Hidden True Crime - RUBY FRANKE/JODI HILDEBRANDT CASE - ADAM STEED, PART TWO - Boy Scout Abuse Cover-up?

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

TW: Abuse & difficult topics relating to LDS church. ADAM STEED PART 2 Dr John Matthias and reporter Lauren Matthias have been covering Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt since the arrests, and will continue to bring you the very latest. We start with Adam Steed--a man who was Jodi Hildebrandt's patient back in 2007, and listen to his heart wrenching interview in two parts ...This is PART 2 August 30, 2023--a brave 12-year-old boy escapes a house of torture in Southern Utah --rescuing himself and his 10-year-old sister. A neighbor feeds the emaciated boy and calls 911. The children's mother YouTube Celebrity Ruby Franke, and Ruby's therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, are arrested 250 miles north in Springville, Utah and charged with 6 counts of aggravated child abuse. To learn more about Adam Steed and his victimization from Jodi Hildebrandt: https://tinyurl.com/22kcfkpe Adam Steed v Boy Scouts of America: https://law.justia.com/cases/idaho/supreme-court-civil/2007/steed.html Thank you for subscribing to our podcast and to our YouTube channel LAUREN MATTHIAS has worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in East Idaho, Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah. In 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award. She left the reporting world to produce the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. DR. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims. He received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling, as well his doctorate degree, from the University of Southern California. Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day. Dr. Matthias has been an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program since 2007. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. Your support helps us produce these podcasts/videos. We have some big plans to explore the true crime terrain in a way that no one else has attempted. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join us on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves. WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ TO SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime https://cash.app/$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

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A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fears along the way. I was talking to a Netflix producer. He's got a story coming, an episode coming out this Wednesday. I can't tell you what it's about. It might have to do with scouting. but he was the one that said

because he's heard me just complain about the side of the story that just you know I'm not in this this thing coming out but I definitely work with it

but in the past he did a documentary about me that was at Sundance the church and the fourth estate and Laura Poitre's executive producer She was a lady that helped with Edward Snowden coming forward. Okay.

And, and his name is Brian Nafenberger. And anyway, I talked to Brian, and he's just like, you know, you know, Adam said, you were a whistleblower. You guys read the past. I came forward and I worked on this and I worked on getting rid of the laws. We did it. We made my family. think that you say you know these people are just trying to destroy you as a whistleblower and sometimes i think that the Mormon church know who jody hilda brand was when i was set up to go

start therapy with her because like nowadays i think differently like i don't i don't want to sound narcissistic i don't want to sound egocentric like that i matter and people don't when i say I, sometimes when I'm in trauma, I say I and you don't give everybody the credit because I'm just dealing with this shit that it is to be a victim's advocate. But the thing is like, right after my dad and I and brother signed the statute of limitations into law, that in Idaho, we changed in one session, one session, the criminal and civil statute of limitations for child abuse. It was five years and then you couldn't prosecute.

And rape was 50 years. And child abuse was five years. So all the pedophiles that went there were safe after five years. And all the institutions that hit it didn't. And they were no more cases after five years. So when I filed my lawsuit, it was 23 against scouting. And they immediately hit us with the statute of limitations saying, you can't do this.

And I can't remember, but out of the blue, when I filed, it was like one day before the statute was up. And I can remember the actual days, but just to really find, we discovered this terrible statute that they were using. So my dad started talking in the press, and he started telling, these people are trying to stop us from changing this.

You named them by name. And after the Scouts, Scout Honor series came out that won the Scripps Award of Idaho Falls Post Register, I mean, huge contention, a huge thing. But he'd name those people by name and say like, this guy's trying to stop this. And nobody wanted it passed.

We got the laws through. It's a huge fight. There's no one's ever told that story about what my dad did to get those through. And one of the, probably Idaho was probably what, the second most powerful Mormon state in America. I'd agree with that. I mean, yeah. Probably a massive amount of child abuse going.

on that was covered up because when we discovered was that uh and brads you know sometimes it's like a snowball you see your case and then you see it's a bigger story and part of the so so like brad stole's case the the the pedophile that i sent to prison that was sexually abusing all these kids and and that the scout people tried to tell me not to even tell my parents about when i complained about it and said they'd fix it and made me you promised I wouldn't tell my parents. And eventually I called that week. I called the police and had them arrest him.

And the police were awesome. They were like, let's arrest him in front of the flags. So all the kids see it and we'll tackle him. And they know this was wrong. And the police were right. But what we learned about Brad was that he got caught before and that they sent him to a Mormon bishop to repent and that he was a sociopath, serial child abuser. So he just lied to a bishop and he was back at camp.

Wow. And then we learned about this kind of. and that pedophile, not pedophile, and they were all being sent to bishops. And then we learned that, holy cow, this is a broken system because the Mormon church was using the bishop penitence clause so that they didn't have to report the child abusers after they were sent to a bishop. So it's only different. Like it's different when someone comes to you and confesses.

