Rotten Mango - Ruby Franke “Shares Bed” With Evil Woman/Marriage Counselor To Get Rid of Demons
Episode Date: March 20, 2025Jodi is one of the most recommended marriage therapists in the area but there’s something about her that feels - wrong. “Every relationship needs to die in order to be reborn.” Her pattern i...s simple yet effective. Find the husband’s addiction. Each husband has one. It’s usually watching too many explicit videos, staring too long at his female coworkers, or just having too many inappropriate thoughts. Find the addiction. And stomp. It. Out. Shame the husband for how he’s ruining the family and give the wife strength and power to run away from him… straight into Jodi’s arms. It almost seems like that is her intention. And it seems to work like a charm - every single time. And just maybe - if Jodi really tries… maybe the men will even end up in prison. Then the wife will have nobody but Jodi. Youtuber / family blogger, Ruby Franke, should be very familiar with this. Because now all she has - is Jodi. Full show notes at rottenmangopodcast.com
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They say that spirits all have something that they want.
And ever since Jodie Hildebrandt moved into the Frankie household, just weird things have
been happening.
People are hearing footsteps inside of the walls.
That's what it sounds like.
It's hard to explain, but it sounds as if someone is inside of the wall just walking
around through the walls.
The Frankies obviously didn't check inside the wall, but it through the walls. The Frankies obviously
didn't check inside the wall but it's starting to freak some of them out.
Whatever it is, it feels like Jodie brought it into the house with her.
Whatever these spirits are. And now she's sitting on the bathroom floor while the
dad, Kevin Frankie, is shoving a camera in her face documenting this allegedly
torturous situation while Kevin's wife Ruby
is sitting next to this middle-aged Jodie Hildebrand holding her so that Jodie doesn't
accidentally harm herself.
This happens maybe once a day, maybe a few times a day.
It's like another being just enters Jodie Hildebrand's body and starts controlling
her movements and
it's so easy to tell because immediately Jodie Hildebrandt's eyes get pinched
closed and she starts breathing heavily she looks like she's in pain she looks
perhaps even constipated today she's on the floor with her hands fisted into
balls and she's slamming it down onto her chest. Ruby is gently trying to stop her but
nothing's really working. By this point they've tried everything. I mean Kevin was known as the
resident exorcist for a minute, trying to cleanse Jodie of whatever evil spirits are following her
around. He says, I would place my hands on her head and then I would command the demons to depart
and then I would state every name of Jesus Christ
that I could possibly think of.
And those evil spirits were very reactive to those names.
It became very clear.
The minute he would start saying those names,
Jodie would thrash and hiss and wail and growl at people.
It was like she was being hurt
every time Kevin said one of those names.
What is it that the spirits even want? It doesn't make sense why Jodie Hildebrandt.
Jodie lays there, her eyebrows are crunched up in pain, and this new voice comes out
and it comes out like a deep, aggressive voice.
She's mine.
What did she just say?
She's mine.
She's mine.
She's mine.
She knows I own her.
These are all recorded?
Yeah.
Who is she that Jodie Hildemarine is talking about?
What does she want to do with her?
Perhaps she's talking about Ruby Franke.
Maybe she wants Ruby Franke to be hers.
And maybe she's going to do everything in her power to make sure that she is hers
This is the case of Ruby Frankie and Jodie Hildebrand
the therapist and the youtuber that were arrested for child abuse for holding two kids captive in the basement and
torturing them them.
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to directly support a survivor, Jesse Hildebrandt,
who endured abuse at the hands of their aunt, Jodie Hildebrandt.
Their information will be in the show notes if you would like to share your support as well.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team,
and we would like to thank you guys for your continued support.
As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. Today's case involves some very well-known names in
the family vlogging world, Ruby and Kevin Frankie, plus their six children, best
known as their channel name, 8 Passengers. All the minors in today's case have been
protected and will simply be referred to as either boy, girl, or just their first
initial. We will be using the names of the two eldest children, Sherry and
Chad. They are of legal age. They've publicly spoken out about Ruby and Jodie. And additionally,
Sherry recently published a book that I read and like I said, you need to get 10 copies of this
because no coverage of any news station, any documentary even compares to the truly visceral way.
It's like such a vulnerable way that Sherry is able to convey her feelings about everything that's happened and she does it without-
I mean, there's so many points where it's very depressing to read, but ultimately the amount that she's shown to have grown from this is
inspiring and incredible.
It's one of those books that I think we will all be thinking about two days after reading it, two weeks, two months, and even two years down the line.
Also, I believe she narrated the book herself,
so if you're more into audiobooks, that would be a great way to listen.
As for content warnings, there are descriptions of food restriction,
child abuse, CSA, religious abuse, therapy abuse,
as well as just overall abuse and torture in general.
Now, side note, there is going to be a lot of conversation
about the LDS Church in these episodes.
Ruby and Jodie were devout members of the LDS Church,
or at least they claim or they thought they were,
but they should not be used as representations of what the faith means
or how it should be practiced.
We are also not here to discuss the LDS Church or faith as a whole.
I personally don't have much experience,
but like with any religion, there's going to be bad people that do bad things, to discuss the LTS church or faith as a whole, I personally don't have much experience,
but like with any religion, there's gonna be bad people that do bad things and sometimes,
if the establishment protects them, I do think that there should be consequences for all
those parties involved as well.
With that being said, this was originally supposed to be a three-part series, but with
the addition of Ruby's personal journals detailing the torture, Kevin's claims that
he did not know the kids were being abused, as well as just all the online conspiracies
discourse, there's another woman that a lot of people want to be arrested in connection
with Jodie and Ruby.
This is like the three Musketeers and people online are saying, you've only arrested two
of the three Musketeers.
So there's a lot of discourse there.
Now this is going to be part two of the now four part series
Please go watch part one if you haven't already and that's in depth onto Ruby Frankie's YouTube career the channel eight passengers
how they go from making millions of dollars to just being canceled for suspected child neglect and all of the video proof that Ruby
Frankie is a pretty horrible mom in this part
We will be going over Jodie Hildebrand
and how she likes to force divorces
as a so-called marriage counselor
and how she likes to ruin people's lives.
In part three, we go over the torture house
that is her $5 million mansion in the middle of nowhere.
And in part four, we will go over
all of the online conspiracies,
as well as the prison calls,
how passionate netizens have been that
something needs to happen to both Kevin Franke and Pam.
There's a woman named Pam.
So with that being said, let's get started.
Do you think that you can pinpoint when exactly you made the worst decision of your life?
Because marriage counseling is ruining Adam Paul Steed's entire life, including
his marriage. Not even the, oh the marriage counselor is biased and she
keeps siding with my wife, that a lot of husbands like to argue. It is so much
worse than that. Marriage counseling will kick start a chain of events that has
Adam kicked out of college, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt hated by every single person he knows and in jail. He's holding his little daughter in his
arms when the officers arrive. This is a protective order we're gonna have to
take your child. The little girl starts screaming daddy no daddy no and the
authorities they more or less just rip her from Adam's arms. He has no clue what
the hell is happening right now. In exchange for his child being taken from him,
Adam is now branded the most evil person
in the entire campus of BYU in Utah.
How old is Adam?
He's in his early 20s.
He's a college student.
Okay, and the kid is?
One.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, now if you see him on campus,
it's like seeing Satan himself just walking casually through the corridors
He's evil. You know, he's got like a 500 page honor code file in his name, which okay side note
BYU is a religious institution. So while a lot of institutions they have honor code offices
They're typically for policing the academic integrity of students
Whereas BYU you could basically start a file
for your roommate if you caught them watching Thirst Traps, or if you catch them secretly
drinking coffee, because BYU is sponsored by the LDS church. The honor code includes behavioral
standards established by the church, like caffeine intake. There's not a single drop of tea or coffee
that you're going to find on the entire campus. Yeah. So what do you drink? Energy?
No, you can't even drink energy drinks.
They love soda.
Yeah, that's why soda shops are a big thing in Utah.
Like sugar? Just sugar?
Yeah, just straight sugar, I think.
Yeah.
Now, Adam's file is now 500 pages long.
The notes on his file are dated.
There are detailed notes of phone conversations
between the honor code office and witnesses that are calling in to explain,
Adam is too predatory to be left in this university.
Which is a very bold statement to make. I mean, they're saying that the longer that he's a student
here, the more people are in active danger. Adam and his wife, let's call her Mary, that's not her real name.
She's also a student at the university. The two of them, they have a one-year-old daughter and another baby on the way.
And Mary is actually the one that starts the honor code file in her husband's name, Adam.
She walks in one day and she reports that Adam, her husband, is delusional. He is controlling. He has violent tendencies.
She tells the honor code office that she's concerned about her husband taking
baths with their young daughter. She says it's because he's a victim of sexual
abuse when he was a kid. He does not have a healthy understanding of boundaries.
Again, this is what she's saying. And one time he asked that I take the baby out
of the tub. They're taking a bath together. I take the baby out of the tub
and he was trying to hide his erection.
That's what Mary is claiming.
She said from then on, she had to be in the bathroom at any given time that Adam was alone
with any of the kids.
And Mary is just scared of him now.
And it's not even just Mary that Adam is scaring.
Mary claims that she has this marriage counselor, a therapist.
And Adam is threatening the therapist too, like they're both terrified of Adam.
Naturally, the honor code office, they want to talk to the therapist, and she's an open
book.
She tells them, well listen, Adam and Mary came in for marriage counseling, and it was
very clear from the get-go.
I mean, due to Adam's behaviors, it was just gonna go downhill.
The file reads, the therapist advised and explained
that Mary wanted marriage help.
At first, the story was a common theme of a wife struggling
to understand her husband's problems
with self-pleasure and porn consumption.
However, the therapist quickly became alarmed
because Mary had been convinced that, by Adam,
that whatever Adam was doing was not anything wrong,
that this is just the way that men behave.
The therapist states she believes Adam is manic and with the encouragement of therapy,
Mary has been trying to set boundaries and be more assertive with herself in the relationship
and Mary had quote, began to waken up to what was acceptable behavior and how confused she
had been and how off track Adam has been.
The therapist is explaining to the honor code officer, I mean, Adam is masterful at keeping
Mary in this constant state of confusion.
The notes continue, the therapist explained that Mary felt too threatened to comprehend
or connect with the seriousness of some situations, but once Mary started putting in boundaries,
Adam did not like that, and that's putting it mildly. The therapist states,
He's psychologically unstable.
He has an intense delusional fixation on me, the therapist, and he keeps saying that I'm the antichrist.
Which sounds alarming, right? And he's violent.
The therapist strongly asserts that she's just scared that the two of them have kids at home.
One example that the therapist gives to the honor code office is that Adam held their infant daughter over the third floor balcony
and he was just giggling. He was like, oh, holding you over the third floor balcony. Ha ha. He thought it was a funny joke.
The therapist claims she would not be surprised if he does anything drastic to Mary or the kids so that they don't leave him.
He is just so extremely manipulative, pathological, narcissistic, and dangerous.
The therapist explains that out of all of her years treating thousands, honestly, yeah
thousands of married couples, I've never been terrified of a client until Adam.
There was this one instance where they were both in my office and i was so
physically threatened by him i had to position myself between him and the door so that i could
make a hasty escape if i needed to this was the first time in all the years that i've been a
therapist that i've ever had to do that she goes on to allege that not only has adam palstead
essayed his own wife but also their one-year-old daughter.
She states confidently with her whole chest,
"'Adam is the most dangerous person
"'that I have ever met in my life.
"'He is very clearly a predator.'"
That therapist's name is Jodie Hildebrandt.
When Adam first looks into Jodie,
his potential new marriage therapist, he does like a quick
Google search on her just to see what's going on.
She is one of the most recommended therapists in the Wasatch Front of the Mormon Church
from for like the past 20 years, honestly.
Her website sounds good.
It says, my style is compassionate yet direct and clear of what is necessary to fully change
and champion any addictive or self-destructive behavior, whether it be
ravenous addictions, feelings of inadequacy, conflicts in relationships,
intimacy problems, communications and breakdowns, and frankly block anything
that prevents having and creating peace and joy. at the bottom of her website the
banner reads, what you do is not who you are.
