The Teachings of Jodi Hildebrandt

After Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt’s child abuse charges in 2023, a new Netflix documentary is diving into the influence that Hildebrandt held over Franke and many other LDS church members throughout her career.

Shane’s position as an active LDS member lends perspective as to why local bishops would endorse Hildebrandt and the emphasis that the Mormon culture seems to place on certain “addictions”.

Plus, Emily admits her own theories about Jodi and why she targeted her harshest punishments towards men and children specifically.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, guys, Welcome to a new episode of Legally Brunette.
I will be your host Emily Simpson with Shane with Shane,
but I hope everybody had a good holiday. We're back
after the Christmas and New Year break, and before we
get into we're going to talk about Jody Hildebrandt, who
if you followed us along from the beginning, we did
an earlier episode on Ruby Frankie, which is the mom

(00:24):
influencer in Utah that was arrested I think it was
twenty twenty three, maybe not too long ago, for four
counts of child abuse and she is currently in prison.
But if you listen to our earlier episodes, you know
that Jody hilda Brandt was the therapist that moved into
the home and had a lot of influence over the
family and ended up being arrested as well.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Criminal therapist.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
The criminal therapist, Right, So there's a new Netflix show
out that really focuses just on Jody hilda Brandt. So
that's what we're going to talk about today. But before
we get into that, let's just do a little update.
There's been information that has come out recently on Brian Coburger. Again,
if you remember Brian Coburger is the Idaho college murderer.

(01:08):
He's in prison. Remember he did not go to trial.
He took a plea deal so he could avoid the
death penalty.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Right, so he's part of his perfect crime strategy.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yes that he's guilty. He's guilty because he wants to
avoid the death penalty. So if you have not listened
to that episode, it's a really good one. I think
we might have actually done two episodes on the Idaho murders,
so you can always find those on our feed. Legally
Brunette So, Brian Coberger's sister has spoken publicly about the
last holidays she's spent with him. Just days before law

(01:37):
enforcement and descended on her parents Pennsylvania home and arrested
him in connection with the fatal stabbings of the four
University of Idaho students. You know, this is something I
was thinking about when we talked about even Brian Coburger
or Luigi MANNGIONI. We haven't done one on him, but
I always wondered. Those are very infamous people that are
in the news. Everybody recognizes the face and the name.

(01:59):
It's very huge and true crime.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Even if you don't follow true crime I know what's
going on, so.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
And you know a little bit, but you don't really
Like with Luigi Mangioni, you don't hear anything from like
what his family. You don't see what are they gonna do? No,
I'm just saying photos no, But I'm saying I feel
like they take a step back and hide.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Out, because again, what would you expect him to do.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
I would think that if they were out and about,
like he's so huge, that paparazzi would be taking photos
of them or trying to get statements from them or
contacting them. But you don't see anything the same with
Brian Coberger, like he was such a I.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Don't know if people are really interested in finding out
what extended family has to say about him.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
I want to know what his parents think about him
being a murderer of four college students, and so anyway,
I am going to DM his sister.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
So.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
In an interview she did recently with The New York Times,
mel Coburger said she became physically ill when she learned
of her brother's arrest and assisted she had no prior
knowledge of the crimes. She said, I have always been
a person who has spoken up for what was right.
If I ever had a reason to believe my brother
did anything, I would have turned him in. Weeks after
the killings, in early December, Brian Coberger returned home to

(03:14):
Pennsylvania and spent Christmas with his family. According to his sister, Mel,
nothing about the holiday raised alarms. She recalled him participating
in family games eating vegan cookies. I'm glad they were
vegan for him that their mother had made specifically for him,
and she also said he appeared disturbed at the sight
of blood when their mother accidentally cut herself while handling foil. Well,

(03:40):
that's the really, honestly, what I just read is just
the characteristics of a psychopath, someone that can sneak into
someone's home and brutally murder for college students in the
middle of the night, and then go home and spend
the holidays with your family and act like nothing happened.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah right, Yeah, and you know, be more focused on
your vegan cookies.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Exactly five days after Christmas, the FBI agents arrived at
the family home and took Coburger into custody. Mel, the sister,
said she was no longer staying there at the time,
and learned what had happened through her sister, Amanda mel
who had been studying psychology herself, said her brother had
struggled for years, including a period of heroin addiction that

(04:18):
she attributed to severe bullying during high school. She disclosed
that he once took her phone and tried selling it
eth a mall to pay for drugs. The family feared
for his life during that time, but believed he had
recovered after treatment and academic success at the Sales University,
followed by doctoral studies in criminology, which he was at
Washington State University when the murders happened. Let's move on

