorry, Mindy, because you have this organized. Oh, no. And I want to go through that. But this was interesting, too. It says, Ruby, too, had her favorite Harry Potter moment, though hers came from Harry Potter and the half-led Prince, a scene where Dumbledore challenged about performing restricted magic within Hogwarts, simply responded, quote, being me has its privileges, end quote. Ruby would quote this line often with a glimmer in her eye.

The idea of being above the rules clearly resonated with my mother. Is that Dolores Umbridge? Is that the name or who's the character? Dumbledore. No, it's Dumbledore. Oh. And he's saying, you know, he's doing some magic that's not allowed. Okay.

And he says, being me, because he's the headmaster. Sherry, Sherry mentioned that I think Ruby reminds her of Dolores Umbridge. She resonated with the Dolores Umbridge character because of the strict and the my way or the highway. Yes, umbrage, I'll just read that because I have it here. Umbridge that I enjoyed most, Sherry is saying,

uh, for some reason, the tyrannical, power hungry, condescending, sanctimonious sadist who ultimately faces, uh,

her comeuppance. That's who Sherry resonated with. But Ruby had her favorite Harry Potter moment. And hers came from this moment when Dumbledore states, being me has its privileges. In other words, Ruby would quote that line often because the idea of being above the rules resonated with her mother.

I think that it kind of explains her parenting thoughts. I'm in charge. I'm in control. I am the only one with emotions. You guys can't have them, but I'm above the law. That was like a really important moment for me to understand what's going on in that house. Why is there so much hypocrisy and self-righteousness? Well, there you go. She really believed. leaves that she has these privileges her children, though. Yeah. What did you all think about, you know, this question of was there abuse before Jody enters the picture? There's kind of of the piano lessons, but there's clearly, do you know, what was said there?

Yeah. Well, just before we jump to, to piano lessons and to physical abuse, I want to talk about the concept of childhood emotional neglect because that is abusive. And I don't know how many people are aware. There's a Dr. Joni's Webb who writes a book called Running on Empty. And it's about the concept of childhood emotional neglect and how that environment of not being able to feel emotions or having your emotions stifled by a parent where it's not safe for you to feel things. It turns into a specific amount of behaviors or types of behaviors as an adult where you, feel really empty, where you're not able to name your emotions or process them properly. And I just, I underlined this part of the same chapter.

This is on page 11. It says, the Sherry writes, I can't help but feel sadness for the baby girl who cried for her mother, who wanted a different kind of love than the kind she received, a love that allows for vulnerability, for tears, for the full range of human emotion, a love that allows a child the freedom to feel. and I think it's so important to point out. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet,

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and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one. one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. That when we don't allow children to healthy, express their emotions in healthy ways, they learn to stifle them and it's going to come out sideways at some point. So just to say that part of the abusive environment in the Frankie household was Ruby not allowing her kids to to have emotions or to share them authentically.

And I think that is a staple, though, of the Frankie household, what Megan just said from the very beginning, not being held as much, crying out. That's sort of, though, the parenting philosophy, I would say, with the Griffiths. I think that's what we learn with the family of origin. I think the documentary, what's it? Amazon documentary, shiny happy people. where they talk about blanket training. Well, Ruby's sister Bonnie shares blanket training on her YouTube channel.

I think that, so I'm saying before Jody comes along, there's already a foundation set that this is, that the, this is how you raise children. You raise them to say, I'm in charge to, as you say, stifle the emotion, to get complete obedience from the children. And Sherry states that there's not just emotional abuse. This is clearly emotional. And Sherry states that she longs for and mourns this little baby that wasn't held enough that she was.

But also we hear about physical abuse too, the slapping of the hands or of the mouth or tugging the ear. Tugging the ear. There is also this physical abuse, nothing that would send them to the hospital that she states. Nothing that would show mark. Yeah. That was show mark. What did she had? She described it really well.

It's on page 14. where she talks about the abuse. Yeah, I can read it if you. Oh, she calibrated. I think she uses the word somewhere that she calibrated her physical abuse to where it would be enough to instill fear in her children, but not enough to show marks. Which works. At least on her. Absolutely.

And so there's this fear she doesn't want her mother touching her. And she, she, so I just think that this is, again, this sort of authoritarian looking for complete obedience from sort of this army of children. And also this tough love where, you know, I think I remember her talking about Ruby making the kids run laps or do pushups. That stuff didn't come from Jody. That was going on early on. Yes, that was before Jody. And also kind of breaking the kids down to break them back up. We should probably share the pajamas story.

Is someone want to tell the pajamas story? Do you guys remember that? Where she has the baby and her mom gives her the set of pajamas. Yeah, yeah. I think this is an important theme. that comes up often in the book where Ruby is planting seeds of motherhood in Sherry very, very early. And she points out little things about her appearance that will make her appealing to a future husband. Or, you know, she talks, you know, Sherry has anxiety and develops this habit of biting on her lip.

And her mom says something like, no husband is ever going to want you with disgusting scars on your lip. But Sherry very, very early realizes that she has this disconnect with her mom. And it was after one of the babies is born. It's in page 18 and 19. It's how chapter four kind of begins. Go ahead, Monique. Yes. So it's after baby number four is born.

And Ruby's mother gives her a set of silk pajamas. and Sherry witnesses this intimate little moment where the grandmother gives the pajamas to Ruby. And Sherry says, when I get older, can I have silk pajamas like you? And Ruby responds with, when you have a baby, that's when we can be friends. And so I think she's sending a message to Sherry that. I'm your drill sergeant. I'm your drill sergeant until you're a mother and you have your own baby. And that's when we can be equals.

That's when we can be friends. That's when you can get all of the love from me that you're craving. And so she sends, and this is when Sherry is six years old is when her mom says that to her. You mentioned the Griffiths, Lauren. I caught this. I don't know if y'all caught this, but at the very end, Sherry says one of the things I'm most proud of is I'm breaking the multi-generational cycle of abuse, which implies that the abuse predated Sherry. and possibly Kevin. Correct.

And I think that's a, that's... Ruby, I keep saying, Sherry. I know. Me too. The abuse traded in Ruby. Absolutely. Okay, keep going. Absolutely.

No, I was going to say, yeah, I agree with that. And I think that's why I think I keep going back to this family of origin. I think it's really important to point out that there's a theme into, and yes, this sets a foundation before Jody comes in play. I mean, I'm jumping ahead, but as we've stated on our channel, that Jody didn't, teach Ruby how to abuse. She gave her permission. So there's something already there, the way she sees her children, the way she's raising her family, the way she is abusing or this tough love, you know, and clearly I think that there's a point where the Griffith family is raised

to sort of parent in this authoritarian way to want strict obedience from the children. And that's, I think, the multi-generational thing that Sherry is probably attempting to break. And that is the foundation of all of this. So she's almost primed for what's going to happen in the future. And so, yeah, like Ruby is doing this. You know, she's doing this. Jumping ahead just along that line in chapter 17, Sherry says, connections or Jody Hildebrandt reinforced what Ruby had been doing all along. it gave her a manual to refine her tactics. Right. So I think that it was, she was ripe.

She was ripe for the teachings of Jody Hildebrand because she'd already been kind of laying those foundations for all of those years. They had the same worldview already. Sure. So it worked. Right. So Jody found Ruby. And unfortunately, they already had the same worldview about children.

Thus, she was primed and ready for what she was about to teach and willing. Yep. Let me check in with you all about one of the things. I know we're spending some time on a lot of time on this early part, but again, like you said, Lauren, sometimes the why is kind of the most important thing. So I want to check in with you all on something. So I remember growing up having very close family members,

let's just say aunts or uncles or even my parents, how cliche is it that in any given Mormon ward, there's like this perfect couple that looks perfect. The mom is perfectly dressed and makeup and hair. the dad's a businessman in the business suit. They appear wealthy. They appear like the perfect family. All the kids are sitting in a neat little row. And then you find out like, I was going to say dad's in prison or like they get divorced or there's abuse and it just blows up. And this happened in my family with close family members. It happened. My parents got divorced after 25 years

of marriage. And as a kid, I was always going, why are these apparently beautiful Mormon families It's just exploding in complete chaos. And what I felt, even as a kid, is there's this so much pressure to look perfect and then to hide what's really going on and to always put your best foot forward. And that's clearly what Ruby ends up doing with eight passengers. But I do think, tell me if you all think I'm wrong, that is a Mormon trait. And Ruby, Sherry writes about it on page 13. She basically is talking about her mom's food blogging.

And she says, Good looking home cooking. What's that? Good looking home cooking was the first blog. Yeah. And she says, the truth is, I'm not sure she ever made those dishes, meaning the one she blogged about. Sure, Ruby was always baking something,

but most of the recipes on good looking home cooking were aspirational rather than realistic. Part of an image that of the smiling flower-smudged mama, the gaggle of cherubs gathered around the table. Even at this early stage of her online career, Ruby was showing her willingness to sacrifice authenticity on the altar of appearances. My question to y'all in your experiences is, is that a Mormon cultural trait? I'd say it's Mormon. I'd say it's evangelical too. Again, this goes back to also shiny, happy people as a great example.

high demand religions. High demand religions. That's good that. Yeah. And Mormonism too, yes. But I just keep going back to this. I actually said to my husband once, a psychologist who couldn't believe how many kids the Duggers had and nobody really

can, right? That's why they're a TLC family. But I said, look, you know, if anybody's going to have a lot of kids, it's them because she's so sweet. Look at her. She just raises these good kids and she's there and she's this full-time mom. And then shiny, happy people comes out to go to your point, John. And we learned that there's this strict obedience and this tough love.

going on in that house too, going to your point of like how things look perfect. And I don't even think it's the desire to look perfect. It's the desire to be perfect. I want to take that a step further. It's not look. It's to be. They're not saying we want to look, even though it's chaos behind closed doors. It's no, we're going to be perfect. I'm going to raise you with strict obedience even in our home. This is, again, this sort of parenting style. We're going to get rid of the warmth and the emotion. And all I want, again, are these soldiers. So yes, it's, is, I would say, a high-demand religion issue. It's, yeah, it's concerning, in my opinion. Yeah. And it's also, I think part of it is just the cultural shame for sin, you know, and for

things not being perfect. Because I think in Mormonism, and also, like you're saying, Lauren, high-demand evangelical in that world, there's a correlation that gets made between sin, and things just going wrong in your life. It's like if you are doing everything right, if you are praying hard enough, if you are keeping all the rules and following all the commandments, then God would reward you. And so when something bad happens,

it's because you've done something wrong to deserve that. So we want to keep all of our, you know, warts hidden because otherwise there's a lot of shame and judgment in the culture that like, oh, if you have a child go astray, you must have done something wrong as a parent. You know, if you lose a job or if your kid has to go to rehab or anything like that, it's an indication of your righteousness.