I don't even know what that means.
Her resume on paper seems great.
Bachelor's in English, graduate work in educational psychology,
earned a master's degree.
Then she worked at Cirque Lodge, which is a nationally known
drug and alcohol treatment center, which is frequently visited
by celebrities. It's expensive.
It can range from $30,000 to $100,000
to get treated for one month.
One month.
And Jodie would not stop talking about it.
She claims that she treated Paris Hilton
not for drugs, but for bad behavior
at the school that...
the camp, if you will, that Paris Hilton was sent to
that was terrible.
She was there, working there?
Yeah, that's what she claims now adam did think
that it was a little strange how little she cared to protect clients information but maybe it's
because paris hilton's personal life has been all over the tabloids since forever so it's not
actually breaking any patient protection laws it is weird though and adam did think it was weird
besides it's fine because adam and Mary are going in for
marriage counseling. They've been married for two years when they're recommended by
a church bishop to go see Jodie. The church bishop is like, oh, that's a good one. Adam
says Jodie was very charismatic right off the bat. Mary's instantly obsessed, she's
really happy that she's working on herself, and Adam was just excited for his wife because
he thinks maybe Jodie is a good fit. She's firm, but she seems very wise in a fun way.
She doesn't mind laughing and making jokes so that the message gets delivered.
I mean, for a church-recommended therapist, she doesn't seem like she takes herself too seriously.
At least in the beginning.
As for Adam's relationship and marriage itself, there's just a lot to work through. Just a lot.
They're trying to balance being new parents while also being college students.
They have a one-year-old. Mary is pregnant with their second.
They're both students at BYU. They're both Mormon.
But for Adam's wife, she's not even just religious.
It's not, oh, church on Sundays. Her dad has a very high standing in the church,
so there is pressure for them to be the best LDS church members out there,
which naturally is not the healthiest.
Adam says that whenever he googled something, if he even saw for like 20 seconds, okay,
maybe he googled it.
Maybe he googled a naked woman's picture for two seconds, and if he looked at it for
two seconds and he had a quick, lustful thought about it, he would call his wife and apologize
profusely.
Like you would think that he met another woman at motel 6.
He's saying, I feel terrible.
What I did was terrible.
This is terrible.
It probably doesn't help that Adam's entire start to their
marriage is just rough.
All of Mary's family members hate Adam.
They were against this marriage to begin with from the get-go.
Adam was one of the biggest whistleblowers of the LDS Church, and it's not that he turned against the faith,
he's like a devout LDS member even at that point,
he was assaulted by a higher-up in the LDS Church when he was a child.
he was one of the first few victims to kickstart a decade-long chain of almost 93,000 victims who have come
forward with essay claims against the Boy Scouts of America.
Wait, 93,000 victims?
Have come out against the Boy Scouts of America.
He's one of the persons who started this whole-
Chain of events, yes.
So he was looked down upon?
Yeah. Now, it gets very
complicated because you're like, what does the Boy Scouts have to do with the
LDS church? He was, Adam was one of the first people to try and get some justice.
So quick context, the LDS church was the largest sponsor of the Boy Scouts of
America. Scouting was considered a big part of the youth development in the
church. So about one out of every five Boy scouts were of the LDS faith they were essentially sent by the church as part of their church youth activities
now there are LDS higher ups that also hold significant positions in the boy scouts executive board if you are an eagle scout in the boy scouts which is like the top 5% ranking it is a badge of honor at church.
So they're two separate organizations, but not really.
They're very merged together.
Adam Paul Steed grew up in the LDS church.
In fact, his dad works as a seminary teacher for the church.
They're very serious.
When he's 14, he goes to a Boy Scouts camp in Idaho where he is essayed by a scout leader,
but who also happens to be an LDS church leader named Brad.
After the essay at the camp, he tries to report it to the Boy Scouts leadership. They don't care.
Adam straight up calls the police himself. He's like, come get this guy. He's very brave. He's 14.
Now, he admits, Brad admits and confesses to molesting not just Adam, but 24 boys, and he pleads guilty.
He receives a dainty little 150 day jail sentence. That's about
a week per boy that he abused. About a week. That's it. What kind of jail sentence is that? But how did
he get away with essaying so many boys? Adam and his father, they go to the church higher-ups to
report the abuse because he's also a higher-up church leader, Brad the abuser. I mean, he's not
just a scout leader. He's heavily involved in the LDS
church. He has a leadership position. So according to Adam, when he brings this to the church to
report it, the church does practically everything to shut Adam up, which why? Why? Because apparently
years prior to essaying Adam, Brad confessed to essaying a six-year-old boy. His LDS bishop
church leader sent him to quote counseling and then later stated you are cured
and allowed him to keep working with children. So they're not allowed to drink coffee or even look at
photos but here you are someone who's essaying boys and you are cured. Yeah that is so bizarre.
Yeah now I think with any massive organization at least I think religion is beautiful
But sometimes they can provide
Ways for people that should not be around children to be around children and that's gonna happen anywhere in any religion
And I think in this situation the chain of command they all should be punished
I don't think that this is representative hopefully of the LDS church as a whole but this whole chain of command
Whoever his bishop was I was like you are cured is crazy as well
No, it's alleged that even after he was quote cured there were more reports more warning signs that people have reported
Hey, this bad guy is really creepy, but the Boy Scouts and the church they ignore it. They even cover it up
so when Adam and his dad they try to get justice from the church because how do you let him still be around children?
The church turns around and
allegedly
pushes the family out. They fire Adam's dad from the church as a seminar teacher and
they're just pushing this issue too much. They don't like it.
They feel like if other victims come and seek help, it's just gonna start getting messy. allegedly.
and adam, this little boy, instead of getting the support that he needs,
he starts getting treated like a money-hungry liar.
like he is just out here to get money from this church that has about a billion dollars-
i think they're worth like a billion dollars a church, yeah.
adam and his dad do not give up.
there's a lot of respect honestly for the two of them now in the LDS community and just everywhere else
Adam and his dad not only fight tooth and nail for justice and they help other victims come forward
They fight to get laws passed
So this gives an extension of the statute of limitations for SA victims in the state of Idaho
Prior if a child was SA they would have to report the abuse before their 23rd birthday.
Adam's advocating, his dad is advocating,
they get a law passed in Idaho
that you can report it at any point in your life now.
There's no statute of limitations,
which the LDS church allegedly really hated.
Really hated.
Just curious, why would you not like that?
No accusations, just thoughts. Just
kind of weird. Now even though Adam is a victim of the abuser that belonged to the LDS church,
it appears nobody cared to help him. Nobody wanted to do anything. The backlash to telling the truth,
demanding justice, trying to get other victims to get help. This is, I mean his whole entire family
has to relocate from Idaho to Utah because it was that bad. They were shunned.
That is where Adam meets his future wife Mary at BYU.
They get married, they have two kids now, and everyone is telling his wife even before
the marriage that Adam is a terrible person.
I mean he did all of these weird shady things to try and make money.
I mean the alleged church leader that tried to suppress Adam,
President Hillam, he ran the whole Boise Idaho temple. He was in a leadership position. He
also was heavily involved with the leadership of the Boy Scouts. He did everything, allegedly,
to cover up the abuse. Coincidentally, Hillam is very close friends with Mary's parents,
who are also very high up in the church.
So they're doing everything to try and prevent these two from getting married.
When Adam heard that his fiancee's family hated him, he said,
I was depressed for a couple of days, and then I remember just being like triggered
because I was a victim of child abuse, and I just remember thinking, I'm not, I mean,
I don't have problems, I'm not like that, I'm a good person.
And I remember some terrible moment, I went online and I looked at Sports Illustrated
Swimsuit Edition, and then I called my bishop and I went into this repentance process.
I called my wife, I told her I wasn't worthy to get married.
But nevertheless, the two get married, they have a one-year-old, and now she's pregnant
with their second child, and their lives are about to get harder, so they need guidance. It is natural to seek help. It's admirable to seek help
They get referred to Jodie Hildebrandt and that's when everything starts falling apart at first the changes are really small
But Adam does notice it. So Jodie likely knew Adam's history like this whole thing
Yes, and she's involved with all these leaders, right? Yes. And she wasn't as involved
with all these higher ups, but it's alleged that she saw Mary as a way to get even more influence
in the LDS church. I see. Adam says his wife would just confront him all the time, just out of nowhere,
confronting him with abstract things, very vague accusations you're in
self-denial about your own addiction what does that even mean adam says i just have a million
questions i mean it doesn't even make sense what addiction are we i was never diagnosed with any
sort of addiction nor was i actively struggling with one sure he has ptsd from the abuse he
suffered as a child but what the hell is his wife on about? But Jodie starts telling them that everyone has an addiction.
Every single person has an addiction.
Whether it's food or reading the Book of Mormon too much.
Yeah, you can do that apparently.
Every single person has an addiction.
She's explaining to these marriage counseling classes that Adam and his wife are a part of
that every action that you have comes from addiction. It's rooted in addiction. Most
of the time you don't even know that. It is the cause of every action that you
take. Are you jealous about your friend doing something? It's an addiction that's
causing the jealousy. Are you gaining a few pounds on vacation because the food
is delicious? No, it's actually an addiction. It may not be obvious at first,
but that's what Jodi's here for, right? To get to the bottom of your addiction. For example,
Jodi would teach if you have to spend time not thinking about something, like a picture of a
naked person, the fact that you have to not think about that proves that you're an addict. In other
words, all this resistance of white-knuckling not to think about the magazine on the aisle
of the grocery store, the fact that you have to not think about it, means you're a sex
addict.
which, by the way, she's talking about like playboy magazine.
she's not even talking about hustler magazine.
another huge belief that jodie teaches her married couples is from the beginning Jodie tells every single married couple
Relationships have to die so that it can be reborn again. It's like a resurrection
How do you do that?
Separation it's the concept of only if your relationship dies only then can it be reborn
It kind of makes sense
Adam says because of the worship of Christ and his resurrection in the lds faith,
in theory, this whole theory of relationships dying is almost too perfect.
but adam soon realizes, quote,
if the relationship or marriage didn't die on its own,
jodie would kill the relationship in any sociopathic way alive.
after a few weeks of being in a big group setting with a bunch of married couples and Jodie, now it's time to graduate to the next step. Split the
couples up. Husbands go off into the men's counseling group, wives go off
into the women's counseling group, and that's where things just start going
off the rails, bonkers. Adam is placed in a group setting with other husbands.
Jodie is leading it. These other husbands, week after week, are just confessing in
the man's group. They're just confessing to the most heinous predatory crimes. They're confessing
to having thoughts about SA child abuse incest. Adam is traumatized. He's a victim of CSA.
He does not feel safe in this group, but Jodie does not care. She tells him, actually, you're
on the same level as these people. He's like, no, I'm not. I don't have predatory thoughts.
These people are predators because they're confessing to these predatory thoughts. I'm not I don't have predatory thoughts these people are predators because they're confessing to these predatory thoughts I'm a victim of CSA
I feel triggered when I'm in this group she's like no you're in denial you're
just as bad I'm gonna help you see the truth this escalates until three weeks
after giving birth Adam's wife is understandably in a very sensitive state
she's vulnerable Adam says Jodie starts digging her claws just deeper. she starts helping Adam's wife
identify how she's the victim. Mary was likely very confused like what do you
mean I'm the victim? it's the oh sweetie you just don't know it yet. that's what
Jodie's saying. Jodie would tell Mary that she had been conditioned by Adam to
believe that a husband who looks at a naked picture here and there is normal. It's not normal. It's basically the same level as
cheating or domestic violence, if not worse. So of course you cannot trust him around your kids.
She's trying to tell Mary it's the same as if Adam killed someone, you know? Would you forgive him
and just hope that he doesn't kill someone else? Or maybe doesn't kill you or your baby?
Would you forgive him and just hope that he doesn't kill someone else? Or maybe doesn't kill you or your baby?
Adam is so taken aback to be treated like a predator.