It's different when we catch a child abuser, a pedophile. and they get sent to a bishop and the bishop gives the okay and sends them back to work at camp and this happened systematically in the Mormon church in fact it became such a good cover that the church broke ranks with how they normally call bishops in a secret operation that none of the members knew about so behind the scene and you have like thousands of bishops and and they were then instructed you know before in the old days it was scriptures where they prayed to God know how now there's complications the modern world and there's child abuse allegations. And when bishops get that, they'd be given this church handbook that started developing

these real specific rules on what they needed to do. And it said, call this number and talk to these people. And the thing about it was, it's the people that were like, they were like attorneys on the telephone talking to the bishops on how to handle these cases. Here's the crazy thing. The Mormon church totally broke ranks with their traditional. call a bishop and a group of people an honor call. That's what it was. They ordained the people on the telephone that would handle all of these child abuse cases as bishops so that they could classify everything under an umbrella of bishop penitence

and not report anything. So, I mean, we're talking to millions and millions of interviews. And this is what the Mormon church has done. and and and and and and and they're fighting toothed now behind the scene to keep this five year statute of limitations for child abuse around with scouting and so i know that society will wake up society will learn how to fix itself and they will hold these people accountable and they will change these people even if these people win some legal law here and there it will change because this problem will not go away so i know that's inevitable but the thing is like like we changed the laws for us but at that point in time I didn't think of going after the church because

like a cult could be I totally believed in it and had cognitive dissonance and didn't think no but the had all these rationale for how the church given the best case scenario of what they must have understood that made them explain why they didn't do the right thing you know

but I went after scouting because they were like a professional organization and And, you know, my dad said, look, these big organizations, they don't care about this unless you sue them in a big way. And I had punitive damage on my case awarded. And my church leaders told me not to do it. The area presidency told me not to do punitive damage. So I turned it down.

Huh. They, as an increase it from God. Because they recommended it. Because they recommended that. Don't go too far. Here's the right balance. Some, you know, the other, the next punitive damage case was stuff. that was billed off our cases, the victim won $20 million.

If I had won $20 million, I'd have turned it into a fund and gave every penny of it to victims out there because that's how I feel about it. But the thing is the thing about this issue is that there was tons of controversy over us changing these rules. I mean, my dad lost his job as this BES guy and we lost their retirement. and society was split in half on it and all this terrible stuff but we succeeded in the impossible we changed the laws in Idaho and see I was called by that I told you earlier that attorney told me the one that's had 27,000 scouting victims he represented when the federal case and they had 97,000 victims come forward to him Kostanov he said Adam in California it's like a million $2 million restitution for these child abuse cases in Utah, it's like $20,000. They miss the statute of limitations. You go to court for six months.

And eventually they're just like, we'll just settle and help the person who's $20,000. And religion, an institution, an empire of like $100 billion or something. And their approach towards handling all these victims to which, they created a situation that allowed these, you know, the public school system was like, hey, if we have a pedophile, we call the police. And he goes to prison for 25 years. The Mormon church in scouting, or even in church was like, hey, we send them to a bishop. Now we don't have to report the case, all as well in Zion. I want to clarify one thing you said. You believe, or you don't know, but you believe and you sense that the church might have purposely sent you to Jody Hildebrand

after your case with the Boy Scouts of America and you receiving the sound. Let me give you some killing on that notion. Yeah. I don't just make up notions out of nowhere. Right. Meet this girl at BYU. I was a super Mormon. Her dad was a general authority.

I thought we'd have a happy family. It didn't work out. Jody destroyed. It was a crappy marriage at best. Jody did this crazy stuff. So the thing is, when her dad got called as an area authority in Holland, it was by a man named Elder Helm. Elder Helm was a president of like the European area where her dad was called as an area authority. Now, the third quorum of the 70, in my opinion, they don't have the legal power that the first and second do.

I think it's more like a PR campaign to show the rest of the world's involved with the Utah Mormons. So her dad gets called in Holland. And I don't mean to belittle him. He was a nice guy to mean to point that he just went the wrong way in this divorce. And again, I don't want to talk about divorce. But here's the thing. And see, I just did. That's how the visceral stuff works.

But the thing is like, this guy, Elder Helam, shows up. He's like the father that her dad relies. He's the guy that called him to be a general authority. He's the guy that inspired by God. this great guy. When your daughter goes through this terrible divorce in the country that you're not in, you go to this guy for help. They get Doug Thayer as the attorney.

They come out fighting and, you know, her dad originally wrote me, hey, let's get together and talk. Then I heard no response. Then Doug Sayer, attorney, protective order, everything. And it became this like almost half a million dollar legal fees on both sides, three year fiasca, where in the end, you know, they amounted, to nothing but just the system. But so, so in, in this situation where, um, this guy who's president of the first

corner of the 70, he shows up in the court hearing for the protective order. He's sitting there next to my ex wife and Jody Hildebrand. And, and he's there and he goes to all this other stuff. And I can start to tell that all my priesthood leaders think differently now because they're being talked to by a top leader. The Honor Code Office thinks differently because they're being talked to by top leaders. Even when I subpoenaed their records, they're talking about general authorities getting involved and that they just follow blindly the one side that those guys are on.