And because there's all of that shame and judgment in the church, I think that's the reason why there's so much, you know, of this veneer, of the cover-up, of the inauthenticity, because it's really not safe in the culture to have normal human mistakes happen. You know, it's kind of silly even saying it out loud. But for kids to misbehave in church, I mean, for me, for my parents, that was like the ultimate, you know, you were going to really be in trouble if you misbehaved in church. And a lot of the times when I was younger, I remember my parents would not necessarily ever compliment our grades or our musical accomplishments or anything like that. But if somebody at church commented on how well-behaved, their children were, they talked about it for weeks. And that was just about the main part of the validation that we and my family that we ever got as kids was like, oh, so-and-so said you guys were so well-behaved in church. And we loved your talk and those kinds of things. That's

what we got rewarded for. I think it's important to note as well that for these women like Ruby, and I can speak from my own experience, let's stay-at-home moms, how your family looks, Like that is where your purpose lies and not just how they look, but how they act. And it's the product of your hard work is what people can see. And so, yeah, I think that it's a trap that you fall into maybe as a stay-at-home parent because it's what you have to show for all the hard work that you're doing. You're like, if my family looks put together and nice, then maybe that's validation for me that I'm doing something right.

And so I found it interesting too, along these same lines that, oh, shoot, I kind of lost my train of thought. But yeah, it's just as a stay-at-home parent. And with all the children, it's a balance because, you know, I think it's easy to look at the kind of authoritarian and dictator style, which clearly is not healthy.

But when you have all these, I think they said by the time Ruby was 30, she had her six kids by the time she was 30, plus she'd had some miscarriages in there. That's a lot to go through, you know, by the time you're 30, and, you know, there has to be some sort of order and balance. But, you know, so just finding that in a loving and accepting an emotionally available way is, I think, where she was missing the mark. Yeah, and I think that because of how we're taught from a,

very young age in Mormonism that our highest calling is that of wife and mother. And also, the prophets literally tell us that our kids will be better off and everything will be better if we stay at home with our kids and we don't pursue a career. So there's a lot of pressure to do that. And not everyone can. And that's why when we're saying at the end of the book, you know, when Sherry questions, you know, I wonder what it would have been like if Ruby would have waited to have kids, maybe she would have learned more about how to deal with children and how to parent more responsibly. And it resonates with me too because when I first started having kids, I was super young. My first child was born when I was 20 years old. And I began my parenting career, parenting the way I

was parented. And I think a lot of us do that because we don't really know another way to do. And the way that I was parented was with a lot of manipulation and a lot of control and a lot of shame just the way that's happening in this book. I was shocked at how similar are, you know, it was. And so when I started having kids, I started doing the same types of things. And when my oldest daughter was about seven, I just had this realization that I was creating children who were going to fear me, the way that I feared my parents, not love me. And I decided I wanted to do things differently. And that was when I really started changing a lot of the things that I was doing as a parent and sort of breaking away from Mormonism, honestly, even at that young stage, because I didn't want to control my kids. I wanted to love them. You know, but I just think when we're in that culture, you're sort of predisposed to that. And certain personality types like rubies are going to take that to the extreme, unfortunately. And I think that's why we see Mormon families blow up so often. Yeah, and then you add to that the influence of social media and trying to be a YouTube channel and trying, you know, and then even add to that potentially your missionary zeal for Mormonism and wanting to portray the church right.

So maybe that's the next place we can go. Margie highlighted a quote at the bottom of page 43. I don't know if you, do you have your book, Lauren? is that even on there? I only have screenshots of the book. I tried to log in. Oh, maybe you can share her book with you. Yeah, you can share me.

Let's read a little bit. Lauren, if you don't mind, let's read starting with the final paragraph at the end of 43, where it says in many ways. Okay. And then just stop when you feel like, you know, the point's been made sufficiently. But this is about missionary zeal and and vlogging and the ethics of vlogging and Mormon vlogging, really. In many ways, family vlogging is a very LDS-aligned pursuit, a natural extension of our traditional, our traditional practices.

Vlogging offers a modern form of bearing testimony and keeping personal and family records while simultaneously engaging in passive missionary work. Vlog means church members can share their faith, values, and daily lives with a global audience, potentially attracting interest in the church and its teachings. In a way, the synergy between YouTube and LDS families seems almost predestined, fitting perfectly with the church's desire to be, quote, in the world but not of the world, and quote, allowing members to engage with modern culture while maintaining our distinct values and beliefs. Do you want me to keep going? I couldn't agree more with this. I mean, this next paragraph is kind of important. Yeah, keep going, yeah. Perhaps that's why Utah and the broader LDS community have become such powerhouses in

the realms of family vlogging and traditional lifestyle content creation. Some of the earliest and most successful family vlogging channels have come from our communities, documenting life with multiple children showcasing the appeal of family life to a mainstream audience while demonstrating how modern media can be harnessed to share testimonies and values in a reliable, engaging, relatable, engaging way. Yeah, like Mormon family vlogging is a global phenomenon. And it's even ironic, this book's coming out in 2025, but I think some New York Times level journalist declared 24 the year of the Mormon housewife because of not just secret woman housewives, but also the traddwise phenomenon.

Ballerina farms. It's not going away. What do you all think about that? Mormonism and vlogging. Well, I specifically, I agree to, and you're fine. I specifically remember a conference talk, a general conference talk, when we, we as women, were encouraged to get out there in the universe and blog about our righteous lives. I remember that encouragement.

And my sister and I were like, oh, wow, we should start a blog. And we did. We started a parenting blog. It quickly went south because the title of it was God is the only perfect parent. And I did about three blogs and I went, I can't write this. Yeah. Any other thoughts on why Mormonism leads the world in family vlogging? I don't, I couldn't.

And if it's a good or a bad thing? I couldn't agree with this more. I also resonated with Sherry discussing her journaling growing up. I was so into journaling. I think beyond just showcasing and missionary work, I think it goes into ancestor worship and how we are supposed to be leaving, you know, our history for the next generation. And I think that, I think there's also like, I think for me, there was a bit of a pan. that if I didn't leave journals or if I didn't leave my history, then then nobody will know, you know, what it was like or no one will know me. I remember feeling a panic in Sunday school

where they, they, this was a, this was, I missed a lot of like the horrible Sunday school lessons that I heard, but here's one. It was about journaling. And I don't know if I was in young women's or the end of primary. I was, I feel like I was like an early teen though. And they gave a story about journaling and recording, and this was before social media, and they gave a story of a little girl who was about to go into young women's, and her mom said, hey, how about this? I'll go get my journal, so I can relate it to you about what it was like when I went into young women's, and the little girl goes, yeah, I would love that. And then the mom said, but guess what? I didn't keep a journal. So I can't let you know what it was like. I have about 60 journals from growing up. And I'll tell you, one of the most traumatizing things is reading your journals from junior high. I want to burn them. I wish no one ever told me to keep those journals.

I don't want to know it's in those journals. And scrapbooks, too. I did that. But I think it also, I think it's a bit of a Venn diagram. It's, oh, look. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. Now you can be a missionary with your journals. So it's this double-edged sword. You can be a missionary with your journals. but there's also this idea of you're leaving a legacy for your children and your children's children

and you want them to then see, well, I want them to see what a happy family we are. So I think that that's a little bit of it too. I just want to throw that in is there's not just we can be a missionary, but the whole journaling and recording your history starts with this idea that we're going to remember our past ancestors from their journals. We're never going to forget them and no one's ever going to forget us. And we're going to pass this on to the next generation. Yeah.

Yeah, and I thought, you know, there were points, you know, one of my biggest concerned with this book is just thinking, how much can we believe of her as a reliable narrator? But for me, one of the fantastic things about the book is she reads from her journal. She reads actual passages of conversations she had with her therapist, conversations she had with her dad, reactions to an exchange with Ruby. She's reading from her diary and quoting from her diary, what a fantastic. resource. That's true. Sherry, grateful you kept those journal entries. So there's a great example of like, thank you, Sherry for keeping a journal.

We don't need Ruby's journal so much, but yeah, that was dark. And at that time for Sherry, I think that her starting that journal was crucial in her. I think she was around 11. Is it 11? Or I can't remember what age.

But around the time that that eight passengers is launched is when starts writing and I was really happy for her that she had that outlet where she could just whatever the motivations were, I was grateful for her that she could have that outlet. And she'd say things like, my mom's being a shit today. And like I was like, good for you, Sherry. You know, like pushing back and she really was able to start, you know, expressing herself in a safe place for her that she hadn't had. So I'm really grateful that Sherry kept those journals. It was,

and I think it showed that from an early age, she's a really good, writer and she's a deep thinker and was able to express those feelings in a pretty eloquent way. Heartbreaking when she writes in her journal. I don't think my mom loves me. I don't think my mom loves me. That was so sad. Yeah. Let me read a quote from from Zachary's mama. Zachary's mama writes, it's comment from our live stream. She writes, curiously, not being brought up Mormon, I recognize a lot of these parenting behaviors in my own life and lives of others growing up. The parental picture today is very different than generations past. So that's true.

You know, if you read the works of like Jonathan Haidt these days, this idea of helicopter parenting of over-nurturing your kids, it almost reflects a little bit of the sentiment you were talking about, Lauren, that like there's another angle, which is have, you know, when modern times have parents swung too far to nurturing, and are they over-nurturing their kids? So with parenting, sometimes you're almost damned if you do and damn if you don't. Hey, if it's one or the other, over-nurture, everyone.

Over-nurture. Versus abuse? Yeah, I think I agree. If it's about tough love or over-nurture, I just say swing to the over-nurture. All right, well, again, y'all jump in any time. I've got this list, but the next thing that Margie flagged for was this notion of consent and the ethics of family vlogging. And I know that Sherry recently, I think, presented to the Utah legislature her thoughts.