I mean, he had to uproot his whole life after being victimized as a child and he's still
trying to work through the trauma and his own wife is treating him like a perpetrator.
Mary eventually tells Adam, it's your sex addiction, you just don't see it.
Side note, Adam has only seen about two hours of corn in his entire life,
but his wife is acting like he is an addict of these videos.
Mary tells Adam that he was never a victim of child essay.
The wife is telling him?
That never happened to you.
You're in denial because you have an addiction.
You made up that story because you have an addiction.
By this point, Adam is trying to convince his wife. That's crazy. Like that's crazy!
I'm not an addict, especially not for sex, and she knows that he would never lie about what happened to him.
So in this desperate attempt to try and save his marriage, Adam agrees to his wife's conditions on how to save their relationship, which is, they need to break the relationship.
So it can be resurrected, remember?
Jodie instructs them that they cannot talk to each other.
They can only talk to each other in a group setting, and they need to break the relationship
in order to rebuild it.
Adam suggests getting a second opinion, because what kind of crazy therapist even suggests
that as a marriage therapist? Butodie tells him see that's your addiction
speaking the addiction knows that you are solving your addiction by coming to
me of course the addiction doesn't want you to keep going to me addiction is a
parasite and it wants to keep being fed Mary rejects his idea like, no, I'm going with Jodie.
Now, again, this is just from Adam's perspective.
Mary has not said her side of the story, but it seems like there are, I mean,
he's got files of evidence.
He was on a big podcast called Mormon Stories, where they've been really covering
the Jodie Hildebrandt, Ruby Franke case.
That five hour long interview with Mormon Stories with Adam
has been taken down due to a court order.
So it's a little-
Why, how so?
What's going on?
There are speculations that Mary did not like
being spoken about.
But Mormon Stories, when Adam went on there,
he gave every single file that he had.
Police reports, the 500 page honor code office file.
He gave lawyer statements, every court order,
he gave everything.
He gave Jody Hildebrandt's therapy notes
that he subpoenaed.
He gave everything.
So it's still alleged, but I just,
just putting that out there. Now, Mary allegedly rejects this idea.
From this point forward, she says, we're not gonna really live together.
Like, we're gonna live together in the same apartment, because we have two kids together,
but we're not gonna speak unless Jodie is present.
She even goes as far to allegedly give Adam a letter that says,
As of today, I am no longer willing to take upon me the responsibilities that come with being your spouse.
I set the following in boundaries in order to protect myself from expectations that are
not being met in this relationship.
I will no longer do these things for you as a wife.
Cooking, cleaning, laundry, dishes, picking up stuff after you, reminding you of any of
your responsibilities or appointments, assisting you in your schoolwork, spending family time,
sharing intimacy, sharing a bed, engaging in any kind of physical touch beyond these social acceptable boundaries of friends.
I will consent to share our apartment as living space. I will consider it to have my responsibility
to take care of myself and our two children, and I will not consider it my duty to inform you of
my daily activities or plans. They have no physical, emotional, mental, or even verbal contact for weeks.
And then one day, out of the blue, allegedly, Mary, the wife, asks Adam to
give their baby a bath. So he goes, gives the baby a bath, and he says, quote,
she totally walks into the bathroom in her lingerie. Like I just remember
thinking, oh my gosh, he's finally listened to me. We're gonna get back to
our normal life and stuff. And she starts teasing me and acting like she was gonna hop in the tub
With me and I'm holding our baby our one-year-old and I was like, hey
You gotta get the baby out of the tub and I'm laughing thinking it's funny
She leaves with the baby. She comes back into the bathroom looks at me
She looks at my private parts and then she looks at me in disgust and just turns her back and walks away
That is wild what is going? That is the alleged honor code reporting
of he had an erection in the bathtub. But even if it's true then this whole
thing is like a setup. It's entrapment. But even why does that even
is that even necessary to you know, I don't know
It's weird this bathroom incident the motives behind it become even clearer later
But Mary his wife is turning into a little soldier for Jodie is what it appears to be
Adam doesn't even recognize her anymore. For example, Adam and his wife had this trip planned to go to Yellowstone
They're bringing some friends there one couple from Brazil
They just had a baby the couple from, and they don't have much money
because they're exchange students on top of all of this. So Adam really wants to
do something special for the Brazilian couple and he's like, we're gonna go on
this trip and I'm gonna help you guys pay for it. Like I will pay for all the food
on the trip. It's a big moment for Adam to be able to finally do something like
this and to, I don't know, do something special for his friends. But when they get to Yellowstone, Adam promised his wife that they were gonna
stay within an entire budget for the entire trip. Now, I believe most of the money that
they were spending was Adam's. He did get settlement money from the Boy Scouts of America,
but it wasn't a lot. It's not like he's rolling in it. And he also does not spend lavishly.
At this point, he's hundreds of thousand dollars in debt because of Jodie at this point. So at this point today. Oh today
Yes
But at this point when they're in Yellowstone
He has a little bit of money and he doesn't spend it lavishly and this is one of the times that he just wants
To spend money on his friends. Like this is a good reason to spend money
They realize when they get to Yellowstone that all the food prices are
Astronomical there because it's a tourist zone. Everyone is hiking up Yellowstone that all the food prices are astronomical there because it's a tourist zone
Everyone is hiking up the prices of all the food. Adam says it's fine, but Mary starts freaking out
Telling him that he is violating the boundaries of their relationship because he wants to feed his friends
He says I remember driving like four hours around Yellowstone
I remember driving like four hours around Yellowstone trying to find a grocery store that was cheap enough so that we could feed my friends and her baby and her baby was crying
and finally I got so upset I said I can't listen I have to do this and my wife was screaming
at me I went into the grocery store and I bought a bunch of food to feed this you know
feed all of us with and her newborn baby that was crying, I mean they were just humiliated.
Adam is like, I don't know who this woman is, but it's not my wife Mary and I'm gonna get my wife
back. But three
phone calls is what ruins everything. The first call to the police happens after a
big fight between Adam and Mary. Mary is on the phone with the police, frantically
telling them that her husband is physically abusive. Okay ma'am what's
going on? What happened? He violated the boundaries of the relationship of the
marriage. What did he do?
He left his backpack on the couch.
A few things.
I mean, one, the police were just like mouth agape shocked.
Secondly, I think this goes to show how far off the deep end Jodi has Mary,
because to confidently call the police and say that this is a transgression that is an act of domestic violence, if not comparable,
like you cannot be in a place where your brain is functioning normally.
That's how bad things are.
She genuinely believes the cops are gonna handcuff Adam,
log in his little backpack into evidence.
It doesn't even make sense.
The next day, Mary calls the police again on Adam.
This time she allegedly states that he physically abused her
by pushing against her, which is very interesting wording.
Like, did he push you?
What do you mean he pushed against you?
She states, yeah, well, I was standing here by the door.
And they ask, were you blocking him
from being able to leave the apartment?
Well, yeah.
Did he hurt you?
No.
The police leave because Adam has been incredibly patient
during all of this, but he finally decides,
okay, that was the second time,
I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Like, you gotta stop calling the police on me.
You're publicly humiliating me.
I mean, not even if the police do anything.
A lot of people are just gonna assume
that he's violent and abusive
and that the police are just being incompetent.
So Adam decides he's just going to get his life back.
And that means sleeping on his own bed for once.
He had been sleeping on the couch.
He says, I paid for the house.
I paid for the apartment.
So I went into my bedroom and I slept on my bed.
I said to my wife, if you don't want to sleep next to me, you don't have to.
But I'm not going to sleep on the floor or the couch anymore.
He was just tired of being treated like this subhuman being. Adam's wife calls the police and states that Adam attempted to essay her that night.
What did he do?
She says, well she felt like he might essay her.
The police don't do anything because again, it's not a threat.
He didn't say it, he didn't try it.
All he did was sleep in his own bed that he has every right to and she was just having a feeling?
When this does not work the way that Mary and allegedly Jodie likely intended,
Mary just disappears with their two kids for a little bit.
Now again, this is alleged at this point.
I think like any video, you have to come up with your own conclusions, do your own research,
listen to Adam share his story, and Mary has not publicly spoken out about it, so it's... but you get it. Now, Adam's one-year-old
baby, three-week-old baby, his wife, they're just gone. So after a few days, he
files a police report because he thought they'd been kidnapped, and Adam says he
went and talked to Jodie about what was happening and how heartbroken he was and
what's going on with the kids and Mary, and he says, I just remember being in this
agonizing pain, feeling it intensely, and I remember looking over at Jodie and she was smiling her
cheeks were blushing so at this point he's not resentful of Jodie yet right does he think something
is wrong with Jodie as well or he it's like a mixture of he knows that Jodie is telling her
a lot of things clearly that aren't making sense,
but at this point he's kind of confused more than anything.
He doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes between Jodie and Mary, but it's just confusing.
So from there, Adam's wife starts reporting Adam for actually trying to abuse her and the kids,
likely just making up insane stories that Jodie is feeding her.
She gets a protective order against Adam and lures him to meet up with her afterwards. So he gets served this
temporary protective order and then she's like, hey come meet up with me because I like you. Like
maybe we can work this out. But he will be in bigger trouble right? He goes and she reports him
for breaking the protective order. She's also going to the BYU Honor Code office to report him for violent and predatory behavior.
So not only is Adam facing expulsion from college, he's facing a likely divorce and 20 years in prison for breaking his protective order.
He's trying to tell his church leader, you have to help my family.
I mean, you have to read through these files because none of this is true.
Like this protective order is not true. I don't know what's going on. To which the
bishop just responds. A woman doesn't just run away from her husband unless
there's something. Adam is just looking at him shocked like what are you talking
about? You know me. The bishop is just staring at Adam. Do I know you? What? Are
you talking about like you think I'm like physically violent or I'm sexually abusing her?
He says the bishop smiles the fact that you just said that makes me know that you're guilty of those things
It is like every single person in Adam's life had just decided to turn him into the devil
He starts looking online trying to figure out what Jodie's problem is, why she's suddenly on this warpath to kind of destroy his entire life,
and reviews for Jodie Hildebrandt, the negative ones read,
She reminds me of an abuser, an abusive relationship.
She isolates her clients by setting up unrealistic expectations so they believe all their friends and family are toxic,
leaving them to only depend on her and her quote support phone calls.
It makes me sad to think about how many relationships she has poorly hurt.
Another, she's not worthy to be trusted with your marriage or relationships.
My wife went to her counseling in glasses
and the main result was that Miss Hildebrandt brainwashed my wife that I
had an addiction when I did not.
My wife was so certain that I was hiding
something as a result of this woman's lies that we had to go to an honest counselor
to help dispel the dishonesty that Jodie Hildebrandt had told my wife. Do not go of this woman's lies that we had to go to an honest counselor to help dispel
the dishonesty that Jodie Hildebrandt had told my wife.
Do not go to this woman.
Go to a specialist who respects both members of the marriage and does not spread so-called
empowering lies.
And another, a very different history with Jodie than most.
I'm a pretty well-known therapist and I trained under Jodie Hildebrandt for a year.
As I trained under her, I saw her tear apart families
and destroy relationships.
I believe she is truly evil, and I don't say that lightly.
I have done so much therapy for people coming out of her,
quote, cult, who were traumatized by her therapy.
I don't have an axe to grind,
but I am tired of people getting hurt by her work.
I'm reluctant to speak out against colleagues
and other therapists, however, I wouldn't mind somehow, some way, helping
people see how dangerous this woman is. But nobody is willing to listen to Adam
or anybody else that has said anything negative about Jodie. Adam was referred
to Jodie by the bishop from the church. Jodie works as a therapist for this
massive company called Life Star, which, side note, the bishop, the church. Jodie works as a therapist for this massive company called Life Star, which, side note, the bishop, the church bishop that recommends
Adam to Jodie, the bishop's brother owns that chapter of Life Star, which is
already a massive conflict of interest. It just adds to all the foul characters in
this case because the sick part is Adam gets money from the settlement from his
abuse case for things like therapy and the bishop knows that and it's like he's thinking
Well, why not give that money to my brother?