They don't investigate. I told them, hey, go to the courthouse and see that I was there because I missed a hearing by 30 minutes and that these charges shouldn't be felonies because they should only be misdemeanors. They didn't even go. They just believed the other side that it was abused because they were in the same conversation in their notes where they talk about this generalist. authority. So, you know, it's just this one-sided thing that, the thing is, Elah Helam paid a lot of attention. He got super involved. I suspect that when I started to date

people, that he was involved in the back channels for why people couldn't date me, where they would go to their bishops and bishops would talk to them and they couldn't date me. And, and, you know, It was just, I suspect he was behind me getting kicked out of BYU. And I suspect he was behind my bishop saying, one bishop saying, okay, well, you had your temple record. I suspect he was behind them taking my temple recommend away when I was following all their rules. I suspect he was behind them making sure, telling them that I couldn't do it, get it back until

after all this stuff was done. I didn't know it would be three and a half years of harassment. And then when it finally was gone, I suspect he was behind. behind letting a bishop that cared about me was nice to me, but said he didn't feel comfortable over and over and it didn't make sense. Like that he was working, this guy dies, Elder Helm dies, and suddenly I can get my temple recommends, suddenly I can get back to BYU, suddenly all the stuff. That's why I suspect this guy. Yeah.

But then in his obituary, so there was something on the internet, it was like a leak. And they were suspecting the commissioner Patton and a lot of the judges in the fourth district court of racketeering, charges with church leaders. It was very weird to read the leak because it showed tons of stuff that actually happened in our courtroom that was totally unethical crimes that it was exactly like what happened in our courtroom. And it was, I could look like it was from a real news station, but it wasn't. I didn't know what it was, but it got us thinking, wow, is it possible that the church leaders were racketeering the custody, the court case in the fourth district with commissioner. I thought about this commissioner and how he had one time ordered that our child be baptized

because his mother, his mother would roll up, grandmother would roll over in her grave if he knew that he didn't. How he was so into the church and how an allegiance to church leaders sworn in the temples, how does that play out with like what are the rules with like normal situations? And I thought about how like all these people could organize and orchestrate onico people and bishops and say they could all have these private meetings to put these things together that were so organized and powerful that just left people's lives and pieces. And so I was thinking about that. My mom got looking, this is not a few years ago. This is when I quit the church, like three years ago. And she found in his obituary, lo and behold, President Helm used to be the president of the

Grand Teton Scout Council. I hear you. I hear everything you're saying. I'm seeing the evidence. Yeah, he was, he made sure people didn't see that in his records and stuff, but his obituary caught it. The very council where I was, where I turned in all the pedophiles, where they had this whole issue with leaders, I never put names on those church leaders. And the whole thing came out where they were using,

the church leaders were hiding all these abusers. They were, they were three levels deep. The prosecuting attorney. for Brad Stolls were on the scouting board. That's one level. Level three, they were all members of the church that met in meetings that didn't give records. And so why did the, you know, to give a proportionality again, I like the word proportionality. I'll just put things in a picture.

It's super prestigious to be a bishop. I mean, locally prestigious, more pretty prestigious to be a state president, super prestigious to be a general authority over a huge area, like maybe one over Utah or something. and it was extremely prestigious among the 70 general authorities in the first quorum. There was second and the third. To be the president of the first quorum of the 70 was very, very prestigious. I mean, you could have been over a thousand, two thousand state presidents. Who knows?

Something like that. I mean, you're talking about celebrity size, like in a church with 13 million people. why did this guy elder heelam get like why did he allow himself to go in it'd be unethical to sit on one side of the of a divorce hearing just because of your calling that it could sway the outcome but why did he get so heavily involved in coming to these things and and and what i believe was orchestrating all this stuff and and then you find out hey he was over the scout camp that hit all the pedophiles. I know past life. I mean, I'm connecting the dots. It's, I, it's, how about this? I'm, I'm having a hard time processing what I'm hearing, but I'm connecting all the dots.

It's scary because in the LDS, we always rationalize that, you know, people aren't perfect, but God's religion is true. and these people have the absolute truth of God, but people make mistakes, but at a certain high level, they're not going to be making mistakes. But this guy, I wonder sometimes, did he miss his calling to be an apostle because I exposed,

I made him a liability to the church. And did he want to punish you? You know, when there are whistleblowers, when unsavory things come forward, they try to discredit them. They have faults. You know, look at them, look at their past. And so I have questions for that dead man.

Did he know Jody would destroy people and hurt people? I mean, I'm sure people were complaining about this lady destroying lives. I'm sure that all graduated up through the general authorities when state presidents were overwhelmed. Did they know that this lady would destroy me? Or did they plan to have her destroy me through telling the bishop for me to go over there? Or did they see that it happened? it was just luck, pure luck. And then they facilitated everything they could to make sure that destruction was imminent.