But before we jump to that, let's jump to page 53. And Mindy, maybe you could read. It's a paragraph that starts mid-page. But it's basically Sherry reflecting on consent. is child consent in family video YouTubeing and blogging even possible? So do you want to read that paragraph? Okay, tell me where you want to start.

Start with what are the lasting repercussions? And this is just timeline-wise, this is shortly after the eight passengers has been launched, I believe. Okay. What are the lasting repercussions of growing up on camera without any say in the matter? How does that constant exposure

shape a child's sense of self, their future relationships, their very understanding of privacy, and what does consent really look like when you're a child? Too afraid to say no. Personally, I mourn those precious formative years spent in service to someone else's vision. Ruby might claim her kids were always on board, but the truth is we never really had a choice in the matter. What do you all want to say about just this culture of family vlogging,

of always having what she called those janky cameras in their faces at every moment? Well, let's just talk about, let's just take what Megan just said about how the LDS Church pushed this, you know, go be a missionary. Now fast forward to Sherry Frankie speaking about what that was like for her growing up to the Utah legislature and saying, this is terrible. It's almost like it was a social experiment, and here we are. So let's just talk about that. Like, here we are. And this is, this is the outcome of this social experiment. And I think that she also plays into how her family made a lot of money.

She admits that they went from really trying to get by with so many kids and being young to buying a new car and having all of these things and being able to do tax rideoffs on. And the brand deals. Brand deals. Swag and all expense. Paid vacations. And that it was fun and that it was exciting. But the payoff is so tragic.

And I think I also want to put in that like these LDS women that are doing this are taught to stay. home, right? They're taught to stay home and to be a homemaker, yet they're smart and they're brilliant and they're visionaries and they want to do something more. And they can put this out there and make money for their families. And I just, I just can't, I got to go back to this moment of like, hey, do this, you know, decades later and hear Sherry Frankie saying and speaking up at the Utah legislature saying, this is horrible. I didn't have the ability to say no. But it's so much pressure for a kid because the parents are saying,

we got to set a good example for the church. The church wants us to project a good image. So it's for Jesus. It's for God. But also it's our livelihood. And we're not going to be able to make ends meet. And also millions of people are watching. How does a kid say no to that?

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And I think we discussed a little bit beforehand. And we watched, or some of us watched the reaction from Sherry's aunt, who is also a vlogger, a family vlogger. Bonnie? Bonnie.

Yeah. And she was very adamant that they have discussions as a family about this. And when Sherry's book came out, they revisited it. And they said, you know, should we still be doing this? Is this still okay? And she insists that her kids are on board. But how can you actually know that when the pressure is so high? you're asking eight, 10, 12-year-old kids to go against their family, their parents, and to give up money.

And what do most eight-to-15-year-old kids want? They want the latest video game. They want the latest sneakers. They want stuff that money, you know, can buy, right? And so if you have this channel that's making a ton of money and you know that if it goes away, that means fewer video games, fewer vacations, you know, not as cool cars. All of that stuff goes away. And for a child to be able to understand that, I don't think that they have the emotional capability at that age, at that developmental age, to make those kinds of choices. So for me, personally, the answer is kids can't consent. They can't consent to family vlogging because they have no idea what the repercussions are going to be. We've seen the tragedy of child stars for decades. That's nothing new. I've been seen it, like over and over and over again.

Yeah. And the tragedy, you know, and what comes from that, it's even more than like, imagine saying to a child, you are the breadwinner. You are our family's breadwinner. Yeah. The pressure from that. Like, and if you don't do this, we're going to have to go back to work. And this is going to be hard on the family.

And if you don't perform, the family doesn't make money. I mean, these children are their family's bread? winners now. Like it's, it's, you know, that's a lot. Even before they know it, like there's that, there's the one first video that goes viral, what, where the baby crawls out of the crib? Yeah. What's Mommy doing while the baby's crawling out of the crib, right? Right. Yeah. Sorry. Filming it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no such thing as, uh, as child's consent when it comes to anything sexual and vlogging, right? Yeah. Yeah. And what Sherry said when she was in front of the legislature is there's no such thing as an ethical family vlog for exactly those reasons.

And on the same page, while we're talking about it too, Sherry goes on to say, what about Ruby? If I can just read this little part, what might be the emotional repercussions of her snowballing online success? Yes, Ruby's Drive was bringing in money for her family and validation for her ego. But none of those superficial rewards could fix what was broken inside her, Instead, they seem to fuel a vicious cycle, pushing her to seek more validation, more views, more content, often at the expense of her family. Yeah. Wow. So another theme is kind of Sherry's mental health.

What we see is her starting to have tummy aches, thinking that it's demonic possession, which is kind of a little dark and sad of her feeling sick to. her tummy in her bed, eventually, you know, considering, you know, learning about the term scrupulosity, religious OCD, and perfectionism. And, you know, and clearly, well, I want to say this. When I first saw some sort of video from Sherry, I'm just going to be totally honest. My immediate reaction was, wow, she really seems to have a flat affect, which is a term in, you you know, psychology, meaning not very emotionally expressive, right? And as soon as I read that part of the book where it's like no one was allowed to have feelings but Ruby, then Sherry's development, it could be personality, but it made perfect sense to me that if Sherry

developed maybe with a bit of a flatter affect, maybe that was just survival, right? Yeah. But it's also clear if she was having tummy aches and suicidality, even as a kid, she was internalizing, all this distress from both the conflicts with her mom, but also this family vlogging that was super stressful. What were your reactions about that, kind of how it was impacting her mental health, her personality development? Anything you want to say about that? I mean, it makes complete sense. I don't think how it couldn't. I think it was interesting for her to realize in Google, you know, this is, again, this generation, also growing up with Google,

right? I'm going to find out what's wrong with me. I hear depression. I hear, oh, my gosh, that's me. I realize that I have stomachache. I realize that I'm internalizing stuff and I'm going to go to my parents and I'm going to tell them. And I think the difference between how Ruby react opposed to Kevin is interesting because you do see that maybe Kevin is more empathic and does understand a little bit more about emotion at the beginning maybe when she's younger and then it things changed. So that was a really interesting moment for me to see how Kevin did handle Sherry's emotions at first, opposed to later after Jody jumps into the picture. But I think it makes complete sense.

I don't know how a child wouldn't internalize that. I thought it was also interesting, though, that she learned about scrupiosity from her bishop. She went in to talk to her bishop and kept repeating, and he's the one that brought it up. And he said, you're dealing with this. And then she went and looked it up too. That was interesting. Yeah. I think it would be useful to talk about the eyebrow waxing scene.

Yeah, that is in chapter. Where are we? Before we go there, though, can we talk about the demonic possession? Yes, let's go back to that. Because I can't tell you how many people covering the Lori Valo Debel case as much as you and all of us have done, right? the comment that I get more often than anything else from true believing members of the church is that we don't believe in demonic possession. Mormons don't believe in demons.

Mormons don't believe that. So I just want to read this part, okay? Please, can we put this to rest for just a second? And this is your family's case. Let's remind everyone. This is your family. My family, yes, exactly. But Sherry writes about her nightmares.

She's having all these horrible nightmares. And I think it's important to read the descriptive language. She says as soon as the lights went out, others would appear. She was saying there were things in the dark she was afraid of. She said, grotesque figures straight out of a medieval landscape, demonic entities leering with twisted grins, their contorted faces haunted my sleepless nights, their agonized stories playing out in my dreams. Why might a little girl harbor such tangible fears of demonic possession? I'm sure the deeply religious paradigm I was steeped in played a role. We firmly believe in Satan's power and the ability of his legion of fallen spirits to possess individuals. We believe that evil can inhabit physical forms. And she's saying that as if she believes it now, right? Yes. Well, she's still very much a believer, I think, as far as we know.

I mean, she's LDM. No, no, no, yes. I was going to point out that I believe the part that you're reading, she's five. Yes, she's five. When she's remembering these. I mean, obviously, she wouldn't have. I've probably described it that way as a five-year-old, but looking back, that's how she's describing that. Yes.

Having those experiences at that young age. Yeah. It's terrifying. And she's writing, in present-day language, we firmly believe. Yeah. So still to this day, and she says, we believe that evil can inhabit physical forms, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes for extended periods. Having been raised to believe the very air I breathed was thick with unseen forces battling for dominion over my soul. it was a small step for my young mind to imagine that battle raging in my own bedroom.

Yeah, it's one thing for kids to learn fairy tales or even ghost stories. It's another thing for them to believe that those evil spirits are real and all around them all the time. Yeah. Battling for their soul all the time. It's dark. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up, Megan. Anxiety, religious scrupulosity.

I mean, that's the reason why there are so many of these mental health problems is the beliefs are there. Yeah. A question from one of our viewers, DeHendor O7 asks, and this may jump ahead in the timeline, but we'll take some of these questions as they come. Why haven't the Mormon church excommunicated Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrand yet? You can be excommunicated for being gay or criticizing the church or having a popular podcast, I'll say, but not excommunicated for torturing children make it make sense. So I know this is out of the timeline, but anyone have a response? Do we know? I don't know that we know.

I don't know if we know that Ruby's membership has been. Yeah. I don't know, but we discussed this when, you know, when I was on Mormon Stories first with the Valo case about why Lori hadn't been excommunicated. And the thing is we don't know. But what is interesting to me is that there have been plenty of public excommunications, plenty of them. Yeah.

You know, yours, for example. Sam Young, you know, anybody who's an advocate for change in the church, lots of public ones. But I find it interesting that these criminals, these child abusers, child killers, there's no public denunciation of them or of their actions or of their criminality. Or abusers. Or abusers, exactly. And we only know that Chad Daybell was excommunicated because somebody leaked it, right? Love those leaks.

Love those leaks. Keep the leaks coming. So we don't, I mean, I don't know if any of you know. I guess we don't know if either of them have been excommunicated. But you would think that the church would want to take swift action against someone who's been convicted of a horrific crime like this to say they are no longer allowed to be Mormons. Yeah. To publicly distance from these people. Exactly.