By going to his business where they employ a bunch of therapists and it's not cheap or affordable
It's like five hundred dollars a week per person and that's not even individualized therapy
That's to join a men's group with a bunch of other husbands and then you have
therapy. That's to join a men's group with a bunch of other husbands. And then you have personal sessions that you have to pay for.
That's one to two additional sessions per week between Adam and his wife, Mary.
I mean, they're spending thousands of dollars per month to work with Jodi.
Life Star itself has its own controversies.
It's known for being a network of LDS therapists.
And some have said, if you go to the live start and
you've ever seen like a naked body depicted on any sort of media, God forbid
that you've ever watched explicit videos, you're an addict and you're gonna need
to enter a lengthy 12-step program. many therapists in the network also believe
that if you ever self-pleasure you are technically cheating on your partner and
this is a grave instance of infidelity and you need to join a support group.
There have also been accusations against Lifestar that they will, if you have health insurance,
they will diagnose you with an actual DSM-5 recognized diagnosis because porn addiction is not one.
I know that a lot of people do struggle with it, but porn addiction is technically not one.
is not one. I know that a lot of people do struggle with it, but porn addiction is technically not one. So they'll diagnose you with other things in the DSM-5 so that your insurance
will pay for it. Allegedly, that is the accusation that has been levied upon them multiple times
by internet users. Which side note, I think it's fine if someone believes it's not in
their beliefs to take part in self-pleasure or consumption of explicit materials,
I think we should respect everybody's choice, especially, well, only if they're adults, right?
But to actively go around shaming everyone,
condemning them to the deepest, darkest depths of hell for doing it, I think causes more harm.
And for Adam, it was kind of like that.
There was this never-ending idea that self-pleasure is one of the greatest evils in the world,
like right up there with murder.
He says, you know, there was a lot of guilt and shame behind self-pleasuring and explicit
material in the church.
I mean, I had a lot of guilt and shame.
As a kid growing up, I discovered self-pleasuring a few weeks before I met Brad, and just on
my own quietly, from then on, I just always believed that God had sent this pedo into my life to punish me because I was
sick so like that's how ingrained and how damaging it is that it made him
believe that he deserved to be a victim of SA as punishment and now he's
recommended by the church to Jodie and she's telling him that he was never
abused that he's the addict here the bad one and now he has recommended by the church to Jodie and she's telling him that he was never abused, that he's the addict here, the bad one. And now he has to show up to court to refute accusations
against him about the whole bathtub incident. He thinks the whole thing is crazy. I mean,
Mary walked in with lingerie, he wanted her to put the baby to sleep so that they can have
consensual adult time, and she accuses him of CSA of his own child. He is a victim of CSA. He walks into court and
the worst conflict of interest is sitting right there. Right next to Mary
there's Jodie Hildebrandt the therapist but also Elder Halam, the higher-up in
the LDS church that when Adam was 14 he tried to allegedly shut Adam up for the
abuse that he suffered. Then later he tried to prevent Adam from
marrying Mary he's just sitting right there right next to Jodie Hildebrandt
which you know what with all disrespect we hate elder Halam and unfortunately if
you want to send him a non-threatening but scathing message of how his soul
will burn in the depths of hell for the rest of eternity, he's dead.
Fortunately, he's probably there burning. Why is he there? They just all kind of linked up and... Exactly. Adam is facing four felony charges, each is a third degree for violation of a protective
order, domestic violence enhancement. And Adam states, these are all the lies. He has to now
spend $250,000
go through all this trauma fighting all these allegations just to plead
guilty to an attempt to break a protective order which is a misdemeanor
he had to pay a fine no jail time he did spend like a few days in jail because
they briefly arrested him right when he broke the protective order but he
technically pled guilty which means everyone in Utah and the church thinks
that he's this crazy abuser
that was never abused as a kid, just creating chaos wherever he goes.
But later, they will find evidence that some really dark things were happening between Mary and Jodie.
They allegedly found evidence that they were trying to manufacture evidence on Mary and Adam's child to accuse Adam of essay.
So remember the incident in the bathroom.
They were trying to enhance that with evidence allegedly.
What did they find? Like text messages?
Um, obviously these are not available to the public.
Just descriptions of it make it seem like there is evidence that shows
Jodie and Mary trying to get the daughter to pose in a way and to say like,
daddy did this to me. Training her, if you will. Allegedly.
Mary and her attorneys use Adam's psych evaluation that showed how bad the abuse
he endured in childhood was. They use those documents to now try and take his children
away from him. So side note, they also just go around showing his documents to everyone
just with extensive details of the trauma he endured, just letting everyone read it like it's book club.
And Adam says the worst part is they use it against him to say that he's not fit to be a dad.
He says, think about it, a victim comes forward, tells the truth about the hell and the trauma.
Maybe he's a decent person, but this is really traumatic and they use it to punish me try and take
the kids away. he says they kept arguing that because I was a victim of sexual
abuse I wasn't able to be a safe parent. they twisted it into something heinous
to just stab him with. now an additional side note, Mary at one point accuses Adam
of being gay which in itself is obviously not offensive.
but Adam has SA trauma from when he was a child, and it's likely that he has a very complicated relationship
or did have a complicated relationship with his sexuality because he was abused by a monster who happened to be male
and being from a faith that typically condemns gay relationships, it's likely further complicated things for Adam as a victim. There was just no bar too low, no bar in hell too low for Jodie and Adam's now ex-wife Mary to just target Adam.
Emails between Jodie and Mary were uncovered in
Adam's fight to exonerate himself from the accusations.
So the two, Mary and her therapist Jodie, are writing to each other about the contract that Mary is going to give Adam.
They're going back and forth of like, oh you should say we're living together but technically separate.
This is crazy!
Mm-hmm.
Mary emails Jodi, I wrote up this contract yesterday afternoon after our meeting.
It's still a work in progress. I'm open for any suggestions. Thanks.
Jodi responds, this looks good. The more specific you can be the better.
But this looks good as a starting point. I will share this with him this evening if you would like.
they later add stipulations that adam cannot withhold funds from his wife
and that he is not allowed to see any other therapist outside of jodie.
now, side note, since we're here, fuck the honor code at byu.
i'm sorry, i'm not sorry. adam had a few friends targeted by the BYU Honor Code Office just because they were friends with Adam, allegedly.
One female friend was called in because Mary reported her for adultery with Adam since their divorce had not finalized yet.
She was asked about extensive- Okay, so this female friend of Adam's is also a survivor of CSA.
The Honor Code Office asked her for hours, grilled her about the essay
that happened to her during her childhood. We don't even know how they knew about it.
She never told the honor code office that, so maybe they got church records, church files
about it, which is crazy. She was interrogated over her past trauma. Then she was accused
of having an adulterous affair with Adam, to which she adamantly denied. But they called
in Mary, Adam's wife, and she confirms,
no, I know they're- they're adulterers, okay?
They're having an affair.
To which point, the Honor Code Office is trying to ask, like, do you know what adultery is, right?
Like, it's when people do it, like, they're having physical relationships.
Mary just responds, oh, well then maybe they don't have an affair.
Maybe it was just spiritual and emotional.
The next friend
targeted by the honor code office is Seth, one of Adam's best friends. now by
this point it feels like anyone who is friendly with Adam is going to suffer too
truly to try and alienate him is what I think. Adam was sharing custody over the
kids not legally but I think it was more so agreed upon and Seth came with him to
see Mary. Mary grabs, allegedly, a giant
shell the size of a cinder block and throws it at Adam. He quickly dodges
because he's holding their baby in his arms and Seth wrote a statement about it
to the honor code office saying, hey, you know how everyone is reporting Adam? Well,
guess what? Mary just tried to kill him! Maybe not that dramatically, but you get the point.
They turn around and the honor code starts questioning him if he's a sex addict. Also, Seth is a chef.
He cooks with wine sometimes, as one does. They accused him of hiding an alcohol problem and being
addicted to sex. They told Seth if he keeps hanging around Adam, they will kick him out of the university.
to sex. they told Seth if he keeps hanging around Adam they will kick him out of the university. they go after like five of Adam's friends for again the
sole reason that Adam is around them and also at one point the BYU police sent by
the honor code office came and grilled interrogated Adam for about two hours
asking incredibly intense questions about the abuse he suffered when he was
14. what does that have to do with anything? but it was traumatizing. he said i felt so filthy and gross after that. it seems like the honor code office
did not realize that adam could subpoena their records, which he does. adam says he will never
forget the day that he was accused of essay of his own child. he says how i couldn't even breathe?
i mean i had a panic attack in the parking lot afterwards.
So there's a clear conflict of interest everywhere here.
He subpoenas the BYU honor code files on him, which Jodie clearly breaks patient confidentiality
by talking to them about Adam.
But not only that, she has nothing to back up any accusations, suspicions, or statements
that she has uttered about Adam.
He subpoenas her
therapy case notes and the case notes about Adam whom Jodie Hildebrandt has
reported for being this sexual predator, one of the most dangerous people that
she's ever met, that he's r-wording not only his wife but his one-year-old
daughter. He's so sick and twisted and so great at manipulation that he is an
active danger to the public. You would think Jodie has two novel length spiral notebooks on him detailing his sick
perversions, but when he gets her notes, it's like this long.
It's one page, not even.
Adam is in here for marriage counseling, has some sexual issues that he wants to work on,
aka staring 20 seconds too long at a picture of an unclothed woman on the internet.
That's about it.
So these are being used in court.
Yeah, because he's like, I mean, this is not a good therapist.
Like she, this is crazy.
She's levying all these accusations against me and these are her notes on me.
Like I've told her nothing.
She wasn't even Adam's personal therapist.
He was part of group sessions, but he never really sat
with her one on one. Wow. So he's like, suddenly you're just coming out accusing me of like
the world's most heinous crimes out of the gate for no reason at all. There are also
logs of emails between Jodie and Mary where they collude on how to take Adam down allegedly.
There are emails of Jodie coaching Mary on how to talk to authorities to make Adam look worse
It's not even just like say this but she's all present things as an inquiry not in anger
When you present things to authorities, she's coaching her on her tone her delivery
She writes give the authorities the right thinking because they're not gonna come up with those thoughts themselves
It's difficult when you begin to see what is really going on to be patient with those who don't.
Be direct and act inquisitive, not angry or defensive.
Make them think that they came up with the idea themselves.
Mary would email back, those suckers, they totally fell for it.
Ultimately Adam would not get custody of his kids, although he's in their lives now.
Netizens theorize it's mainly because Mary and Jodie are no longer in each other's
lives, and Mary allegedly wants to focus on dating rather than her kids.
So it's just better for Adam to take care of the kids, I guess, allegedly from her perspective.
So he is in the kids' lives, but he doesn't have custody as of right now.
he was also placed in jail for 7 days for breaking that restraining order. he was kicked
out of university. he was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from legal fees. his reputation
has been ruined. he has much more extensive PTSD than before, before his entire life was
derailed by jodie hildebrandt. I mean, the magnitude of courage and empathy that Adam has is pretty awe-inspiring.
Even when talking about this incident
on the Since Taken Down podcast by Mormon Stories,
he never really blames his wife.
He expresses a lot of pain and betrayal from her,
but he actually shows a lot of understanding for her.
He believes that Jodie told his wife
about all these unhinged, deviant crimes
that Adam was allegedly committing, which he wasn't, which Adam has denied all of them to his wife,
but she just thought he was lying.
Adam says Jodie would just have everybody just chopping off all the arms of support
in their life until there was no one left to support you except for Jodie Hildebrandt.
Adam says Jodie Hildebrandt is like Ted Bundy.
She is completely pathological
and that lady is going straight to hell.
He's not suing Jodie or going after her?
No, hopefully he will,
but he thought about going after BYU.
They admitted him back into the school,
but he didn't have time
or money to hire babysitters or time for anything at that point. He was also too traumatized to go
back to BYU. He thought about suing BYU. He asked, how would this settlement be paid?
He asked the attorney. He asked the assistant dean of BYU, I believe. And she said it would be paid using tithes, which is offerings from the church.