Who did the church think Jody Hildebrandt was? Well, that's a great question because here you got this all as well in Zion church front. And if there's problems, you go to your bishop first. And if there's serious problems, he talks to the state president. If they're really serious problems, that state president in their meetings talks to the general area authorities. And if they're real serious problems, they talk to the general authority. and through real serious problems, they talk to the apostles, and the apostles talk to the prophet. Right.

And so there's this whole order of how this stuff goes from the bottom to the top. And I'm betting if Jody had already been practicing for a long time and was so well-versed and fluently destroying people with deception, that there was a huge body count before I ever came along. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what I think. So if that's the case, if there was, then I'm guessing that these super complex damaging cases that make the church environment. So, you know, nothing ruins a romantic evening than someone talking about divorce.

You know, or Zion happy Zion, people losing kids and sexual abuse allegations and stuff destroys everything. So I bet sexual abuse allegations would graduate really fast up to the top of meetings. And if they had an unusual pattern on a high level of allegations, you know, connected to somebody, then maybe, you know, who knows? These things I do not know. I'm just a guy wondering how to make sense of this crazy, crazy story. And it's overwhelming in its size. I mean, in some ways there's some comparisons, I think, to Jody's cult and some things in the Mormon church that should be addressed. I think that I noticed that in the 90s that the church started the bishop's handbook that instructed the bishops to get people to commit to tithing.

and church attendance and fidelity right after people confess their sexual traumas. And it's interesting that they systematically instructed bishops to make sure people were doing all this stuff, right? You know, when people come in to confess their sins. And I felt like that moment of time should have been about helping a person heal from their trauma, not building a fidelity to an institution. And the bottom line is the bishop of your congregation, the person that's the head over your local congregation is who sent you to Jody Hildebrand. Yeah, I called me in and sent me.

And then he said it was his brother's organization, Lifestar. And actually, he probably wasn't prearranged on that by top church leaders because I just told them, unless he did it real subtly, I just told them we got done with the settlement and they had this money and they said that should be used for counseling for me for the rest of my life as a victim of abuse. And, you know, it's... Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy, or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D-com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door.

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He was there. And this is who called your father-in-law, your then-father-in-law to be a general authority. Yeah, and he was the guy that was over the camp that was hiding all the pedophiles, and he was the high religious leader. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future. You don't need to be an expert.

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abuse in Zion. It does. Like in a big systematic way. And, you know, I looked also, Elder Helam's other job was a church Sunday school president for the whole church. And, you know, in the 1990, the church started making tons of pamphlets that we would study every Sunday at church. They had a picture of profit on everything and the different manuals. And he was over making those. And you have to have a certain kind of charisma to know how to take a religion that has kind of, you know, more extreme things in it and moderate it into the world that were. I mean, the whole world started moderating, you know, things.

And Doughty, you know, doubled down and this extremism. But he was, sorry, that was a distraction. But this guy, you know, he, I assume that to be the guy that would be called to handle all those books, you would have to handle all the crazy questions about the church history and know how to rationalize everything in a way that made everybody feel peaceful. And maybe do it extremely well. have a lot of pride and think that you're incredible at it. And if you were doing all that work, that life's work and some child abusers came along

that would just make look all as hell inside, you might be tempted to cover them up. You might be tempted to feel threatened by anything. And you might justify a means to an end that it's worth lying and covering the stuff up and breaking the law. And, I mean, I never knew about Eldahelam. I wondered if that was his case or I wondered if maybe he was closer to the sexual pedophiles themselves and he was scared that he'd seen what we'd done to show the truth. Like, he was president of camp that had pedophiles all over it, actively practicing

pedophilia. Like, that, that's concerning. I mean, when I was in scout camp, I was 14 years old, and I was just bedazed by the abuse and daylight that was happening or the grooming and the stuff of this guy and how he was not in daylight, but where he was taking people at night and abusing them. And then I was sitting there in the office, in the lunch room, when just erased that name. So I don't want a victim to be on it. Got it. Yeah. Well, he's an adult now.

He's a kid at the time. His father was the Elias. He was the representative for all of Boy Scouts of America for the Mormon church. Big calling. Let's see. Wait. But he saw this necklace on my neck and he was this certain kind of necklace. And he goes, oh, what are you going to do with that?

necklace that Brad Stolls gave you. I said, what do you mean? And he goes, I burned mine. And I didn't know that was a ritual with his victims. Brad Stolls would put a necklace on a kid and make them feel like they're real special and just treat them really good at camp. And that alarmed me and I started, I mean, I was feeling real uncomfortable about some abuse that happened a while ago and my brain was like messing it up trying to deny it. And then that kind of sparked things and I started asking a little while, I mean, I was feeling, investigating. People are getting merit badges and I'm running around talking to kids and hearing

these stories and asking more and more questions. And soon I know about all sorts of pedophiles and all sorts of funny stories about pedophilia going on in that camp. And I don't want to use the word generations because that's what I used to use. But now I don't want to use that because that infuse that victims become pedophiles. And that's a myth. You know, it's a damaging one. So I'm not going to build that up. But, but for, generations of years there had been multiple pedophiles there and i started just this overwhelmed amount of victims and a subculture where people laughed about it and joked about it like it was nothing and and so um yeah that was elder helen's scout camp wow yeah i mean bradstall's

confessed to 24 victims comes. Jeff. Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead, Jeff. Oh, Jeff was, I'll remember a name. My mind just one of the worst guys. My brain just blanked out on the was up there at camp above everybody.