Well, if we say picks or it didn't happen, that's probably what they're saying. It didn't happen. No proof. Yeah. Yeah, I think they are trying to distance themselves. I agree with you. I agree. I'm just like, right, I would be nice to know, but they're just going to put their,

they put their blander on them on any of these things. I want to draw more publicity to an already hot topic that a lot of people are talking about. That casts, they'll love to use the publicity machine if it casts them in a good light. But if anything that's going to cast them in a negative light, it'll try to be clear. It'll always forever upset me that your family's case, they did not speak up when. Tyler and JJ were missing. Yeah. And I wonder, though, too, how...

Well, they did the opposite. They told people not to cooperate with police authorities. They told people not to get involved with the investigation or to testify in court without checking with their attorneys first is really what they said. It's the same thing, though, basically saying it's not okay for you to just get involved, you know. But I wonder, thinking about it, how much of this stuff that they really are aware of, you know, the 50s, who sit in the ivory tower over there. I know that they've got plenty of people giving them information, but I think they're so far removed from the actual real lives of their members

that they maybe don't know how much publicity this stuff is getting and how it affects actual members of the church and how they are talking about it. So I wonder if they just don't know how pervasive in common the reporting is on these types of cases and that people are talking about them. I think there's some truth to that too. I remember talking to someone who, you know, knew one of the apostles. And she said, you know, I don't, I don't even think they're even talking about it.

Maybe they're not talking about it, but there's certainly like PR people, you know, minions, minions down the line that are staying on top of everything, but who knows how much that the top leaders absorb or are informed. That's a good point. But I agree. But it's a poor decision, though. It's a poor decision. As someone that's kind of into PR and like how one should handle a certain situation, I'm always kind of assessing, analyzing as someone that's been in the news in Utah and Idaho, who had to reach out for the LDS Church for comment and kind of understand a little bit about the workings of the PR department.

They miss the mark on addressing these. Well, that's a great point, both of you. And it makes me think that there is some pervasive rule about PR that they don't address these. these types of cases because certainly people are reaching out, reporters are reaching out, asking for commentary. Absolutely. But I'm sure there must be some kind of a, you know, just a blanket PR rule in the church that we don't talk about true crime or we don't address the cases of our members becoming

criminals. I don't think it's a rule. I think it's a case-by-case basis. And that's why I think I can say they missed the mark on this one. Certainly not the case for Elizabeth Smart. They let them have every press conference every day on the front lawn of the LDS Church building. So it's a case-by-case basis, and that's why I think I can say they missed the mark on this one.

Yeah, I agree with you totally. I will just point out, though, that Elizabeth Smart didn't do anything wrong. She wasn't the criminal in that case, you know. So whether they would have given PR to someone who is a criminal, you know. Oh, I agree. I think we can all see the differences. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's jump to the eyebrow story on page 70. This is just an example. of how exploitative things got. And so basically, I guess Ruby gets the idea of waxing Sherry's eyebrows and she even bribes her. So basically, you know, starting in like the second or third paragraph, come on, Sherry, this is Ruby. Come on, Sherry, it'll be a great video for the channel.

I'll give you $100. Right. And then, and then Sherry says, okay, you can wax my brows, plopping down in the chair she'd set up in the bright glare of the ringlight. Ruby had a salesperson's gift for making everything seem like an adventure. And $100 in the name of beauty sounded just fine to me. The pain was nothing compared to the horror show I witnessed in the mirror afterward.

Ruby had waxed off half my left eyebrow, leaving a sharp 90-degree angle that made me look like I was perpetually shocked by my own reflection. Who needs symmetry when you can rock the quote, Spock meets surprise squirrel look. I was mortified, but of course, Ruby kept the camera rolling, zooming in on my face like she was documenting a rare species of unibrowed teen in its natural habitat. The money shot, indeed. Sherry, I'm sorry, she exclaimed, her voice quivering with what I'm sure was remorse

and definitely not barely contained glee at striking content. gold. Sure enough, the video titled, Sherry, I'm so sorry, with a thumbnail of me, mid-ugly cry, racked up hundreds of thousands of views. Wonderful, I thought. I always wanted to be famous for my crazy eyebrows. I had to wear huge sunglasses for a few weeks to hide my mother's handiwork, and I don't recall ever seeing that hundred dollars either. Like, isn't it hard enough to be a teenage girl? So hard to be a teenage girl. And I mean, who thinks that that was on purpose? I do. I was going to understand. I totally do. Everyone agreed? Everyone agreed? Pre-meditated? Oh, yeah. For the views. Yep. And yet, did she fake, did Ruby fake being horrified, right?

Yeah, yeah. And she says there's a gleeful undertone, you know. Oh, I'm so sorry about this gleeful undertone. Camera rolling. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And like, I know what it is. to, you know, I have a YouTube channel. You have a YouTube channel, John. I know what it is. So, like, you want something that stands out. We call it, we call it a head and chew crime, you know, clicky, you know, not click bait because click bait is bad, but clicky. You don't want something that, you know, people are going to say, oh, I want to watch this and you want to put your best stuff forward, say this is what you're going to get. And to think that someone might be using children to do that. I think this is a really profound moment of realizing what this is.

When all of a sudden your children are your YouTube channel, what are you, willing to do for that clicky thumbnail. Sherry mentions how she started to learn to recognize her mom's blog voice, where just like the regular stuff when they weren't on camera, her mom would shout or whatever the dynamic was. But then she started to kind of dread when she would hear that blog voice because she's like, here we go. Got to get into performative mode.

And let's see what happens. But yeah, that story. That's a sad story. Yeah. And later when Sherry is testifying in in front of the Utah legislature, she says all she wanted to do was go in her room by herself and cry and grieve alone. But, you know, Ruby kept the cameras rolling. You know, I think it's just a profound look into how that does affect kids. Like kids need to be able to have their private moments, their emotional moments, you know, make their mistakes in private, you know, have a certain amount. of anonymity in an environment where it's safe to fail, you know, so that they develop resilience. And when you learn from such a young age to exploit those private moments, it's got to be really distorting for kids. And I think it's distorting to the rest of us, too, although we probably don't realize it. When we consume that kind of content, I think it changes something in us too, you know, and I don't think that that's good for anybody either. Yeah.

I agree. There have been a few comments online, you know, in Reddit forums and whatnot, where people have some remorse and some guilt for kind of getting so involved in the day-to-day lives of these families and their videos, not realizing that they were kind of contributing to this exploitation and, and yeah. Sherry says several times throughout the book, some sort of iteration of this theme. One that I just came across in my notes.

She said, this is a cautionary tale of what happens when the line between authenticity and performance becomes blurred beyond recognition. I think that's a great description. Thank you. Yeah. Comment from a viewer. Gail Sinatra, thanks, Gail's amazing. She writes,

I'm convinced Ruby has a touch of sadism in her, meaning pleasure from causing. other people pain. Thank you all for your coverage of this saga. Well, it's not just Gail that thinks that. Sherry, Sherry thinks that too. And she, I actually always note that word because it's a big word to use when it comes to crime, you know, of others, a motive, right? You don't just throw that word out in my opinion. And I did note that Sherry used that word several times when discussing her mother. And Jody. Yeah. And Jody. What did y'all make? So there's this part of the book where finally

Sherry is allowed to go to a therapist and at some point she I guess tells the therapist gets up the courage to tell the therapist that she doesn't like playing the piano anymore she wants to stop so the therapist

works with Sherry to get up the courage to bring Ruby in and tell Ruby that she doesn't want to play the piano anymore because it's making her sick and she doesn't like it. And Ruby fakes to the therapist. That sounds great.

Okay, Sherry. No more piano for you. That's fine. And then, lo and behold, a few weeks or months later, Ruby just out of the blue says to Sherry, oh, you know what? I talked to your therapist, and your therapist says you're good.

You don't need to be in therapy anymore. And Sherry's like, I think I still need therapy. And Ruby's like, nope, you're good. You're all done. Your therapist said so. So, I mean, I have a psychology degree. And so what did you all think about that? Oh, yeah.

I think it might even been like the next appointment. It was like the next appointment. It was the very next appointment. It was the very next appointment. I have this part start. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, if you had something, I wanted to hear what you had to say.

But this, I had this dog-eared and written all over because this is a tough one. This is really bad. So what, what Ruby says is, Sherry writes. Instead, Ruby just said, okay, Sherry, you don't have to play piano, and we never have to talk about it again. That was in front of the therapist. And I just, it sucked me right back into being a teenager because those were the kind of things that my mom would do to. She would say one thing in front of the person, but you knew that underneath that was like, uh-oh, I really messed up. This is going to be bad.

By kind of telling family secrets or being authentic or saying you have a need. Well, the intimation was Ruby was the one making Sherry get up at six o'clock in the morning and practice the piano. And Ruby was the one smacking her hands when she made a mistake. And Ruby was the one shaming her for not learning the songs fast enough. And so by Sherry telling her therapist that she didn't like piano, that was calling Ruby out, in Ruby's mind, I'm sure, was calling Ruby out for, you know, being a horrible mother. And who knows what else Sherry is telling this therapist. and now this therapist knows that I'm not the perfect mom.

And if she knows who else, I can just see the wheels of anxiety turning in Ruby's mind that Sherry is telling the family secrets. Like, that's really, really terrible. And so what goes on then is that Ruby gaslights Sherry into believing that the therapist has cleared her at a time when Sherry's having suicidality. She's having religious scrupulosity. She's having huge anxiety that's having a physical. physical effect on her detrimentally. And the exchange that takes place, I just think it's, I would love to just read through this a

little bit. Yeah. It wasn't, she's, Sherry says, it wasn't long ago that I had shared my thoughts of suicide with Ruby. But what Ruby says is great news, sweetheart. I had a chat with Dr. Winters today, and she thinks you're just mine. She doesn't want to waste our money on unnecessary sessions. so you don't need to eat so fast, no therapy today.

Mom, I ventured my voice barely a whisper. She really thinks I'm fine. Yes, Ruby said, her eyes bright with an emotion, I couldn't quite place. You're fine. You're not around Jake, who was the boy that she kissed, and that was a huge problem. There's an obsession with Mormon moms getting their daughters away from boys who they have innocently kissed. You don't have a smartphone. She'd taken away her smartphone, gave her a brick.