And those are supposed to be used to help people that need it.
And he said that he didn't want to sue.
So he says, Jodie is going straight to hell.
And there's a road to hell actually.
It's called Hellhole Pass Road.
Yeah, Hellhole Pass Road. that's the road name. it's dry, it's hot. it's like hell. the road runs through the beaver
dam mountains on both sides of the road. you just see mountains. dry red rock mountains and desert
scrub bushes. the road is gravel. it's completely uneven and there's usually not a lot of cars going
up and down the road.
I mean, one does not choose to drive up and down Hellhole Road for fun.
Except for Jodie Hildebrandt.
She likes to bring her niece to Hellhole Pass Road, her 14-year-old niece, and make them run up and down.
Run up and down the road until I tell you to stop.
I don't care that it's 100 degrees in Utah, you have no shade, no water, just run! Run for your sins or you'll you to stop. I don't care that it's a hundred degrees in Utah. You have no shade. No water
Just run run for your sins or you'll go to hell
Licensed therapist Jodie Hildebrandt has taken on the courageous task of helping her 14 year old niece
Jessie who goes by they them pronouns by the way, this is before Adam Paul Steed
They were also interviewed by Mormon stories. How old is Jodie at the time? She was much younger.
Not Jodie, the niece. Oh, they were 14 when they first got taken in by Jodie. What about today?
Today they're probably fully adults. Yes, yes. Now, Jodie is itching for a big project and Jesse is
her biggest one yet. Jesse is probably one of the biggest sinners that Jodie has ever laid eyes on.
What is the grave sin that they committed?
Being too Mormon.
Jessie, now adult, tells Mormon stories podcasts
during an interview.
I've always been a very curious person
and always, I think, very challenging in that way.
So both of their parents are super religious
in the LDS faith and obviously very well connected.
Jodie is Jessie Hildebrandt's aunt. Jessie's father is Jodie's brother, So both of their parents are super religious in the LDS faith and obviously very well connected.
Jodie is Jesse Hildebrandt's aunt. Jesse's father is Jodie's brother, who also happens to be an attorney.
So Jesse's father is Jodie Hildebrandt's brother, and Jesse's father is an attorney.
Now, they say that they had a very typical, strict, conservative, LDS, faith-filled upbringing.
they say, this is talking about Jessie's mom,
my mom is very docile, sweet, obedient, very efficient housewife.
I mean, everything was always very clean and very organized and very efficient.
I think I was kind of a wrecking ball to them, always asking why about everything.
No answer was good enough and it wasn't coming from a place of disrespect.
It was genuinely I didn't understand and I was very curious about everything. no answer was good enough and it wasn't coming from a place of disrespect. it was genuinely i didn't understand and i was very curious about things.
in jesse's mind, this is true. the lds faith is true. the book of mormon is true. their entire family
are devout lds church members. their logic is true. and they're thinking, i just need to find all of
the supporting evidence to back it up now.
I know a few people like that as well. Like they grew up in super religious.
You can't watch Marvel movies because they're not rooted in faith.
And there are just certain people that grow up like that, but still want to know, but why.
It's not that they're trying to be mean.
It's not that they're like, I don't believe in this.
It's just, they want to know why for everything.
I feel like you're kind of like that. You always ask why for a lot of things. And it's not
that they're challenging anything. Their brain just functions in a way where they
want to know the reasoning behind every single thing that's done. Every tradition
there must be a reason for it. So Jesse says, asking questions, especially maybe
higher esoteric unanswerable questions or questions that point out skeletons? Why weren't black people
allowed to have priesthood? Why weren't they allowed to be at the church for the longest time?
What about sexism? What about race? Those types of questions you don't ask. You don't talk about it.
So this podcast also, are they dedicated to...
Mormon stories. I believe the host, I don't think they're ex-Mormons. I think they've
been ex-communicated but still hold a degree of faith. I think that they just don't like the
established religious aspect. So they interview a lot of ex-Mormons or current Mormons and talk
about their experience with maybe things that have been happening in the church that you're not technically supposed to talk about.
I see. Yeah, they're a great resource, I think. Now, it's not like Jesse is
challenging their parents for the sake of trying to prove them wrong or
rebelling against the religion in a snarky teenager kind of way.
Jesse says, by the time I was 16, I had read the Book of Mormon six times. I
believed it. So in my head, this is true. My logic was just backwards. I started with the belief
or I was like, okay, this is true, so I will find the evidence to support it
instead of following the evidence to the eventual truth. But also I was a total
nerd and then you know the ADHD, you know they say that they have ADHD and they
say this was a hyper fixation and then the layer of wanting familial acceptance
It's very powerful. I was emotional. I was strong-willed. I questioned everything and neither one of my parents
I think knew what to do with that. They were not prepared because of the culture of the church
Jessie also likes to experiment with their clothes and makeup, which makes everyone in their family freak out like
As if they had just brought home a two-headed seal and said, this is my new best friend.
Yeah, Jesse gets ambushed at a family gathering.
They're all gathered at Jesse's grandparents' home.
So this is Jodie's parents' home.
And Jodie happens to be there because Jodie is Jesse's aunt.
This is Jesse's father's, father's home.
When everyone leaves, including Jesse's parents,
Jesse didn't even know that their parents had left Jesse was down in the basement
They just left them. Yeah now it's just Jodie and their grandparents and they sit them down and
Explain that their life is gonna change forever
Jesse will not be going home. Jesse will be going with Jodie and Jodie is gonna fix them
Because Jesse asked too many questions that
they can't answer yes and Jesse likes to wear strong eyeliner and not super
feminine modest clothing and how do they fix Jesse by making them sleep out on
the balcony in the middle of winter this is January in Utah nighttime
temperatures are anywhere between 8 to 30 degrees sometimes it can balcony in the middle of winter. This is January in Utah. Nighttime temperatures are anywhere between 8 to 30 degrees. Sometimes it can be in the
rural areas drop to 0 degrees. All Jessie would get to sleep on the balcony
every single night would be this flimsy $5 sleeping bag from Walmart. The risk of
hypothermia is significant, but Jodi does not care. She even lies to Jessie's
parents telling them that Jessie was given this high-end sub-zero type of sleeping bag.
This just feels extreme. Why are we putting a 14-year-old through this?
Jodie would tell Jesse that this is the start of getting Jesse to confess to their sins and addictions.
Jodie is saying, Jesse, you are in denial. You have not come to terms with how evil you are yet.
Jesse has ADHD, and at the time when they were 14, it was undiagnosed.
Jodie would sit there watching Jesse.
If Jesse moves their hand back and forth or if they tap their feet, Jodie would snap.
Look at you. Look at you.
You're tapping your foot because your body is so full of shame.
So much shame is in there and it has nowhere to go in that little
body so it comes out like this by you tapping your foot. This is all the shame
just itching to leave. Like I said, if you are angry, if you are depressed, if you
are anything, it's all a result of shame. Shame is the cause. Shame is the result
of sin. Sin causes shame. Shame causes mental health issues. Your body and
spirit are full of shame. What I am doing shame causes mental health issues, your body and spirit are full of
shame. what i am doing for you is to make you physically so uncomfortable that it forces the
sin out. just remember a lot of this verbiage because it comes up in the next episode. this
comes up when jodie is torturing ruby frankie's kids. i have to make you so physically uncomfortable
that it forces the sin out
Eventually Jodie moves Jessie in from sleeping out on the snow on the balcony to this little bunker of a room in the closet In Jodie's office, maybe it's a little bigger than a closet, but no windows
It just has like a table and chair shoved inside and there to sleep on the floor
This is going to be Jessie's life from now on the lines was that already? Oh, I think they were with Jodie for years.
They tried running away multiple times.
It wasn't until the third time that they were able to successfully break away.
And even then there were instances where they were brought in by family members to do these
family events and Jodie would be there and they would be terrified.
They were terrified that this would be another way to facilitate them going back with Jodie.
What's Jessi's emotion towards this whole incident?
So much trauma. I mean, they're very eloquent in the interview with Mormon Stories.
They're able to articulate exactly what they felt in the moment that makes
you feel like you were there with them, but at the same time, it's pretty clear that they're still
working through a lot of the trauma. and not in like a they're breaking down, which that would not
be like a shameful thing or anything like that, but in the sense of they state that over and over,
like it has impacted every aspect of their lives. so
this is going to be Jessie's life from now on, just the inside of this room.
Jodie tells Jessie along the lines of, you're no longer going to school, you're
not going home to your parents, as your therapist it is my duty to fix you,
you're going to live and work here full-time. but the first rule, rule number
one, you are not allowed to leave this room. all you can do every single day is
write your sins out on a piece of paper
and every day you will tell me what you have written
because i need to get the sin out of you.
jesse doesn't even know what other sins to come clean about.
jesse has told jodie a few things, the reasons for them being taken to jodie,
one of them included that they had kissed a girl before,
which is like a huge thing I guess.
So it's not like Jessie is uncooperating, which even then this is sick and cruel, Jessie
just doesn't know what else to write down.
So Jessie's sitting there trying to think and they're trying to think back to every
single living action that they have ever done in their entire lives.
I mean maybe once while drinking from a public water fountain they accidentally press two
seconds too long.
Like they're thinking that hard.
Like is there anything that I've done that I'm preventing the evil from coming out of
my body?
Jessie's sitting there writing down, one time I lied to my best friend Scotty.
Like just the stupidest things.
These are the types of things.
And at the end of the day Jodie walks in, snatches the paper out of their hands, reads
it out loud and makes Jessie get on their hands and knees
beg, beg for forgiveness while I read all of your sins back to you
when she's done reading the piece of paper out loud she looks at Jessie
who is still on their knees
no that's not it this isn't it
there is more and I need to know there's more
I know you've had multiple abortions.
Jessie did not.
Jessie did not.
Jessie would even say later in the interview, I mean, Jodie would rationalize and validate
these types of behaviors through dreams and visions.
Like she would have dreams that God came to her and told her that I had abortions, and
so no matter what I said, I was a liar.
She was convinced that every word that came out of my mouth was a lie. that gave her
rationale to put duct tape on my mouth. that's why I was always duct taped.
everywhere Jessie went she had duct tape on her mouth because every word I said
was a lie. which is like the most unhinged accusation. so first of all
Jessie has never had intimate relations that could result in pregnancy at that age.
They didn't even really know or understand how it works.
Also, Jesse likes girls.
And that's what Jesse told Jodie.
So Jesse's like, how would I, what are you talking about?
I mean, they've known for a while now.
There's just no way that they got pregnant,
let alone terminated multiple pregnancies. Also, Jodie accuseses Jesse of terminating like I think it was like 14 pregnancies it
was a lot it was just a lot even though Jodie knows that Jesse is gay Jesse says I was struggling
with my relationship with my father I was struggling with self-hatred I knew I was gay
I knew I was queer that was a huge part of my internalized shame. Eventually, Jesse learns that the only way
to even get Jodie to calm down is to just make up things.
And this is gonna become really important in part four,
the final part of this episode,
because Ruby starts accusing her own children
of doing some heinous things.
Jodie forces you to just make up sins.
Like the craziest sin that you can think of,
you have to say it out loud or else she's probably gonna torture you.
It's like no matter what they did,
Jodie just wanted Jessie to be the devil.
There was no way around it.
You could not prove that Jessie was not the devil to Jodie.
They say, Jodie was convinced that I was a drug addict,
that I was a sex addict,
she was convinced that I had multiple terminations, she was convinced of so many beliefs, never
allowed privacy, I was never allowed privacy when using the bathroom, I had
seven minutes to shower, two minutes to use the toilet with the door open, I
wasn't allowed tampons because she was convinced that I was an addict and I was
self-pleasuring with them. I was never allowed to have the bathroom door closed
because she was convinced that I was constantly self-pleasuring in there.
She was convinced that I was addicted to explicit material.
I mean, I'd never seen porn at that point in my life.
I didn't even know that people with my anatomy could self-pleasure.
This is Jodie's manual on complete destruction of a human being.
How to take a human and break them in every aspect, physical, mental, emotional.