So the guy, Alia Lopes, had me get on the phone with top church, like top people over scouting. and then they're higher up and all while I was there and they were all telling me not to tell my parents that would destroy camp and that they would take care of it and the guy just kept sexually abusing my friends and other people that I can't really mention you. Yeah.

So full circle, full circle, you get therapy after all this trauma. It's Jody Hildebrand and now Jody Hildebrandt and now Jody Hildebrandt has been charged and arrested for child abuse herself. Well, yeah. I mean, the crazy thing about it is like, I mean, I think of the irony. Where's Mark Twain when we need them to say something funny? Right. I can't help you that right now.

I wish that was Mark Twain. I've been thinking and thinking, how do you get a funny spin that's true that makes people feel like human again off of this? Right. Yeah. No, I often use humor to diffuse and this is even I'm stumped right now. You know, we all manipulate people on accident without even knowing we're doing it. The emotional language is hard to understand. But when people have repeated it to a fine-tuned comb, then it's methodic.

They know ahead of time, do this, do this, and this will happen. It's a different kind of criminal than somebody that's just confused about a topic. Yeah. Well said. You know, I guess, yeah, this. This is deep. This case is just beginning, I think. And I have to say, in some ways, my mind is going multiple places, too. I'm connecting dots in my own life.

You got to follow the money. Yeah. Dodie's doctor and was break off everybody's sick. Everybody's sick. You're sick, so you can't decide when to leave my group. Everybody else is sick, so you need to break the relationship with these people that are normal your health and your balancing and everything else in your life her doctrine was that if you break a person's support in every area they'll be a hundred percent dependable on her and you know it's

great job security as a psychologist and you get some the moment these mormon therapy groups go into the charisma and the big promises and the huge fears they are and the in the teaching addiction as a form to isolate someone from all their health relationships. Now, I thought if a guy looked at porn and was worried he looked at it, too much the best thing you could do is have sex with a beautiful woman that loved him. You know, instead to isolate these people alone and this crazy thing. I mean, you have to get the sociopath view of this to understand the machinery that's at

place, like the inputs, the outputs, and stuff. I mean, this, I mean, it's just incredible. The sophisticated she got. You know, in my case, protective order comes around. My wife comes home from a meeting with Jody. She asked me to be their child. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm in the tub with a kid.

We're at the point where the relationship is supposed to die soon, so we're not allowed to hug or kiss and we're not allowed to have sex. It's been a while. I haven't had any sex for months. And my ex-wife walks into coach by Jody, you know. And I didn't know this until years later did I even unravel this. She walks into the bathroom in lingerie acting seductive. Totally not what the women in Jody's minions that she's making them would do for a guy.

I think from a moment she starts laughing. And I think for a moment that we're back to our normal relationship. And I tell her, hey, you got to come get the baby out of the tub. And I hand it to her and she takes the baby out. And then she comes back in. And then she just turns her back to me and acts like she's disqual. disgusted by me and walks off. So I turned my back to her.

I would never remember this story. But when the protective order came out, she starts talking about how I'm a victim of sexual abuse and so I don't have healthy boundaries. And then I had to ask for my baby to get out of the tub and she caught me turning my back because I had an erection. Wow. I heard that being a victim of abuse and my biggest fear in my whole life

was that people would think that I would be like that from that terribly small-minded group of people that just exploit those insecurities for their agenda. I heard that. I couldn't even breathe. I had like a panic attack in the parking lot outside of the courtroom. And the thing was then I was over. It didn't matter. Didn't matter what the truth was.

All that mattered is now when I say that I'm not like this and I say it a million times because I'm totally broken and alone and without my kids and trying to make sense of the world, everyone's going to think that I'm guilty of it just by hearing me say, that I didn't do this. And that's what Jody does to innocent people. So I come to my own conclusion. She seems like a soft criminal, right? But if you can falsely accuse somebody of murder,

say, for example, let's say murder, and they served their whole life punishment for that and it was false, don't you kind of feel that the action of bearing false testimony in that case would be like, if you put it on a scale, it would weigh as much as murder. if the punishment for murder was served

than in other words like you know if she can destroy somebody's life like this I mean I would have rather gone to prison for five years than gone through that divorce yeah I don't think she's I don't yeah I don't think she sounds like a soft criminal if that means anything to you I think she sounds diabolical

well that's what's so Ted Bundyish about her smile and her soft voice and her her ability to say words at the right time so she's not talking over people and to villainize people who are you know like she's she's just incredible at that but apparently when she feels so powerful and overestimates it her blind spot is to know that you can't duct tape children and abuse them that blows my mind do you think she really didn't know that or do you She knew exactly what she was doing because I want to think she actually does know that.