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So in Ruby's mind, you're not around Jake. You don't have a smartphone. You're fine. Never mind the fact that she's been mentioning that she's having suicidal ideation. Sherry says, is this because I quit piano mom? Are you mad about how that happened? Is that why I can't do therapy anymore? Not at all.

No more therapy. Doctors orders. Sherry says, it didn't make sense to me. I needed more time. I was making progress, inching towards something I felt like healing. Mom, I'd like to carry on if I can, I said, pushing my bowl away. Ruby's smile faltered for a moment. Listen to me, Sherry.

The doctor thinks you're a very well-adjusted girl with. How do I put it? An active imagination. Wait, she thinks I'm making this up? Ruby says, Mommy's little drama queen is looking for attention. So Ruby intimates that Sherry. she's not suicidal. She doesn't have anxiety or religious scrupulosity. She's just making it up. And Ruby doesn't want Sherry talking to a therapist anymore.

That's sad. And that part made me sad because at first, when she confesses to her parents about her suicidality and some of her anxieties, like Kevin took it seriously. Like Ruby didn't. She pushed it away and she said something kind of flippant like, oh, she just needs to eat eat better and sleep better and she'll be fine and Kevin said Ruby this is serious we need to take this seriously so I think um that was an opportunity for Kevin to put his foot down and we gradually see Kevin just get less and less power and become more of a shell but um yeah that part was heartbreaking for her and it just made me feel sad because the the doctor clearly didn't cancel the therapy and probably was confused as to why they were counseling so abruptly.

Yeah. That's my interpretation anyway. Me too. But how sad for Sherry to have it suggested to her that it's all in her head and that she's a drama queen and that she's going to make her retreat further and maybe not feel safe, you know, to even approach Kevin if Ruby laid down the law at that time. Yeah. I was glad to see Kevin stand up for Sherry.

At that point, I thought that was a really important. And then Sherry ends the chapter by saying, whether Ruby was lying or my therapist had betrayed me, the result was the same. My little therapy experiment was over. In this family, the only safe emotion was no emotion at all. And I think there's just, there's a little bit of a stigma, right, around therapy that a perfect mommy vlogger would not want people to know that one of their kids needed therapy. because that's a reflection on the parent. And I also want to add, thank you for that. I also want to add that at least in Utah Mormon culture,

there's been a history of sort of feeling like if you read your scriptures and pray and are obedient and go to church and have a good diet and get exercise, you shouldn't ever need to go to a therapist. And in decades past, top church leaders, including Bruce Armacconchi, have even sort of denounced the mental health profession as being sort of of of the devil. So there is kind of a cultural predisposition against mental health treatment,

although I think in the past 10 to 15 years, some of the apostles have tried to fix that, including Jeffrey R. Holland, maybe giving a talk on depression. But there is a deep woven cultural suspicion here within Mormonism against seeking mental health treatment. Yeah. Yeah. And I also wanted to say, Megan, like, I think your voice is actually so important when it comes to this because, you know, I've always joked, like, I know, I know more about your family than I ever should or your extended family. Sorry, TMI. Everyone does. And I don't mean your specific family, your mom and dad, I mean your extended family, your cousin Lori, you know, and Lori's family and the Cox family and, you know, the Valos. So, um,

And I think that what I have seen is, right, sort of this idea when it comes to families like this, this like no mental health. It's very fearful. It's all sort of like everything's fine, nothing to see here. And anyway, I just want to thank you for sharing your voice when you do interviews on your own YouTube channel because I actually see this as a theme when I cover a lot of cases where everything looks good on the surface. and there's something that's not okay. And I think that's something I've learned a little bit more about covering crime. And so, yeah, I guess I just want to point that out. Yeah.

Thank you. And definitely that was the theme in my family. I asked for therapy when I was 13 years old, and my parents said no. And it was the implication was that just exactly what you said, John, is that if you pray hard enough and read your scriptures hard enough and just give your burdens to the Lord, he will take care of them for you. And, you know, they didn't know at that point that I had, you know, severe trauma from my childhood, early childhood. But then there was ongoing trauma in my house growing up as well that they didn't want to acknowledge.

And when I later, as an adult, went to my bishop and said, you know, I think that we need marriage counseling. We need therapy. The bishop cautioned me against going to a therapist. That was not church sanctioned. because he said, therapists have all kinds of wild ideas about what they think is healthy for you. You really need to go to a therapist who is Mormon, who's LDS, who understands how important the faith is to you so that they don't give you some kind of a treatment modality that's against our faith. You know, so there is that suspicion.

Yeah. And I just want to make a quick clarification. I said the Vallow's and what I bet by that was Lori Vallow. I know that Charles Vallow was murdered recently and his trials coming up, so I didn't want to pinpoint that on. Right. any i just wanted to make that clear yeah any valis okay you're lorry's family lord yeah yeah well that that was really sad in a in a dark part thanks for sharing all of you around that so uh i think maybe maybe we could talk about uh about chat a little bit and you know sherry

wasn't the only victim here. You could argue that all of the seven or eight passengers were victims as well. Yes. Anyone want to share their thoughts of what they learned about Chad? Because it's Chad that introduces Jody, right? So anything, I mean, anyone want to talk about how Chad was depicted that was interesting? Before we dive into Chad, I do want to mention that Sherry makes it clear very early on in the book, that she will be naming Chad as her sibling and none of the other siblings, there's no

initials. Like, they're hardly mentioned in the book except for, of course, near the end where the children in Ivans are discovered. And of course, her concern for their safety, you know, as things were escalating. But I really admired that about her. She said they've been victimized enough. and there's not a lot of mention of the other kids. And so Chad, Chad is the only sibling in the book that Sherry names by name.

That's a great point. Yeah. She said they deserve a childhood, basically. That was great point, Mindy. Yeah. And also, if we're going to try to stay chronological, I think we should mention, too, that Sherry starts her own YouTube channel. Right.

And she mentions this to Ruby. Ruby says she's going to approve all the content, but also that she will not shout out Sherry's channel on the eight passengers channel because she wants Sherry to build it herself. Until she reaches 100,000 subscribers. 100,000 subscribers, which that's a pretty big feat to do on your own without any help from any other channels. Yeah, it really is. Yeah.

And so, you know, Sherry's channel does eventually reach the mark. And it's right around the same time that eight passengers reaches a million views. and Sherry is willing to go ahead and give, sorry, Ruby is willing to give Sherry the shout out on the channel, which she does. And then immediately after that, she says to Sherry, by the way, I'm going to be taking 10% off the top as a management fee for you. And so, there's no way that you would have grown without my expertise and my influence on you. Yes, even though she never mentioned Sherry's blog that she worked so hard. hard on.

Yeah. Mom tax. Yep. Mom tax. Yeah. That's what she called it. I know. Yeah.

She said, I just want to read this. Whenever, whenever Sherry's quoting Ruby, you really think you would have, you really think you would ever have started a YouTube channel, let alone a successful one without my help. You owe me, Sherry. Business is business. Like to hear that from your mom, you know, that's really sad. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep, there's a, I mean, there's a way to interpret that you're trying to get your kid to be self-sufficient or you don't want your kid to get into social media. So you're going to make it harder for them, you know, but the way the story's told, it just seems like she. Not those things. It's not those things. A couple comments from our viewers. Marissa writes, I don't know if it's Marisa or Marissa. Keep teaching about the importance of recognizing the signs of child abuse and exploitation.

We need to do more to protect children. everywhere totally agree marisa vala haux writes you guys are amazing i agree thanks for sharing your thoughts and knowledge with us and then finally sequin writes anyone else remember being taught to ask to shake hands with an angel so that you will know if it's an angel or if the being is the devil appearing as an angel of light and then she actually cites doctrine and covenants 129 which is modern-day Mormon scripture where Joseph Smith quotes God saying that that's how you can tell a righteous angel from an evil wicked spirit is by offering to shake their hand. Yep.

It's a great point. It's in the canon. Yeah. Thanks for that, Vala. Okay. To Chad. Yeah, no, that was great. And please keep jumping in.

Y'all have done so much prep at any point. Reflections on Chad. Did you learn anything about him? She kind of paints him out as a jokester, a prankster, but also as an athlete. I didn't realize that he potentially was a good enough athlete to win a college scholarship. Did you all know that? No, but that was the most heartbreaking moment for me. Was that Sherry understood what they were making him give up and what they were asking him to give up,

where his sports teams, everything that mattered to Chad were sports. That was what he had. That was his outlet. That was his life. That was, those were his talents, that he had scholarships possibly on the table. And because he was a, I would call it a typical teenage boy, that's how Sherry explains it just, you know, a bit of a, I don't know, I don't know, it sounds like a teenage boy to me, you know, a little goofy class clown that they didn't know what to do with him, how to rein him in.

And so they took his sports away. and Sherry seemed to be the one that was just absolutely shattered for him, not his parents, but Sherry. Yeah. Did the sports getting takeaway happen before or after he went to the Anasazi? It happened after. It happened. It was after. Yeah.

Maybe we can talk about the Universal Studios, Orlando's episode. That was great. That was so proud of him. Yeah. Does someone want to recount it? Mindy, you got that one? Chad was smart in other words. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's look up. It's in chapter. I actually have, I can tell you, I can tell you, Mindy, because I'd love for you to read it. Okay. It was, it's around page 90. Okay. Where they talk about the biggest brand deal.

The wet ones. What wipes? Wet ones. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's down. Our itinerary starts at the bottom of page 90.

Our itinerary was planned with military precision. Each camera worthy moment scheduled down to the millisecond. And where are they there in Orlando? They are in Universal Hollywood, Orlando. No, it's in Orlando. Oh, they're in Orlando. It's confusing because it says Universal Studios Hollywood, but it's in Orlando. Okay.

So, yeah. I vividly remember being in our van when Ruby said she had a plan. We're going to make a big mess so that we can show how well wet ones works. We made it gross. Gummy bears smeared on windows, slime everywhere, chocolate all over everyone's faces, all to demonstrate the effectiveness of wet ones. It was all going so well until Chad brought the chaos. The park had opened early just for us, which was a big deal so we could get footage walking through the empty park.