The physical is likely the easier part foresse, and that's saying a lot because it's
just torture, plain and simple.
jodie would make jesse run up and down hellhole pass road for hours, the concept being quote
for the reason of making me so physically uncomfortable that i would confess to sins.
i mean, if you also made me run up and down a road for hours in the sweltering heat I would confess to
anything. I'd be like okay I just need a cup of water. You're right I have
reincarnated as the spawn of Satan. I would say whatever you wanted me to say.
There was one time Jessie says that they finally stood up and said no I'm not
doing that. Jessie says that was the day that I walked away and I was like no and
I turned around and she punched me in the back and knocked me down.
And Jodie, she's not tall, but she's sturdy.
She's a powerhouse of a woman, very strong.
Then she ended up going inside.
I stayed outside.
I went to a neighbor's house.
The neighbor didn't know what to do.
Jodie found me, came.
And again, the neighbor was like, I don't want to tell her, but I have to, because
you're a minor and she has power of attorney.
She's your guardian. And I can't lie to her.
That's how Jessie gets sent back.
Mentally, it's confusing though.
Jessie says they ran away three times only to end right back up at Jodie's house
and the punishment for running away would be to be blindfolded,
tied up by their arms and legs, roughly thrown into the back of a car.
Jessie had no clue where they were being taken.
They're driving for like an hour before finally they hear the car shut off.
They're in the mountains.
Jessie will be forced to run up and down the mountains as repentance for running away.
The worst part is it gets to the point where the torture and the life is so bad
that once they're done running up and down the mountain,
Jodie would start showering Jessie with praise.
I knew you could do it.
I knew you could repent, and my niece is still in there.
Jessie says after attempting to run away three times,
hating life, wanting to be in jail rather than with Jodie,
but once they hear that little bit of praise,
mentally your brain is so starved, so desperate, it gives you a high.
like you want to work harder for praise from jodie. they say in the other part, that type of abuse
that i don't think is talked about as much is that 90% of the time, you're evil and horrible and
wrong and the abuse is almost unbearable. but then there are moments where you're rewarded and you're
now the best thing in the world
and so after these six hours of running up and down the mountain, the reward that Jodie gave me of acceptance of
you did it! you did the thing! it creates this cycle which I think is already the foundation and the prerequisites of this is
instilled in the Mormon church of having to earn love
so it's like this very sick cycle of abuse but emotionally Jesse
says they thought about jumping from the balcony to break their legs because they
felt like that would be less painful than the torture even going to jail if
they're so bad just call the police they would ask Jodie just like let them
arrest me please if I'm that bad let them arrest me. Jesse says I would rather
be in jail and the isolation was the worst part. jodie would
tell everyone that jesse is a nightmare, a terrifying nightmare. jodie told family members
the reason that she has jesse sleep out on the balcony is because quote, i'm scared. i'm scared
jesse is gonna murder me in my sleep. you don't know. she's going around saying you don't know
what i'm dealing with. i have to do this with for my own protection the worst part is Jessie believed it they believed maybe she's right maybe I just don't see it
because I'm young and I'm not connected to God I guess but like why am I so evil why is everyone
so scared of me what about Jessie's parents believed it that they're evil Jessie's parents? Believed it. That they're evil. Does Jessie have resentment towards her parents?
Yes. I believe right now, Jessie is no longer in communication with their parents.
I think even some of their siblings had reactions of like,
get over yourself, when Jessie spoke about the trauma that happened when they were with Jodie.
Jessie says, again, I believed all of this.
I trusted these people.
I trusted the church.
The isolation got really bad.
It's like Jodie is just practicing on Jessie before she evolves into trying to throw Adam
Paul Steed into prison to isolate him.
Jessie constantly had duct tape on their mouth and they were told, because you're a liar,
every single word you say is a lie.
You need to be physically reminded that everything you say is a lie.
sometimes jodie would make them go to family functions with duct tape on their mouth,
so people are seeing this. jesse says, everyone around me, my cousins, my parents,
everyone was terrified of me. i wasn't allowed to speak to anyone. i wasn't allowed to speak to my parents.
which, it's not even the fact that they had duct tape on their mouths and can't physically talk.
it's the fact that nobody thought this was crazy and
I'm sure if if you have duct tape on your mouth and your family members are acting scared of you
It almost makes you feel like some sort of animal. Yeah, it doesn't make you feel human anymore. It's so bizarre
I mean it gets to the point where Jodie is convinced that Jesse is
contagious rubbing off evil onto everyone around them if
Jesse is in the kitchen because Jodie is making them do something for her if Jodie's kids Jodie has two kids
Jodie's got two kids. Oh, yeah, they're no longer on speaking terms with her
They're adults by the time that she gets arrested but more on that later
But if they go into the room, these are Jesse's own cousins
If they want to use the kitchen, they would have to report to their mother
that Jesse is in the kitchen.
And then Jodie screams at Jesse to get the hell out of the kitchen.
And Jesse would be forced to stand on the perimeter of the kitchen with duct
tape on their mouth, just waiting for them to be done.
Jodie would stare at them and say, see, no one loves you.
You're a manipulator and you destroy people's lives constantly.
You destroyed your parents' lives.
You're destroying your own life and you're trying to destroy mine for trying to help you.
Jodie would tell Jessie, no one actually cares about you and you just manipulate them into caring.
Nobody believed Jessie, not even their own parents.
jesse says she destroyed my credibility.
i mean i was an angry teenager, and now she made me into this emotional angry teenager
that she had told people that i destroyed my family's life, that i destroyed my dad's life,
and that every person i come in contact with i destroy.
so she sets up the premise, and then when i come forward and i try to tell people what's happening,
what she's doing to me, she can be like, like, oh see Jesse's trying to destroy my life. That's what they do
It's all just it adds up. So she's so good at protecting these loopholes and discrediting people
Eventually Jesse manages to run away without getting caught they go straight to the police station
Where they lie about their age and get taken to a shelter for those without
Homes they say that was rough to is traumatizing, but it was still better than being with Jodie
Now a big question everybody has though is why the hell is Jodie Hildebrandt so goddamn angry?
Like it doesn't make sense. Why is she so upset with every why is she so angry? Why is she such a vile person?
Maybe this Jesse remembers one very interesting conversation they had with Jodie.
Because Jodie makes it her entire life mission to make sure that Jessie is not gay.
But they stay.
She did say something to me when I was living with her.
That was very strange.
Because I've known I was queer since I was seven, and I was experimenting with girls and friends since I was seven or eight.
She knew about it and that it was very bad.
It was very, very evil.
But then she said something to me.
She had this friend, her name's Bev.
She said something to the effect of, yes, being gay is evil and pleasures
of the flesh and yada yada.
But if I were to have sexual relationships with my friends, if we were to, it would
be different because there's a deep emotional connection there and that's different.
We were sitting in someone's living room and she said this and I was just like, what?
Yeah, that's called being gay. Like, what do you think gay relationships are like?
They have deep emotional connections.
Jessi was taken back by Jodie's comment of saying that, oh, if I were to have a relation with another woman,
It's fine. It's because we have this connection.
Yes.
And Jesse is like, that's literally called being gay.
So Jesse believes that Jodie is gay as well.
Yes.
Now there's a lot of quizzes online with names like, am I gay quiz? They're all like fun, goofy, they ask what's your favorite Beyonce song, what you order
at the bar, it's goofy, it's playful, don't take it too seriously, but to therapist Jodie
Hildebrandt, it's not funny.
It's not funny, this is not cute.
As the world's worst life coach, Jodie will give advice to viewers
who submit their life worries to Jodie.
In one particular clip, she's responding to a viewer
who states that she's going through
her 13-year-old daughter's phone,
comes across her search history
where she's talking about taking a quiz.
It's called the Am I Gay quiz.
Jodie explains, there is no such thing as am I gay?
Because that takes choice away.
It says I am something, period, the end.
I didn't have a choice in it.
And so that on its face is a lie.
It's not the truth.
It's a distortion.
So mom, the truth is that your daughter
is a daughter of God.
The end.
She's not, I am bad or I am fat or I am unloved
or I am gay.
Which is like the collection of words she uses there
is also unhinged.
All these things are lies, all of them.
It's a choice.
I know that people get crucified
when you say that to the world,
but that is the truth, being gay is a choice.
It's about protecting her.
You are a mother, your job is to protect your young.
If there was a lion coming at your young,
you would stand in between and you put the baby behind you and you would defend that child with everything you have.
Well, that's what's coming at you. It is worse than a lion. It is here to snuff out
the life of your child and kill her spiritually. What is? Being gay. So lesbians, you heard
it here first. Your aura is stronger than a lion. Yeah, Jodi
continues. I heard a song the other day called We'll Convert Your Children, We'll
Convert Your Children, and it was a song about homosexuality and how they're
coming for your children. It was the most evil thing I've heard, which side note,
the entire song is tongue-in-cheek. They're talking, they're singing about
converting your children,
that phrase, because it has always been and still to this day is used against the LGBTQ
community. the only people that i've seen take that song seriously are both homophobic
and dense up here. that's it. in another video, jodie sarcastically says, lgbtq LGBTQ I think there's now an I plus plus plus okay it's
another one of these movements that are going in our world that is divisive I
mean I work with three people every day and not every day but probably once a
week somebody says a word like cisgender you know that was a word I
learned I'm like what in the heck is? It's just a made-up word that someone place meaning on. Now, because of what happened with Adam Paulsteed, Jodie actually does get
her therapy license suspended, briefly. That's the only negative thing that comes out to
what she's done to Adam, ruin his life completely, shatter and disassemble his entire family and re-traumatize him, she
just gets her therapy license suspended on probation for like 18 months.
So she starts this new life as a life coaching business.
Everything gets more extreme in her beliefs.
The coaching business is called Connections and she preaches about living in truth and
it's, it's a lot more extreme than when she was a therapist because
when you're in therapy you are still governed by certain guidelines
but as a life coach there's no governance
oh so she got suspended and now she's a life coach which
a counselor
she can do whatever the hell she wants now
they call themselves mental fitness trainers. They say like how you would need a fitness trainer for your body, your physical body,
you need one for your mental state.
And it's all about living in the truth with a capital T. Living in truth and not distortion
means having impeccable honesty, rigorous personal responsibility, and humility.
Which I mean, those are like really vague words.
I feel like you could apply that to anything. whereas living in distortion means you are addicted to something that something could
be as serious as drugs and alcohol but it could also be hobbies entertainment receiving compliments
you could be addicted to that you could be addicted to mirrors you could be addicted to driving
driving going on drives i don't know if I don't know where that came from.
You are also living in distortion when you know that you are not enough. Which by the
way Jodie Hildebrandt has a memoir that she titled, You Are Not Not Enough. And everyone's
like, I keep reading it as, you are not enough. Which like, yes Jodie, you are not. They also
say that you are living in distortion when you are living in lust,
which includes being sexually attracted to your own spouse.
That's living in lust.
So these principles get built upon through the years
and they actually do get worse as they develop.
If Jodi was not against drugs,
I would think that she developed her ideas
while super high on some random couch
and elbow deep into a Pringles can
because her ideas of truth and distortion,
these cannot be sober thoughts.
I'm like, this doesn't even make sense.
We can only assume that the idea
of formulating a coherent thought
is too big of an obstacle course for Jodi
because it doesn't make sense.
The principles are truth is always loving,
distortion is never loving, control is never loving.
So remember, if you really want to love someone, you'll reflect truth to them.
If you love someone, you can be yourself around them and you don't have to tiptoe around what you're saying.
When you love someone, you hold boundaries with them and your boundaries won't offend them.
Anyone who is offended by a boundary is in distortion.
Anyone who is offended by a boundary is someone who is being selfish and wants what they want so with these principles of honest, responsible,
and humble you will have calmness, permission, peace, and a willingness to
hold boundaries for you and your child. Who needs a lobotomy when you have Jodie
Hildebrandt's great teachings? I think fortune cookies make more sense and are
less vague than her so-called teachings. She would also hate couples with the
Jesus said having the thought is
the same as actually doing it. So if you think about your hot co-worker, you
actually did your hot co-worker. One therapist who was training under Jodi
says she was excellent in exploiting Mormon anxiety, being pure, being
sinless, being perfect, but connections was more than just therapy. It was a
whole community that she created, a whole platform of people drinking her Kool-Aid.