Okay. So here's the question. Yeah. It's a million dollar question. So my ex-wife wrote back and forth emails with Jody on stuff. And when Jody was coaching her to get to the honor code office to, they knew that I had to have a 21-year-old person with me to be with my kids while this was all going on. And the honor code office started calling anybody in that would go with me and they're accusing them of allegations and threatening them if they were around me. So I couldn't have anybody with me so they couldn't go see my kids.

And that was all going on. And it turned out this huge fiasco with a 500-page honor code office thing. It was just crazy the way the honor code office, that's a whole other story. It's a huge liability for them. It was completely unethical. They were never punished for it, and I have all the documents. In fact, when I subpoenaed them, they mixed them up, shuffled them. It took us three weeks to understand the documents and sequence because they were so guilty that they didn't want us to understand them, so they mixed them up.

And, I mean, it was outrageous the way the Brigham Young Honor Code Office worked. I mean, they would take, and Jody was coaching my ex. and talking to the honor code office and facilitating all this stuff. She was there doing this. What year was this then, 1990? 2007, I think. Oh, 2007. Okay, a lot later.

Yeah. I need to check the date. It might be awful year. So, but she was, you know, tell you some examples. And I had to go back on my post and erase the name because I realized I was outing somebody's abuse from the honor code office without realizing it while. I was sharing my own traumatic experience and the information. Yeah.

But there was a particular woman that was helping. And so she'd been a victim of abuse as a kid. Honniquot office called her in. She was helping me with my kids. So they called her in. They spent forever talking to her in detail about the child abuse that happened to her as a kid. And then they accused her of having sex with me. And then they, they, uh,

her having a relationship. We never had sex. And they accused her of that and they put her on probation and said if she ever talked to me again, they'd throw her out of school. Oh, wow. And I mean, the list goes on. In the honor code office records, there was this one girl, really nice return missionary. And they were like, let's put her on probation. This isn't their records. And they're like, she's just helping me with my kids. No romantic interest, nada, just a nice friend of mine from grade school. And they're like, wait, let's not go after her because she's going to graduate from school soon and we can't put the probation on her. So let's just not mess with her. So they're just like calling people in.

I mean, the one girl that they had her relive all of her traumatic abuse and accused her of all these bad things that shame and build it up, she fell apart after that. Like she was in major counseling, went to an institution. She was a, she was a, she was a, she was a, 4.0 student. Like, she had like a really nice degree. And, you know, when you want to be perfect and you're in a high church family and perfection is the case and this happens to you, this is devastating. And but Jody was working on that. She's filled in those honor code records telling them stuff about me. And the article office was like in the records that I subpoenaed, they're like, they're talking to my bishop and they're saying to him, we're not. We're not. We're not. allowed to give you our records so making sure you don't tell him that we're giving you these records but here's the case the therapist says this and this and this and this and this and this and this gosh i we subpoenaed the her records that therapist jody hiller we subprided her records of me she never knew she never asked about my life she didn't know shit about me she didn't even spend time to

talk to me and and yet she had come to this diagnosis that in the medical field or in the psychology you have to go through process to diagnose and have records for it too and she said nothing and so you know uh so yeah that oh here's the so you're question about the sociopath so there's joe my ex is going in she's got to talk to the honor code office they're asking some stuff oh here's another one that poor girl that i told you about that has been abused and fell they're sitting there like they call her back in and they uh no they call my ex in And they think, are you sure that Adam had sex with this person? And my ex says, well, he had an affair.

And then he said, it's sex? And she goes, well, I'm not sure about that. She goes, but it was an emotional affair. And he explains to her in these honor code records that an emotional affair in having sex are different. And they had put her on probation for having sex. and the honor code office, once they discovered from the person that made the accusation that she had not had sex with me, the honor code office never contacted her and asked her forgiveness and said, sorry for punishing her for having sex with me.

According to, destroyed this girl's life. She got tons of medication. And the thing is like, that's huge in the Mormon church to, I mean, that's next to murder in those days, you know. that ruined your chance for temple marriage. Absolutely. All the other siblings got one, but not you now. Your whole life got changed by this. Yeah, oh, here's the here's the one.

I was up to like thinking all these people they, you know, I try to get people the benefit of the doubt. Like, oh, they're just having a hard time. They were mean. They didn't mean that. I try to think for them. I do that too. I would have said that.

Yep. And I use my grace in my mind to define them, right? Well, there's this part where Morwenna's in these emails that she's corresponding with Jody. And she's talking about going into the Honor Code office. And she needs to convince these people. I can't remember and I need the emails. I'm going to say ahead of time. I might not get this exactly right.