But while Ruby was filming her brand deal talking points in front of the iconic globe, Chad was being, in her words, an absolute punk, making constipated gargoyle faces and photobbing her carefully orchestrated brand content. Ruby's dream of picture-perfect family content was rapidly devolving into a blue. looper real. So she banished him to the hotel room while the rest of us enjoyed the theme park. Chad, ever the rebel, wasn't about to let Ruby's parental decree keep him down. He snuck out of the hotel room, took a taxi, somehow sweet talked his way back into Universal Studios and had a great time by himself. When we got back to the hotel, he was gone. We had no idea where he was for a while. And that as far as my parents were concerned was the absolute final straw. In Ruby's and Kevin's

Chad was becoming some kind of juvenile delinquent, a malfunctioning robot, and they just needed to find some way to reprogram him. I don't know if we want to all keep. So, you know, just really quickly, in family systems, sometimes there's the misbehaving kid, but sometimes that misbehaving kid is actually playing an important and a healthy role in the family system. Y'all are not in your head. You all want to respond to that? The malfunctioning robot. The malfunctioning robot.

Like, let me, you know. But what's the part? potentially positive aspect of that of Chad's behavior in this case, right? What's it saying? What's maybe let's theorize of what Chad's behavior is trying to communicate to the family? Well, when you grow up in this family system where everything is under the microscope and there's scrutiny and there's also reward for vulnerability online and your parents are really involved in the vlog and that's their main focus, how else do you get attention? How else do you get attention? How else do you find out how your parents feel about you? You know, how else do you get noticed

unless you're the one stirring up trouble? You know, so if you're, if you're the victim of childhood emotional neglect and you don't really have a face and you're just another one of the eight passengers, you know, how do you distinguish yourself by acting out? And I don't even know if this was him getting into trouble. I think it was him coming up with a solution. First off, I feel really happy for the kids and understand why the channel maybe brought them some joy as they get to make a mess in their car, right? I thought that was a moment, too, where they get to put gummy bears and put chocolate all over the face. This is a family that has to be perfect. And all of a sudden, because of this brand opportunity, they get to be messy.

Like, already that's fun. I'm like, I get why these kids are torn. Like, this is a moment where it probably was really enjoyable for them. And then they get to the park. And Chad is, again, doing what I think is really great. He's rebelling. He's showing this is ridiculous. Like, I want to be goofy. I want to be fun. I'm photo bombing.

Like, that again is joy. That's, I think, representative of what's going on in the car. You know, he's just continuing it. Like, I want, this is, I don't want to be a robot. We're at Universal Studios. And then when he sent home because, or back to the hotel, excuse me, because he's not a robot. And he's saying, let's have fun. He's going to say, you know what?

I'm going to come up with a solution. and I'm going to go back to the park because I'm a kid and we're here in Orlando and we're here to go to this park and I'm going to go have a blast without you guys. So in some ways I think he's showing this family what a solution is to this robotic lifestyle. And if they would only listen and see what he's doing, they could probably have a healthier family system. So I actually see Chad is coming up with some bit of a solution if they would just open their eyes. I agree with that. That's good. I wonder if he's starting to internalize and be resentful of just the perfectionism and just the phoniness of what their life is.

That I was proud of him when he's kind of pushing back as a parent, as a parent who sometimes wants things that you've planned to just go well. I get the aggravation for Chad's behavior. But knowing the whole story of what they'd endured, I mean, there's a story of Chad being a really little boy who is mischievous and cuts a little bit. piece off of Sherry's hair and Ruby punishes him by taking him to the bathroom with the clippers and shaving off a large section like in the middle of his head as a punishment for doing this. And, you know, those experiences they build up. And I think that I think Chad in this moment at Universal Studios is just maybe pushing back at the perfectionist, you know, veneer that his family is trying to portray. And Chad knows very well how important this trip is for for his

family, you know, and I think he knew which buttons to push with Ruby. And yeah, I'm not sure he anticipated the response to that, but I don't know. I just see Chad as a fun, goofy, you know, a little bit naughty, just trying to like find his way, find his voice in this family. Yeah. I do see a little bit of that vindictiveness, though, knowing how important the shot was to Ruby and knowing that that was the time to push the button. And it may have been sort of getting back at her for not treating him well or not giving him the sort of mothering that he wanted and needed. So the healthy side of that is if you have a kid who's acting up,

maybe consider why they're acting up and that they might need a little more attention or love or something that they're not getting. Right. I just think about how much I would hate the camera being, in my face all the time and always having to perform for everything. And another explanation is just rebelling and acting out, even subconsciously, is a way to say, this is stupid.

Can we just have a family vacation and have fun? Why is the camera always on? Yeah. We're ruining this fun trip that we could have, you know? Yeah. I agree with that. I also think it's important to note, you know, Sherry goes on to talk about this experience where they send, right after this, they send Chad to a bunch of different therapists.

And basically the therapists say, Chad is too young for us to diagnose and pathologize at this point. He's a normal kid, basically, is what these therapists were saying, which is why I think Ruby ends up reaching out to Jody because she sees a way for Chad to be diagnosed and pathologized. Sherry says, not to mention, so he says he usually ran circles around those poor counselors, you know. But he said Chad was often the most manipulative person in the room. Turns out growing up on camera is excellent training for pulling the wool over people's eyes. That's good. Yeah. Well, that's where things, that's where the villain, the real villain enters the picture.

Yeah. At the end of, at the end of part two, at the end of this chapter, basically says, looking back, my parents should probably have just given Chad the space. time he needed to grow up. Teenagers act out. It's practically in the job description, but no, Ruby and Kevin couldn't fathom such a simple solution. Instead, they doubled down more determined than ever to find a Chad whisper, someone aggressive enough to break through his defenses. Oh, boy, be careful what you wish for. They were on a mission to find the perfect person to crack his code and rewire him to their liking, which is how the monster came into our lives. And then it says, a monster masquerading is a mental health professional armed with a

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She would say khaki shorts, I'm sure. And a mind full of psychological warfare tactics. A monster who would see my mother's inner darkness and cultivate it, nurture it. Until it eclipsed all light, a monster named Jody Hildebrand. And that's when that's when the villain is introduced. What do you think about that intro, Lauren? It's powerful. It's really powerful.

And again, she says that will eclipse my mom. What does she say that? That she, again, this is this duo coming together. That is. This creation of this black hole. Uh-huh. There you go. Yeah.

So it clips all light. It's quite the intro. Because I imagine that Sherry looks back at that moment and just again and again and again, what would have happened if Jody hadn't been suggested to the family, what would have happened if she didn't enter the picture? This was the moment that such frightening things began to happen. Have you all wondered where a passengers would be if Jody had never come in? I guess they, I guess Ruby's behavior takes the channel.

Yeah, it was starting to take the channel down, her behavior already. I want to say this too that's interesting. So you said they were looking for anything to rewire him, anything to get Chad to their liking. I want to say to you, like, this is something that I've learned about crime as well in assessing the why is behind crime is that we are always looking for the answer. That as they take him from counselor to counselor and everyone's like, look, there's nothing. Like, you're good. They're determined. No, there's got to be an answer.

There's got to be a solution. And I think so oftentimes human beings, we just. want an answer to everything, whether it's Chad misbehaving, whether it's, you know, there are just some things that don't have answers, and I feel like it's such a slippery slope. And I see this in Ruby a lot. So I just want to point out that to her, there is a solution to everything. And there's going to be an absolute, an absolute solution to figuring Chad out. And that is such a slippery slope and something that's frightening, I think, when we think that there is always just some. something to learn that will give us a solution. And there's an urgency to getting your kid fixed. Yeah. When you're, you know, when you have a very popular YouTube channel, I think there's maybe that's not the kind of content that she was hoping for.

Like, how do we deal with our troubled teen? So I think that there was a sense of urgency in trying to figure out what was wrong with Chad, quote unquote, versus just kind of letting him develop normally as a teenage boy who was goofy and gregarious. I know. So healthy, really, when you look at it. it. Like if this is trouble, you know what I mean? Most of the like, okay, you know, all of the things that you could be dealing with, you know. Yeah, he wasn't shoplifting or addicted to drugs or,

you know, harming other people or anything like that that you see, you know, so many kids get sent away to boot camps or whatever for. He was just acting out. He was a class clown. He was, you know, mischievous, you know. He was messing up the video shot, right? Yeah, exactly. So when Mindy, when you're saying like there's an urgency to get him fixed, but there wasn't an urgency to fix Sherry's problems. You know, it's like there was an urgency to fix the problem that he was messing up the content. He was more visible.

Exactly. Yeah. And Sherry suffering privately. Right. She talks about how she would shut down and distance herself. And she later gets in trouble for that too because she's not engaging enough in the videos, you know, but fixing the problem of Chad messing up the content was pretty important.

Yeah. Why would Ruby want? Chad to see a therapist, but not Sherry. Exactly. Because Chad was messing up the content. I think what we're saying. Chad needed to be fixed. Sherry fell in line?

Sherry's issue was that Sherry's issue was her internal, was her own depression. That didn't bother Ruby. Chad's behavior was an issue to Ruby. It's a difference between internalized and externalized behavior. The issue was how it affected Ruby. It wasn't what was going on internally.

What was best for the kid. Yeah. Wasn't what was best for the kid. It was what was best for Ruby. For the shot. Best for the money shot. Yeah. But that's a good point, Lauren. I mean, I think it's such a common theme that we come back to over and over that these controlling people, like all they care about is what is best for them.

They don't care about how their behavior affects those around them. They have this lack of empathy, you know, this inability to really. understand what they're doing and how it's going to affect someone. And we see this with the punishment that they give, Chad, by taking away his sports ultimately. Ruby has no idea how impactful that is to him. She just knows that that's the button to push to perhaps get him to fall in line more. When someone is so desperate for control and they are so desperate to control others, that is where crime can occur. So I'm just saying that that's a pattern I see. in my reporting, I can't help but see how desperate Ruby is to control others and her children.