It was like a church within a church and Jodie was the prophet.
That person also didn't like the way that Jodie would treat clients entirely differently according to their status.
He says, a client would come in who was well known and had a lot of money and she would say to me,
we really got to take care of this one. And I thought, that's odd.
So this was when Jodie was a therapist and he would say, like, we're therapists.
We're trained not to care about if that person has money.
I think she was just salivating.
She was salivating about money and power.
Like that excited her.
What can I do with a client with a lot of money, influence and a lot of power?
Jodie was a business woman.
I mean, she really has a lot of addictions, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
She knew how to hit on a pain point and the biggest pain point for people in order to turn a profit. Jessie says, this is the crazy thinking about it now, but I used to do her billing.
So Jessie is Jodi's niece, remember? And they say, I used to do her billing.
She would force me to do it, like free labor. Jodi's billing for the therapy session.
Jessie says, I did her billing and she bills the LDS church.
So every client, essentially, I would say the vast majority
of her clients were from bishop recommendations,
just based off the billing that I would do.
So the host of Mormon stories mentions,
in the Mormon church, if somebody can't afford a therapist,
sometimes tithes and offerings might be used by the bishop
who recommends his ward
members to Jodie. He will then foot the bill from the church offerings, pay Jodie. She's making money
off the church allegedly, right? But they pay the bill. Now here's the problem with that.
One, Jodie is gaining a lot of wealth and success from the church itself. And two, a lot of victims have come forward to state that another insidious way that Jodie
ruins people's lives is once your bishop pays for your therapy, they are entitled to all therapy notes.
Like there's no such thing like you usually have to sign things that say my bishop can also know
what I talk about in therapy. So it's this, Jodie will alienate you from your bishop,
accuse you of doing some heinous things allegedly.
Is the allegation against Jodie.
I mean, multiple allegations against Jodie.
Even when Jesse's physical state started changing
because of the physical torture that their aunt was putting them through,
I mean, a lot of people at the church could see them
in this mental and emotional anguish.
People start going to the bishop about them, and the bishop then turns to Jodie,
gives Jodie a full rundown, like, these are what people are saying about Jessie.
Jessie says, bishop went to Jodie, told her, gave her the names of the people,
what they said, the reason why these people thought anything was wrong with me,
and according to Jodie, it was because I was emotionally manipulating them into thinking that that I would go to church wear a long
face and manipulate them into feeling sorry for me. Jodie would facilitate
meetings with the bishop and with Jesse to tell them no tell them Jesse nothing
is wrong right? Jodie's great which is already highly unethical okay side note
already unethical if you are a note already unethical. If you are a therapist, every single therapist,
at least the ones that should be licensed anyway,
they say if their family member,
a niece, a cousin, a cousin five times removed,
doesn't matter, they would never be their therapist.
They would recommend someone, that's it.
You do not become the therapist for your niece.
And not only that, but you don't have them move in with you.
And since, you know, Jodie is in competition for the worst person alive and just bring the gold home Jodie would
facilitate meetings with herself, Jessie and Jessie's bishop and the church
leader the bishop would tell Jessie you're like a horse you got to be broken
in Jessie says we drove to all the people's homes all the church members
that were concerned for me,
and Jodie sat me in the car, she told me exactly what I was going to tell these people,
and I would go in and apologize to them for manipulating them into thinking that Jodie was doing something wrong to me when she was actually saving my life.
Jessie says, also Jodie hates men, she hates men, she thinks all men are pretty much, vast majority of men are evil, including church leaders.
She thought church leaders were idiots.
And she had the answer, and that she understood it.
She thought she was fighting tooth and nail on the front lines of Satan.
But somehow, there are still people that believe Jodie is the all-knowing oracle to the truth.
One review reads,
Jodie's one-on-one calls
and the group classes have been life-changing for our family. Years of
false beliefs were surfaced in weeks. What years of therapy failed to do? I
will say anyone who believes Jodie's tactics are questionable are simply not
ready to take responsibility for their choices. Five stars for Jodie Hildebrandt Review left by Ruby Frankie
18 year old Ruby is not looking for a degree
which seems counterintuitive because she is a student at Utah State University
but where else are you supposed to find the love of your life who is going to be athletic, handsome, smell good, comfortable to talk to, well groomed, not skinny, 5 inches taller than Ruby, doesn't have anger issues, is not snappy, is not study, is good with music and teaching,
wears khakis and collared shirts, eagle scout, is good with siblings, likes yard work,
prays daily, reads scriptures daily, wants six kids, willing to help kids with homework,
and is crazy about me." That is her list of what she's looking for in her future husband,
and she's looking right now, 18 years old in college looking for a husband.
How do we know that?
She, oh her prerequisites, she has a whole graph of it labeled and detailed on a poster
board that's hung in the back of her closet.
When she starts dating, she's going to go in and start writing the boys names across
and then
coloring in the boxes so if you're five inches taller she'll color in that box
and then at the end she's gonna see who has the most colored boxes and that's
her future husband. What? Yeah she's like efficient with her dating. That is crazy.
Mm-hmm yeah the boy that she's gonna marry is gonna check off the most and
one of the contenders is Kevin Frankie
It's not the most romantic meeting but that's fine
She did not write love at first sight type of romance movie meeting on her chart
Ruby and Kevin Frankie they bump into each other at a hot dog stand on campus and instantly he's a good contender
He's laid-back Ruby likes that. She wants someone to join her in life. Not run her life. Not lead her in life.
She wants to drive the car. Which also, side note, a lot of netizens have been asking,
eight passengers, then who was driving? And then a lot of netizens comment Jodie.
Interestingly, Kevin is just as interested in Ruby as she is in him, maybe more so.
He was heartbroken when he realized that while watching a movie with Ruby, under the blanket,
he was holding her hand.
Oh, and he looks under.
There is another guy dating Ruby on the other side, ALSO holding her hand.
WHAT?
He's so pissed about it, but he becomes determined.
And I don't know how he knew about Ruby's little graph of dating in the back of her closet I don't know if he stumbles
upon it by accident but once he finds it he's ready he jots down every single
thing on that list and this is the new Kevin Frankie this is who he will be
from this day forward he says I went home and I studied hard I studied that
list harder than I did my schoolwork, I think.
I was very insecure with who I was. I was willing to change to become somebody that somebody else
would appreciate and love. And it works. After two weeks of dating, this is like two weeks after
meeting each other, they get engaged and within two months of being engaged, they get married.
And at just 21 years old, Ruby gives birth to their very first child, New York Times bestselling author Sherry.
Yeah, get her book.
One down, five more to go.
Six kids total, and Ruby Franke is the type of mother
who needs a scapegoat.
She would be a perfect mom, right?
Had it not been for this kid.
Everything would have been perfect,
had it not been for this one.
A lot of narcissistic parents always find a scapegoat in the family and it's usually a kid.
Every other kid is good. Every other kid is well behaved in their eyes except this kid.
If something goes wrong, it's this kid.
Does the kiss shift?
Yes. The kid, it seems like in the beginning it is Chad and then once a lot of the older children move out once Chad and Shay moves out and
Kevin moves out it'll be the youngest too
Chad is the eldest son the second born and in part one
We go over Ruby taking away his phone his bedroom his bedroom door even sending him to a troubled teen wilderness camp for over a month
It seems like this was all done at the recommendation of Jodie, which Ruby meets Jodie through a friend who is telling Ruby, listen, if anyone can quote
fix Chad, which by the way, Chad and I don't think any of the Frankie kids needed any sort of fixing,
they just needed a mother who loved them and did not vlog all of their worst moments and put them
online five days a week, but she says, if anyone can, quote, fix Chad,
it's going to be Jodi.
Now, the first Zoom meeting between Chad,
he remembers for some reason his parents were so nervous.
Chad thought it was goofy.
He's like, I'm just going to get through this Zoom meeting
with this Jodi lady, and I'm going to be done with it.
They hop on Zoom.
Jodi says, Chad, it's really good to see you.
Are you ready to start living an honest and responsible
and humble lifestyle?
Chad says absolutely. Let's get started. I'm so ready to live a responsible life
You're lying Chad
Chad said he went silent because he's never had a therapist or whatever call him out so directly
In front of his parents like you're you're lying about that
It was just very aggressive Chad looks over and he just knew that his mom is hooked
from that moment forward.
Jodie is not taking Chad's bullshit.
Is this like in the middle of their YouTube journey?
Like they're already famous?
Already famous.
So do you think Jodie coming in already like,
oh, I want these people as...
It seems like it.
I want to latch on to this.
Yes, done because they're famous, famous, rich influence. Everything is perfect. I see. Yeah.
Now after the zoom call, Jody reaches out to the Frankies and she tells them, look, your son, Chad,
he needs an outcome. He needs an outcome for the way that he showed up to that meeting. He's
running circles around you guys
Immediately they just start taking away everything his phone Xbox no friends and a saucy wilderness camp He doesn't get a bedroom eventually they take away football which was that was honestly Chad's he was really good at football
Really good that he wanted to get a scholarship and just get out of there
Chad says my mom was trying everything in her power to fix me
But I never felt like she was doing it for me.
It always felt like she was doing it for herself.
At one point, my mom got kind of teary eyed
and she said, Chad, this is your last chance.
Jodi and I found a military camp in Virginia
and we are just waiting for one more time of you acting up
and if that happens, we're gonna send you there
until you're 18.
Chad says, I don't know, I think I really just sent
something in my mom that realized that she's not gonna let Jodi go.
This is just how it's gonna be. This is how it's gonna be from now on and I just
decided to start listening. Ruby's thought is, if this is going so well with Chad,
why not Kevin? Maybe Kevin Franke, Ruby's husband can benefit from some
counseling. Kevin Franke works as a professor at BYU in the
civil engineering department with a focus on geotechnical engineering, meaning he teaches how
soil and rocks and earth materials interact with structures and buildings and infrastructure.
It's a lot of work pertaining to the soil, so they're really well-versed in fundamentally
soil mechanics and just how rocks behave, so how certain soils respond to static and dynamic loads, how an earthquake can
have the interactions between the infrastructure and the soil specifically
in that region and how they can learn to make the infrastructure better for the future.
It's a lot of smart stuff.
It's indisputable that Kevin Franke is academically very intelligent, but in terms
of teaching, some would argue he's not very good. his
rate my professor rating is 30% would take again with a solid 2.2 out of 5.
one review on rate my professor says he's very rude and mean. he spoke down to
students in a very condescending disrespectful manner. I truly did not
have a great experience in this class. it wasn't an insanely hard class. I take school work very seriously and I've never had issues
with a professor before Professor Frankie. Hard professors are one thing, but downright
rude, dismissive, and arrogant is another. Save yourself the misery if you can and take
something else with someone else. Another just reads, weird dude. Interestingly enough,
another reads, unable to get in contact outside of class. He's very controlling and you can only have the same views
that he has or you will be looked down upon.
Caused me so much stress that I dropped out.
Which we talked about this briefly in part one,
but Kevin does not appear to be involved in his family life.
One would assume that perhaps he was using
all his energy at work, but a lot of the students say
he was impossible to get in contact with outside of class.
So if he's not working, he's not with his family, what is he doing?
Another rating reads, Professor Frankie was rude from day one.
He does not respect his students at all.
He was always in a bad mood and made class miserable.
He would make horrible homophobic remarks and make us students feel incompetent.
His classroom felt hostile and like a prison.
I hate it there.
Kevin says he started taking connections
classes with Ruby. Group sessions. Actually the first time he went was a
full seminar. Like you know a whole workshop. It's like one of those hotel
conference rooms that you book out. Jodie's hosting it. Jodie's up on the stage
and the whole workshop is love versus lust. Jodie would say love is giving. It's
honest. Lust is about taking, it's about greed,
it's about control, and you can lust over anything. If a man says he doesn't lust, he's lying. Many of
them are lusting whether they're lusting sexually, they're being selfish. So we have a huge pop-up,
okay? That's what Jodie's saying. Kevin leans in, looks over at his wife Ruby, he's about to roll
his eyes. When he looks and sees that Ruby and every other person in this entire hotel conference room is laser focused.