But I promise it's there. But she's in there and she's trying to convince them that she's a victim of some terrible thing that I've been doing. and she's talking to Jody about it and Jody explains to her form of sophisticated manipulation that will make these people think that she's a victim. Yeah, pity place. And she goes, she goes in there

and she does exactly what Jody told her to do. She comes out of there. Well, in the honor code office in their records from the same day, they're like, she came in, this terrible stuff happened, we've got to help her, this is this, we're going to do this and this, So they're breaking all their own rules to save this girl.

And then in the emails between Jody and my ex, my ex, rides, oh yeah, they were total suckers. They completely fell for it. And Jody's like, yeah, that's awesome. So she knows what she's doing. Yeah, and I think the prosecuting attorney in Southern Utah should have a chance to see those emails. I absolutely agree.

she knows what she's doing. I want to see these emails. Because as they taught us in the Mormon church, do what is right and let the consequence follow. Yeah. And that's, you know, just, yeah, so that's the, and what's sad is, I don't want to say this completely,

but I suspect that, Jody finds women with real bad control issues and teaches them how to become sociopathic and destroys their lives, destroys other people's lives. And in the future, you know, just just huge problems in society. I agree. I agree she handpicks her victims. She sees what she can do to them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's kind of weird because it's She does it in a way that has so many steps that we can't have a concrete cause and effect that holds her responsible. Yeah. You know, it's interesting coercive control.

This is a thing, but coercive control just became illegal in the UK. And the U.S. doesn't have a law like that, but it's a fascinating part of this, I think. A lot of what she's doing is a blurred line with laws, right? What's illegal and what isn't. but if coercive control is against the law, then I think things become a lot more clear, too, about what she's doing and about how she's manipulating. Yeah.

But I've got that. I got that correspondence in those emails. Do you? I got the papers, yeah. And I, you know, and I've got it, when you look at it in its timeline, my dad's magnificent. He tried to save his son from this.

And he spent all the hours, organizing all the papers, taking the scouting, or the honor code records and emails between them and putting it all in the timeline so you could see how the story actually happened. And there are very, very creepy other parts where my ex was coached to try to make it look like our childhood been abused that got completely thrown out of court. And this was this was Jody's framework of trying to make it look working with her to try to make things look a certain way. And and sorry, that story would tell him so hard. I feel like I shouldn't even have told it.

It's extremely, you ask how dangerous Jody is. I think if Jody could take an innocent person and have them go to prison for child abuse. And if she, if we all knew that person was. innocent and she did it one after another after another after another I think she should if people knew she knew what she was doing and she was doing that I think she would be doing the same level of destruction that you know that like it's different it maybe it's like that serial killer that kills doctors patients instead of normal people a medical serial killer yeah yeah they're in a different category they're not as bad there's oh maybe it's then you know they hooked to other

religions of thought and blurring it all up and stuff. But at the end of the day, someone out there's missing their loved one because someone murdered them. Yes. There's probably hundreds of men who don't have their children because the fragile, not good at best, SV courts in Utah, were completely hijacked by this lady's work. And I knew, I knew a girl. that said her brother killed himself while this was going on. Oh. I've told my story, it totally traumatized her. She couldn't talk about it.

And she opened you up about her brother. He said the exact same thing was happening and that he killed himself. Oh. I tried to get her to come forward and talk about this stuff. She never could. It was too much. Too much. You know, I think that your voice, I just want you know,

I think your voice is going to bring a lot more victims forward and give them the confidence, which is what you hope. I believe that's exactly what's going to happen. I think there's going to be a dam that opens. Oh, let me tell victim's something if my voice has heard. There's a real negative feeling that happens after you come forward, and it lasts for a while, and it's a real thing. It's real damaging.

It makes you feel real dark, and most people get scared of that feeling, so they run away from talking. But what I've learned is that if you do it, you won't feel better at first. You'll feel worse for a while, maybe have PTSD trauma, and maybe miss up a lot of your relationships.

Maybe you'll get the boress over it because you can't think of anything else for a while. But if you just hold your head high and you just keep working on believing that the truth matters, after, who knows, often it's like six months even. You'll get to this point where you feel like as good as your old self and then suddenly you'll graduate into this new area where you feel better and better and better to an area you could never reach before. And you've got to be in it for the long game so that you can change your life. and the lives of all the people that need to come forward. And courage is courageous.

That's Brian Napenberger, my buddy from Netflix. He's absolutely courage. Courage is courageous. He's now, you know, he's doing this story from Netflix right now in a docu-series on this. And that's what they're seeing is with victims that when they come forward. And it's not as hard to come out. It was hard for me to come out when my whole state and religion

and everyone was against me, and it was before the me too. And I was a guy where everyone was stereotyped as being dangerous predator for being a victim. That was a hard time to come out when your religious leaders said you were destroying the church and people, you know, all these sluos of us. But today we have each other. And there's thousands and millions of us. We have incredible power that we never had before. And so this life altering thing for most of us won't be about changing the world. like it's been in some times with some of us that did this in the beginning.