So one part, the next part that comes to my mind that was really disturbing was the way Sherry paints the picture, she learns about Jody Hildebrand, immediately senses that Jody's off. And Sherry gives the impression that at the very beginning, she Googles Jody Hildebrandt, learns about Adam Paul Steed's experience. She doesn't name Adam Paul Steed in the book, which bothered me a tiny bit. I wish you would have just mentioned him. Because his story is important. She mentioned his story without mentioning his name. Right. And then she mentions that she knew Jody had had her license revoked and had acted super unethically back at the very beginning of the relationship. And it gives me the impression that if Sherry knew that, that, that, that, um, that, that, um, that, um, that,

that Kevin and Ruby also would have known that about Jody from the start. But so that was interesting that they were aware, because I know about Jody, right? But I didn't, I could imagine a family along the Wasatch front, a friend says, hey, this, this therapist that can really help. And they don't even bother really Googling the therapist or Bishop Reckxam recommends a therapist. And so they just see the therapist and they don't really know about sketchy behavior. So it surprised me to know that Sherry and likely Ruby and Kevin all knew about some of Jody's problematic behaviors from the start. I think what Sherry found took some digging because when this case broke, the day it broke, I went digging and I found out about Adam Paul Steed and I found out about people calling Jody Hildebrand a cult leader from like 2019.

Yeah. There was a lot of past stuff on social media, but I don't know if it's something that. that Ruby and Kevin would have found some light Googling. It's more of like, wouldn't you agree? Like, Mindy's a sleuth. Like, you had to, you had to dig into their social media accounts and then scroll back to 2019 or find a certain profile. No, there was a solid tribute article that basically said Jody Hildebrandt's a bad therapist

that lost her license for violating client patient confidential. But it still wasn't the top Google results. Okay, okay, okay. That's what I'm saying. You're still going to have to dig. Like, so I don't know if it means that Kevin and Ruby. No. But it means that Sherry is smart and was like, I'm going to find out. Well, Sherry finds out and goes to Chad and says, I have a bad feeling about this lady.

Let me tell you what I found out. Yeah. And he replies to her, Sherry, she's just a middle-aged lady. If I don't do therapy with her, mom's going to make my life even worse. I survived the desert. I can survive Jody Hildebrand. And so he kind of, you know, pushes off her concerns. And then, and we found, I saw this pattern that made me sad. Chad rats Sherry out to her mom and says to Ruby. She tells Ruby that Sherry's talking about about Jody. And Jody responds, you know, sorry, I'm getting the names all wrong. Ruby, okay, rewind. Chad routes out Sherry to Ruby for raising concerns about Jody. And then Ruby's response is anyone who doesn't like Jody is hiding something. So very quickly, I think Ruby allowed herself to get sucked.

into the cult of Jody Hilda Brown in her way of thinking. So that was unfortunate to see it a few times that Chad would turn or, you know, Kevin would turn and Sherry just, you know, gradually just felt more and more alone that she didn't have anybody in her family that she could turn to, yeah, to express concerns. Yeah. And there's also that dynamic in controlling family systems of ratting each other out as siblings. You know, the parents reward the kid who rats out the other kid. And so the kid's not getting much validation from their parents.

They feel this obligation to rat out their siblings because it's a way of gaining more acceptance and approval from their parents and sort of ingratiating themselves and saying, see, I'm on your side. I'm going to tell you when someone else is doing something bad. I know you appreciate that. So it's just a bid for validation, I think. And Sherry mentions that earlier. she, I think she gets accused in the online community of like sucking up to be like Ruby's favorite. And I love this quote.

It's brief. But she says, I'm not sucking up. I'm surviving. There's a difference. So it seems like, and this is so Utah, it seems like one of Jody's first recommendations is that Chad go to a wilderness camp called Anasazi. So Utah. Why are you laughing, Lauren?

Because it's so Utah. I was a reporter in all of, you know, Utah and, and. Idaho, it's a very Utah thing. It helps our economy. The laws here, everyone goes and recruits all these wealthy families from back east. And it's a thing here in Utah. It helps our economy. They promote these camps. You have people promoting them all over the country. This is a really weird thing about the state of Utah. And I think that everyone should be aware of it because as a reporter, people need to be aware. And the way they are managed and the way they are not managed. And one reason we can get away with them is because we don't have some certain policies. that other states have. This is a Utah thing, and it's something everyone should know about. So go learn about why Utah has a bunch of wilderness camps. I'll just say that. And I'll say, I don't think I've said this before. I do have some close friends. We have some close friends that have worked in these troubled team camps. So do I. And people I respected admire, people who don't have any undue allegiance to the Utah or the church, will say a lot of good happens in these camps.

So I don't think our point is that nothing good happens there. But on the other hand, And parents are allowed to kidnap their children in the dark and have them be carried off by strangers because of weird laws in Utah that support this type of stuff. I don't doubt, I want to clarify, I don't doubt that there are plenty of good things that can happen in these camps. I'm grateful for good people that work at these camps, but I'm sure there's also a lot of good things that happen in the Church of Jesus Christ, Latterty Saints, too. And it's not all bad, usually, but I'm telling you, but that there are policies and things about the system that are very, very concerning. and people should not be looking the other way or just say because one child or a bunch of children are helped, things are going okay. There are a lot of concerns about this, and I'll shout that from the rooftop. We've got to fix the system in these camps.

And just Google Paris Hilton, Utah, Trouble Teen Kids, if you don't know. Just Google every southern Utah camp that's been investigated or shut down or people being arrested because of how these schools are being managed. Yeah. And to your point, John, that parents are allowed, and I agree with you, Lauren, there needs to be more awareness about it. I've talked about this on my channel before and people will say, what, that's a thing? Yes, it's very much a thing. And to your point, parents can kidnap their kids in the middle of the night and send them to these camps when they really don't need it.

And I would argue that- It's like a girl has premarital sex with their boyfriend. She's kidnapped and sent off to a camp for six weeks or 10 months, you know. Yeah, and it's the kind of situation where if the parents are the ones who get to determine and what the definition of a troubled teen is, we're seeing a perfect example of it right here, where Chad was just a mischievous kid, and he gets sent off to a camp

where there are kids who are abusers and addicts and who actually have problems. Have criminal behavior. Criminal behavior. I would argue that perhaps the times where there has been a good result is when you have a kid with a legitimate problem that goes to a camp where he finds competent mental health help. And those are probably the story.

stories of kids who have a good experience there. But the camps where they lump everybody in together and convince them all that there's something really terribly horribly wrong with them when there sometimes isn't, that's when it becomes harmful. And I remember hearing one of the stories about a young lady who got sent to camp for having premarital sex. But she was in a group of kids who were basically drug addicts. And they were telling her, she was like, no, I don't have any of those problems. But the counselors were telling her that she had to confess, otherwise, they weren't going to let her out ever. So she began thinking, oh, I am an addict. I do have a problem. And so it ends up destroying the mental health of a lot of these poor kids who get sent to these camps

for not a good reason. No, it's a real problem. And I know the legislature knows, and I know they're trying to contemplate reform, because it's become a national embarrassment to Utah. Reform is what I want is not to get rid of camp that can help children, but reform is needed. Yeah. So I thought it was interesting to find out that the price tag of Anasazi, which is Arizona, not Utah, $14,000 for 40 days. I wrote down $49 days. Yeah, 49 days. What? Did I get that wrong? 14,000 for 49 days. Okay. Okay. That's a lot of coin. Yeah. That's a huge expense. And she said her parents didn't think twice about it. Yeah. Yeah, I call it a Project Chad, a quick fix.

Which is why I think, you know, that's the other problem with these camps. It's the huge price tag, you know, the huge commitment for the family. And then if your kid doesn't reform in the allotted time, well, you can re-up, you know, if you want to. But these camps are making a ton of money and they probably don't pay their people very much as well. Yeah. So, um, So yeah, Chad goes, that's when people started reaching out to me. As I think about it, there's a point where my viewers and listeners started saying, hey, John, are you aware of eight passengers? You know, did you hear that Ruby sent Chad to Anasazi?

And I'm like, who's Ruby and what's Chad and what's Anasazi? Do you all remember? Was that one of the first points where eight passengers starts to sort of get? real public opposition? I think the first time I heard about eight passengers was the beanbag, and that's after Anasazi, but the beanbag story is, if I go back, I think that's the first time I started hearing about eight passengers. For me, it was Anasazi.

Sherry states in the book that the beanbag scenario was the worst thing that happened. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. They lost passenger. It tanked their channel. And the fact that Ruby didn't even realize it until, like, she knew the content and she was still okay putting it out because she was just so blind to realizing just how terrible it was making chat sleep on the beanbag.

I'm really fuzzy on the dates for all of this because I didn't know anything about eight passengers. So about what year would this have been when people started reaching out to you, John, about eight passengers? So I'm going to say 2021. Wow. Okay. 20, 20?

The beanbag incident happens in. in May of 2020 is when that video comes out. Oh, that's the beanbag incident? The beanbag incident. So it would have been, that's 2021? That was 2020. Okay. So they moved into the new house in Springville in 2019.

So, yeah. When do you think that you started hearing around that time? No, it was in this very room, it was in this very room where we had a, we had a faith crisis retreat. It's the retreat where I met Zach and Herardo. Herado helps me. They came. but another attendee came and just started telling us that he was part of this twisted distorted therapy group where some therapist had him sleeping on his mattress in his office and his wife

he wasn't allowed to have any hugging or touching with his wife for six months. I learned about this. That's the first time you've learned about. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And so I, so this guy, he's just this heartbreaking story of like, it's just because I masturbated a couple times and now my wife wants to kick me out and she's going to these support groups where

these non-licensed therapists are all treating me like I'm an addict and they're encouraging my wife to kick me out of the home and immediately I'm like dude come on Mormon I'll shut this woman down come on Mormon stories and we'll tell this story and he was like I can't I do MLM I don't want to I don't want to, you know, tell my story. I'm worried about what the repercussions might be. I'm terrified of Jody. She's got her hooks into my wife. And then I'm terrified that she might sue me. And so that put me on notice about Jody pretty early on. But I could never, even when people would reach out to me and say, I'm really concerned about Chad, I'm concerned about Anasazi. I'm concerned about the beanbag. I didn't know what to do because I'm not going to

I like open the OSF up to a defamation suit by third, fourth hand, me making a bunch of named accusations, because that's how people like, you know, Jody would operate. Right. But at the same time, nobody, everyone was too terrified to speak up. And so, you know, anyway. And haven't you found that even since, it's hard, it's so hard to have anybody that will, and likely a lot of them are still active in the church, but. especially now that all the scandal has brought out,

it seems, or has gotten out. It seems like it's real quiet. Nobody wants to come forward and talk about their experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so Chad goes on Assazi.