They're like on the edge of their seats.
He whispers to Ruby,
This feels like a cult, like a man-hating club.
Kevin says the experience was very confusing.
You know, this is a bunch of man-hating women that are just looking for excuses to tear down their husbands,
and I mean, that's what it felt like to me in there.
But it's confusing because there were a lot of people that I respected,
a lot of people that were on that stage with microphones in hand giving testimonials of how great this was
and how it changed their lives and their marriage.
The seminar does come at a very vulnerable time.
He says, To be honest, we were pretty lost and Ruby believed this was the road map back to the place that we both wanted to go.
So after the seminar, she sat me down and she said,
I'm concerned about our marriage and I'd like to invite you to join a connections men's group.
Which is a group of men that meet up on Zoom every week with Jodie so she can berate them about how they're ruining their lives
if they ever place their eyeballs on a nude photo of a woman.
In the beginning at least, Kevin and Ruby get sucked in.
He says, we both felt like there was purpose again.
Even the kids felt a change.
Ruby was happier, she never shouted anymore.
We were really happy, like a happy family again.
Clearly, very quickly, Kevin gets very into connections.
There are clips of Kevin Frankie giving advice to other parents in the connections groups.
He's sitting there right next to Ruby saying things like,
There's so many culturalisms today that are just being promoted and celebrated and
taught from the highest towers in every part of the land that it's my job to make kids
happy.
It's my job to give my kids a magical childhood.
It's my job to make my children smile and laugh.
And it's my job to make my children smile and laugh and it's my job to make my children successful. no. sherry remembers in her book, yeah that's
exactly what ruby does. ruby does not have time or patience for a child that
wants to be happy or is even sick. so now kevin's like buying into all of this.
he's like discipline, discipline. It's not my job to make sure
that my children are emotionally stable.
In the beginning, Ruby and Kevin are the stars
of the new group sessions that Jodie is hosting.
They become the teacher's pets, if you will,
and everyone would do well to learn from them.
Many victims have come forward to say
that Jodie is very meticulous about how she tortures people
in these group counseling sessions.
You could be in a group setting with all these husbands, but if you ever admit that you have been
self-pleasuring, they will pair you up with an accountability buddy. This is a
non-mental health professional that you have to text three times a day at the
very least. Anytime you want to self-pleasure or do anything that you
shouldn't be doing, even if you just briefly thought about it for two
seconds, you have to tell your accountability buddy. They take a full
log. They're like an accountant. excel spreadsheet this. and then there's these
confessional meetings where you meet up with your wife and jodie and you have to confess everything
to her and if you maybe don't mention one thing on that list, the accountability buddy will rat
you out. and then everyone in the group pressures the wife to punish the offending spouse in some way.
other victims who have come forward state that jodie encourages the wife to punish the offending spouse in some way. Other victims who have come
forward state that Jodie encourages the wife to punish husbands by kicking them
out of the bedroom, no hugging, no kissing, no talking, no nothing, no intimacy or
even personal connection for months at a time, all for the unforgivable crime of
self-pleasure. Does Jodie have a husband? She did briefly an ex-husband for two
years and it was apparently a very messy divorce.
Now Jodi would use that where the husband is now going through months of isolation and
it's almost like she's waiting for the husband to self-pleasure again and have a relapse.
That's when she pushes the wife to kick him fully out of the house and start initiating
a divorce.
Aside from that, the group sessions are just group bullying sessions.
kevin says if jodie piles on somebody, they all pile on. if jodie praises somebody, they all praise.
and so it really felt like a pack of dogs. and jodie was the alpha. and whoever she sticks the dogs on, they would go.
whoever she praised, you know, the dogs would just lick them up and down. and that's just how these groups went. the revenue from these group counseling sessions alone is estimated to be on the
conservative side have brought in Jodi about $30,000 a month. now Kevin would
start helping to lead these sessions. yeah he was very involved at this point.
he would talk about how he was addicted to all sorts of things. sports, his phone,
work, and how he always just made
his wife feel like she had to hold the house down, and it was this whole conversation he's
like leading and teaching, and it seems like the only one in the entire Frankie household
that's really concerned, that's not a full-fledged child that's getting concerned about this,
is Sherry.
She's very suspicious of Jodie.
Something about Jodie is cold, not
maternal, but in the worst way possible. It's like the absence of any maternal
energy. Sherry starts looking into who exactly Jodi Hildebrandt is and she
seems like a grifter. Honestly, like a con woman. On her website there's packages
that you can purchase. Leadership training. Six-week program, one person, 800.
Team leadership program, 5,000 company leadership training 15,000
Jodie learns the reason that Jodie switched from therapy to full-blown
Counseling and life coaching is because yes, there's more money, but also she's on probation her license was suspended
At this point Adam Paul Steed's story was not fully out
So it just was like Jodie was disclosing patient information to the honor code at BYU.
It wasn't the level that we know today.
Even the way Jodie responds to criticism is alarming.
In one video, Jodie demands people leave her better reviews.
She starts ranting, all you have to do is click the link and give us a five-star review.
It's as simple as that, but you guys aren't doing it.
I think we've had five people from the last time I asked,
which is probably a month ago, five out of almost 9,000,
five people to give us a review, that's five.
And we've had probably 50 to 75 people
give us one star reviews.
So we started with a five, and in three months,
we're down to like a two.
There is a link underneath every single video
that says give us a review. Click it and give us a five-star review please
I don't understand why you won't do it even if you put all of this to the side
Sherry is noticing how extreme things are getting in the house
Jodie would say extreme things like it's extreme but it has to be because we're
surgically removing the sin we're surgically removing the sin. We're surgically removing the sin from your souls.
May 2021, Jodie calls Ruby freaking out.
She's wailing and sobbing into the phone. This is Jodie, the life coach extraordinaire, crying to her client.
She tells Ruby that it's happening.
It's time.
The second coming, doomsday, the apocalypse.
The shadow figures are coming for her.
They're haunting her.
They just surround her at night, all around the bed.
Jodie knows Satan is behind this. He has it out for her, he's the one sending them
we talked about this in part one, but Ruby and Kevin were prepared for doomsday, the second coming
Kevin says, because we were in that state of mind where we were ready for something big to happen, we were expecting it
we just weren't expecting this
so to them, this sounds incredibly rational, level-headed. Yes, of course Satan Daddy is sending you demons at night. So they go to Jodie's house to be
with her while she goes through these demonic possessions to give her support.
So for months the church bishop would come to help Jodie, I guess with
exorcisms, but nothing's working. Bishop even suggests maybe the demons are
attached to your five million dollar house. Maybe you gotta leave. which means maybe Jodie can stay with you Ruby live with you and
the rest of the Frankie kids until she's better move into the Frankie household
Kevin says I was like oh hell no I don't want this in my house but I was beaten
over the head with it that's really insensitive she's done so much to help
our family you're being selfish she needs it and come on and you know won't be for long and so I relented and I was like, okay
Actually, this could be kind of fun. Let's make it fun and she needs a vacation
so we'll just do all of this and it turned into um,
You know the the moment she showed up at my house, which was the weirdest crap started happening
We saw the church leader told Jodie to live with Frankie
Well, it was more so I don't know how to help you. Maybe the demons are in your house. I gotta go
Oh
So ruby just took her in. Yeah, Jodie and ruby were like, oh, let's go to ruby's house
Okay now Kevin says out of nowhere the lights would turn on and off
It sounds like people were walking inside the walls. You could feel there's spirits floating around
Kevin says he hated it, that it was weird.
But he probably didn't hate it as much as Sherry hated it.
She just remembers her mom calling her,
you have a couple of hours to take whatever you need out of your room,
and Jodie's moving in.
You're moving out in two weeks already to go to college,
so I figured you only have to deal with it for two weeks so it should be fine.
Sherry says it was fine, but I thought it was weird that a therapist would move in with her patients.
But it gets worse. Sherry writes in her journal at the time. The house's spirits feel weird with
Jodie here. Something's going on between her and my parents that we don't know about and the whole
thing is super secretive. I'm trying to spend as much time out of the house as I can. This is the desert house? No, this is the Frankie house.
Oh, the desert house is not Frankie house. No, that's Jodie's house.
Oh, yeah. This is like their family home that they've been vlogging in.
Okay. Now Jodie is still suffering from her demonic
possessions, her trances. Both Ruby and Kevin are trying to help her through it, but eventually Jodie starts responding
best to Ruby. Ruby even volunteers to stay in Jodie's room overnight, which is
her daughter Sherry's room, to comfort Jodie because the demon spirits get more
active at night. They start sleeping in the same bed. Ruby tells Kevin, you know
what? I'm just gonna start sleeping
in there and if I need you I'll come down and get you and maybe if I'm in the
room with Jodie these things will leave her alone.
Kevin says, I'm like oh that's kind of weird, that is when they started sleeping
in the same bed. Kevin says that's also when quote Ruby started having like
trances and stuff. I would say it was probably around that time that she
believed she was going to heaven
and seeing God and Jesus talking with them.
They would stay locked in that room for four to five hours
and then they would come out all on cloud nine
and Ruby would say things like,
"'She just had this amazing vision.
"'We're all bringing all this stuff into the world.
"'We're doing God's work.'"
Yeah.
Kevin says, "'I don't know the extent to which
their interactions went, but it was much more than a friendship, much more than a
sisterhood. It was uncomfortably intimate. Sherry says, I never remembered her being
that sympathetic towards me when I was having similar issues, aka nightmares as
a kid, but I guess this was different with Jodie. Also Sherry says, Ruby and Jodi would stay upstairs all day and they would rarely leave the house unless they were going to Dairy Queen.
Their diets were a cardiologist nightmare, just sugar and ranch dressing.
So after moving out for college, there's this very strange incident where Sherry has to go back home to get a few things from her room.
She says, I pushed the door to my bedroom and I looked around confused.
She says, I pushed the door to my bedroom and I looked around confused. The room was bathed in the soft glow of candles.
The air was heavy with the scent of lavender and vanilla wafting from the massage oils in the dresser.
I quickly grabbed what I needed and got the hell out of there, feeling like I just walked into someone else's honeymoon suite.
The only thing missing was rose petals on the bed.
That is crazy. Sherry says the
whole thing was made weird weirder by the fact that that night Sherry's
sleeping on the couch she can't fall asleep it's like 5 a.m. she hears
something and she writes in her book quote I cracked one eye open just in
time to see Ruby tiptoeing out of my room her hair messy her cheeks flushed
and her robe hastily tied heading back to the bedroom she shared with my dad.
A strange smile on her face.
She looked mischievous.
What the hell was going on?
Why was Ruby sneaking around in the middle of the night like a teenager,
trying not to get caught by her parents?
Were they really doing candlelit massages in my bedroom?
How could all of this be happening with all of us in the house?
She continues, massages in my bedroom? How could all of this be happening with all of us in the house?"
She continues, it was equal parts fascinating and horrific. Two women who preached quote
truth while living lies, who condemned queerness very publicly in their connections videos
while embodying it privately in my room, on my bed, most likely.
Later Sherry will find notes in Ruby's computer detailing how frustrated Ruby was about having
to cater to Jodie's needs for physical affection without getting anything in return.
Which is a lot going on, but at the time, all Sherry is most concerned about is her
family's safety.
Sherry starts googling, is my family in a cult? This is where I leave you with part
two and stay tuned for part three and part four. So part three we're gonna go
over if people could have seen more warning signs because up until the day of
the arrest they're still posting podcast episodes like 30 minute podcast
episodes and some of what they're teaching kind of lines up to what they're journaling about the torture that was taking place.
And then in part four, we go through the arrests.
Stay tuned. Let me know in the comments. What are your thoughts?
Stay safe, and I will see you in the next one.