But changing the world, it will be about changing your world. And, you know, it'll heal stuff like, take, for example, you have all these traumas when you date people because of what happened in the past. You tell us this shit for six months and you become datable. Like it changes you. It does real change inside of people. You know, the right, the truth does matter. It does set people.

free. It does need to be there. It has an extremely expensive cost to share it and talk about it mentally, emotionally, psychologically. But there is nothing more transformative than, as Jody Hildebrand always says, getting validation for something that seriously violated boundaries. Over her words, her list of words that she uses, validation, boundaries, addiction, you know, self-dil. deception. Those are all that she just articulates those words into narratives and circles. Just like, I think it was the guy that did Star Wars that said there's only like so many drama plots and all movies ever made. Right. They just learn what they are and they use them over and over.

Right. Yeah, you know, just figured out how to use those into a certain scenario with vulnerable people and just use the same boring, stupid, limitless, loveless, systematic, methodic stuff. over and over. Yeah. I hope you know how brave you are. You are really courageous. And I hope you're, like, I hope you do okay after this. And I, you know, I want to tell you too, like.

I'll be, okay. My wife's in the other room putting a baby stroller together. Oh. It's just got a smile on her face. And, you know, it's just one of those things. Like, victims everywhere, hear me. You don't realize this, but you do not believe you're innocent. I mean, that's the thing.

You do not feel like you're innocent. And yeah, you're looking for meaning with your life with all this crazy stuff that happen to. And, you know, you also want to have a good, healthy, beautiful relationship with somebody. And, you know, it's just the recipe for that is having the truth come out, coming forward with the truth, dealing with the ship for, six months or whatever it takes. And then you get this craziness that leaves you and these insecurities leave you and you feel

normal for the first time in a very, very long time. And so, yeah, I absolutely believe that being accused of child abuse when you're innocent is for me worse than being abused as a child. And both have happened to you. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine I change all the laws to catch dangerous predators and I come down here to Utah

and they point all the laws of me. And they don't even follow due process. They don't even have a victim. They don't even have a statement of a crime. They don't even have a statement of me threatening, acting, talking, or doing anything. They just use a stereotype that I was a victim and then a miscontextextualized psych evaluation out of context to argue a few points with the commissioner that sitting there with the top church leaders all in a situation.

I never once in my whole life had a sexual feeling that deviated away from a female close to my same age. Right. That's me. I'm not going to blame some people if they had different issues because of certain traumas they went through, but I was lucky I didn't have those traumas. Right. You know, and, and, and, uh, but, um, what was my point?

Sorry, when I talk about stuff that, oh, the, the, the, the bathtub thing, uh, the reason that I talk about this isn't because I want everybody to know a sensitive story that they could just turn out its face. It's because I believe that the truth sets people free and that, you know, that you tell the truth and unfortunately, that's a key example of how, like, Jody could influence somebody. Like she coaches a mom to dress lingerie when he's in the tub and to go in there when she's coaching every move. The mom's saying, do I kiss him?

Should I talk to him? Here's all the rules. Super strict. She comes in lingerie into the tub right after she has your session with Jody. And I, I take the, I wonder if there's some identical stories. I wonder if there's like duplicates. There could be identical stories. There could be funny.

There's like 10 of them. There's like my neighbor down the road and like 10 other guys and you're just like oh I don't feel so personal anymore. I was guys I was really feeling personal about that and super damaging there. You know part of coming forward about this part and talking about it is that I've needed to heal from this. You know, I've always felt that I was an honest man in all parts of my life I could tell. and in this one area i was and they out they out maneuvered me yeah jody always says the right thing to distract from the crime where she's hurting somebody and it's a real hypocritical way to just to make everybody think that there's a victim somewhere and all their emotions and

everything get flouted it up and then they don't do the right thing and people break rules and stuff like that that's how she works that's wild That's wild. Thanks for sure. Yeah, her comment about the children, being in danger, never let them near anyone. That was her just doing her thing, but this time was harder to show because it's more in the open of the crazy. But in all these cases, she's, yeah, she's master of saying the subtle comment right at the right moment to redirect everything. Right.

She's got all her practice in her groups. Deflect and redirect. You know, and it's true, it's not going to work this time because they're children. Like, you know, children just can't be duct taped. it's it's yeah that's it's not going to work this time but but interesting to see that that's that's her m-o that's what she does well i've got to tell you we've been on the phone for three hours and 23 minutes yes we have i will let you go i really appreciate you coming forward on saturdays we do we delve deep into different cases and this saturday this is what we're

covering and this foundation and your interview prior to that I think is one of the most important things to this case, you know, if we really want to understand this case. And we realize that, as you point out, it's more than this case. There's a lot more to it. So thank you. Okay. Sure. Appreciate it. Thank you, Adam. And you have a great day and we'll be in touch. 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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