He comes back and then, you know. He starts therapy with Jody weekly. Yeah. For himself. Yeah. And it's quite a bit of money, right? Jody's pretty expensive.

$175 an hour for her private coaching. But then also, it's like this, funnel because she starts with one member of the family, but then she starts saying, they don't just need individuals that you're rolling your eyes, learn. Do you want to continue? Oh, I just, I can't stand her business model. I can't. It's disgusting. I think, I think you have to sometimes have no soul to be able to take every, you know, manipulative business, business, you know, model there is and put it into just one. And that's what Jody Hildebrandt did.

She took, she took the funnel. She took the MLM. She took the, uh, You know, the, here's a better deal. I mean, she took the cult. She took the team. She took the 10 percentage of the coaches. I mean, what did she do? And then she bought a $5 million home with it. I mean, she is no shame.

I mean, sometimes, you know, I've always said, I'm like, man, sometimes I wish I had no shame so I could just be wealthy. Like she took everything from these people. I mean, every, every sketchy business model there was, and she put it into connections. And people were like, okay, sign me up. I'm just like, oh, it's just manning. It reminded me of Elron Hubbard with the Scientology and the auditing where you get somebody to tell all their deepest, darkest seahruits, so you could use it against them, right?

Yep. And then so there's individual stuff, but then she's got the group stuff, and then she does couple stuff. And before you know it, she's got her hooks into the entire family. And families are paying thousands of dollars a month or more to the point where they're hitting up grandparents draining retirement funds. to be able to pay thousands of dollars a month for Jody's support. So reliance, isolation, reliance, separation, like everything. Yeah. It was a cold.

It's a full-blown cold. Yeah. Brainwashing. Yeah. Can I point out one more thing that is a common recurring thing? This is when Sherry is pushing back against her mom. And, you know, when Ruby finds out that Sherry has defamed Jody to Chad, Sherry says, but mom, she had her love.

license suspended. Her own kids don't speak to her. Ruby says her kids couldn't handle the truth. She's been called by God to help people. So this is the recurring theme. We see all the time, somebody says they're called by God. They have a special mission, and that gives them license to take your money and to indoctrinate you into their cult so that they can have power and control. Okay, so, oh, Mindy. Oh, no, I just was agreeing. I said, yep. So, okay, here's another question that I have highlighted. And I have my own internal debates about this. Is it fair?

Would it be fair for someone to say that the Mormon church prime, in high-demand religions broadly, prime people such that they would be susceptible to a cult leader? Yes. So, Lauren, you immediately said, Well, yeah. Do you want to expand or? I mean, I mean, Sherry says it in her book. She says that it's similar. She says that these people are all, she says that her mom thought she was like Joseph Smith and that Jody thought she was like Joseph Smith. And so Joseph Smith is the founder and first prophet of the LDS church. He is the one that, you know, taught people and converted people to Mormonism and started Mormonism. So when you have Jody Hildebrandt saying, I'm like Joseph Smith and all these people are primed to believe in leaders and follow authority, then and to look for answers from a higher power than yes.

Like they are people that follow any religion or, or again, also I want to say prime through, as we're talking about family systems through an authoritarian family system, are also going to be primed to want to follow somebody so that they can tell them what to do. You know, and the LDS church is also part of that, you know, with authority. I think we're taught to trust, you know, trust the church members and church leaders without, proper vetting and maybe sometimes pushing down your intuition that something might be wrong. I think you trust. And I think when they were introduced to Jody, they were introduced by a trusted friend. And then you get into the machine of it, right? And you start getting involved. And you see that

there's all these people that maybe you're in your circle. And I'm sure that there are some aspects. Am I being too generous by saying there may have been some aspects that were helpful for some people. In fact, Sherry says that like after Jody got involved in, or after Ruby got involved with Jody, she did yell and, and, um, was kinder. Although then she said her psychological and manipulative abuse ramped up, which Sherry thought was even worse. But, um, I just think we're primed to just trust and, and to outsource our own authority instead of like looking inward to our personal authority. I think we're so conditioned to outsource. So if there's somebody who's claiming to be, have answers or have like a more of a closer connection for whatever reason.

But Jody, it stumps me. Number one, she's a woman. You know, like, I am honestly. To her credit, right? For sure. But I'm honestly, I'm stumped that that somebody like Jody. Not just a woman, a woman wearing khaki shorts. Yeah.

It's really actually perplexing because it kind of goes against the norm. cult and especially like, you know, adjacent to Mormonism, it's fascinating to me. So she must have had, you know, I think she just must have had such, you know, manipulative powers and convincing methods that she was able to convince people. I think often to your interview with her niece, Jesse, where Jesse talked about Jody, Jody's own child, saying that she didn't feel safe around her mom because she said my mom is so convincing that she would tell me that if she told me this guy was yellow, I would believe her. And I think, and Sherry even says where her parents want her to have therapy with Jody and Sherry's looked into Jody enough to know that there's some real problems

there. And Sherry says in her book, over my dead body, was I letting that woman anywhere near my brain? That was her initial reaction and she ends up having to have therapy with her. But, yeah, Yeah. She ends up becoming an acolyte. For sure. For a time. Yeah. For sure. She was a perfect little Jody robot for a while. Yeah. And I was going to just off of what you were saying, Mindy, I totally agree with you that we in the church are conditioned not to self-validate. We are conditioned to seek our validation from our priesthood leader. Right. Who tells us if we're worthy or not to go to the temple. And so because we're,

we don't learn that self-validation and we outsource it to other people, it makes us particularly susceptible to someone like Jody who speaks authoritatively, who has a mental health degree and a license at one point, it was suspended. And then she went on to practice without her license, just as a coach, right? But she's had that experience, and she does speak with power, and she is convincing and charismatic. And also, I think the in-speak that she developed, sort of made people go, oh, that's a different way to think of it. Maybe I'm thinking of that word wrong. It's not that I'm experiencing depression. I'm in distortion. We have to bring up truth and distortion, which Sherry describes as two innocuous words that would soon become the bane of my

existence. And I think that that was, you know, crafty on Jody's part to develop these words that would explain pretty much any scenario that you're going to be in in life. You're either in truth or you're in distortion. Yeah, and you're talking to, yes, black and white thinking. And you're talking to a population of people who genuinely do want to improve and become better and become more righteous or more able to follow the rules. And so she's presenting this new way of looking at it. You're also talking to a population of people who is not used to healthy mental health language. And so you've got Jody presenting this new language and members of the church are going, oh, I never thought of it that way. I've never considered this as a mental health concept before. So it does absolutely make

members of the church vulnerable to someone specifically like Jody. I'll add, we know from, you know, the arrests and from the pen papers that Jody and possibly even Ruby were meeting with Brad, was it Brad Wilcox or Jeremy Yagi, like a Mormon general authority. It was the journal, actually. We never got, we were never given the pen papers. Oh, okay. The journal. Yeah, the journal, by the way, the pen papers.

You can actually see law enforcement handle the pen papers. Or is it pen papers? Yeah, pen papers. Pen papers in the body cam footage. It's so painful to watch because Kevin has explained what they look like and how they give it to them and then they put it back. And I, you just want to scream, no. But the journals, yeah, Brad Wilcox, was Brad Wilcox?

I think it was. Yeah, it was Ruby writes. Jody was meeting with Brad Wilcox. She's one of the top leaders in the Mormon church. Jody's meeting with Jeremy Yagi, a top general authority in the church. And what I'm saying there is I know it was part of Jody's modus operandi to tell everyone. And I think it's true that she had relationships with top Mormon church. leaders. Oh, she used that flex, for sure. That they didn't know how to treat

masturbation and pornography, but that she did. And so she, that sort of reverence and deference to authority was an important part of what led people to be susceptible. Because how many of us, when we were Orthodox Mormon, if we heard, oh, I just got out of me with Boy K. Packer or Jeffrey R. Holland, we'd be like, oh, yeah, I'm paid attention. We know that Tom Harrison invited her to be a part of his kind of therapy conferences. Yep, yep. And so God back into therapy, yeah. And then finally, just this, the morality, the porn and masturbation, shame doctrine and fear was just her money.

That was her money train. If that didn't exist, I think if there weren't the obsession in the Mormon church with porn masturbation, And I want to be clear, I am not standing here as like some big fan or proponent of porn. That's not the point. But the point is, if the Mormon Church hadn't pathologized pornography use to such a ridiculous, toxic degree, given how prevalent it is, there would be no Jody Hildebrand in the way because she was just getting her fuel off of that outrageous excessive obsession. with what psychologists would say, at least in terms of the masturbation part, is healthy normative behavior. That created Jody Hildebrand, in my opinion. Yeah, and I think, John,

you were the one who told me that Jody was instrumental in helping develop the church's addiction recovery program, which labels anyone who watches pornography at all as an addict. And I can't tell you how many young men and adult men have mentioned to me either in private conversation or anecdotally to other people that they went through the addiction recovery program because they were forced to by a spouse or by a potential girlfriend or potential someone they were engaged to because they had looked at porn once or twice and the insistence was well you have to go to addiction recovery at the church before I'll continue to see you or before I'll marry you or if our relationship is to continue. And what these men were describing was,

as you're saying, just normative behavior that was pathologized and labeled addiction. And that's one of Jody's main tactics. Those are cash cow. Yeah. She takes it even beyond that. There's the woman who cheated, quote unquote, because she noticed that her male man was attractive. And, you know, I think that Kevin had an experience where he admitted that he found another woman attractive at the gym. And so, I mean, we're not even talking. Yeah, we're not even talking about like porn and masturbation, although certainly that would be, you know, demonized by her as well.

But just any type of sexual impropriety or what she, you know, what she described as that would be considered distortion. And one of the most disturbing ones that comes up in the book is, is convincing these poor husbands that them showing any affection to their daughters, is hinting at inappropriate affection or incestial. Yeah, or pedophilia, yeah. I mean, it's just, she just twisted and got into the minds of these people that were part of her program in such a damaging way. Well, I guess if finding people attractive is being in distortion, then I'm in distortion like 100% of them.

I want to know what the postman looks like. I'm like, I want to see pics. Well, clearly Jody was in distortion. She was hot for Ruby, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that we haven't quite gotten there yet, but I think that that's so much the root of all of this that we're talking about probably goes back to her repression of her own sexuality. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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