(04:50):
to Jody hilda brand So. The show on Netflix is
called Evil Influencer The Jody Hildebrandt Story. I watched it
a couple times actually in ah. First of all, I
hesitated whether we talk about it or not, because I
felt like maybe it was just again because we did
the Ruby Frankie. We watched the I watched the documentary

(05:10):
on Ruby Frankie, so I didn't know if there was
a lot of information. But really I found this interesting
because it didn't focus on Ruby so much. Obviously, it
goes into Jody and it goes into her past. So
you get a more I think three sixty view of
how she ended up becoming as influential as she is,
because I think the question in my mind the whole

(05:32):
time I'm watching it is how was she able to
influence so many people and so easily so. Jody Hildebrant
is a former Utah therapist and life coach who became
closely involved with family vlogger Ruby Frankie. It was a
partnership that ultimately led to one of the most disturbing
child abuse cases in recent years. In August of twenty

(05:54):
twenty three, Hildebrant and Frankie were arrested after Frankie's twelve
year old son escaped from Hildebrand's home severely malnourished and injured,
prompting police to uncover evidence of prolonged physical and emotional
abuse which was inflicted on the two youngest children. Those
are Frankie's youngest children. So the documentary actually starts out

(06:15):
with that ring footage, and we did talk about it
when we did the Ruby Frankie case. But the ring footage,
even though I had seen it before, and I had
seen it multiple times before, even watching this new episode
got no I wasn't desensitized. I cried again when I
saw it. And you know what really made me, I

(06:37):
think break down the most is when the child escapes.
Apparently this was the second time he escaped. The first
time they found him and brought him back to the house,
but this was the second time. I think he escaped
through a window and he goes to the neighbor's home,
and they have the ring footage so you can see it,
and they also have the nine to one one call
and all that, so you can hear everything that's going on.
But when the man opens or when he you know,

(07:00):
he replies to the ring through the ring, he sounds
like he's irritated, right, because it's like some young boys
on his porch ring.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
He might even not like the mom, so he might
be thinking the crazy kids from next door, well, yeah,
I don't bothering me again, not knowing the full length
of what's going right.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
So you can tell he's kind of irritated when he's like,
what do you want? You know, and the kids walking away,
but you can see him come back and he's like
it's personal business, and he's you know, the guy's kind
of like, well, you know, what's going on, you know,
why are you bothering me? Kind of thing. But then
you can tell you can hear it.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Changed he saw that the child was in danger.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
You can hear a shift. He actually when he calls
nine to one one, and you can hear it, he
actually starts to sob when he's talking about the child
because he talks about how his he has duct tape
around his wrists and his ankles, and he's emaciated and
he has scarring.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
He weighed like fifty pounds.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, it's so it was really emotional to watch that. Again.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
No, I just wanted to say something because they say
it was one of them horrific child abuse cases, disturbing,
disturbing in recent years. But I disagree with that. I
bet disturbing child abuse cases happen all the time. Just
this one surfaced on video camera so we got to
see it. But I don't want to overlook all the

(08:18):
suffering that there's a lot of kids that have to
go through. It just doesn't get this level of attention.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
No, And it got this level of attention because Ruby
Frankie had her YouTube channel which was eight Passengers, and
so she already had notoriety and I believe at the
height of their YouTube channel, she had around two million subscribers,
so it was huge. People really knew who she was,
especially in that Utah type of community. And you know,
everything was about posting about you know, not only the

(08:45):
church and church teachings, but also just family life and
how to raise six kids. And you know, she put
herself out there is like this amazing mother that does
it all right, so people are following her, right.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
So it was a fall of this eight passenger mony.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
So Jody Hildebrandt was raised in the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints and completed a mission after
high school. And Netflix's Evil Influencer, Jody's missionary partner recalls
that she was once a beauty pageant contestant and star
basketball player, and says she was particularly effective at persuading
others to join the LDS Church. It's been noted that

(09:21):
Hildebrant has shared limited details about her personal life over
the years. In past talk, she has said that she
married her husband in nineteen ninety three and had two children,
but the marriage ended in divorce just three years later.
She has not publicly identified her former husband or children,
and has acknowledged that she is estranged from her kids. Now,
this is interesting to me because this woman holds, how

(09:43):
it starts, holds herself out to be a marriage therapist.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
It'd be like me being an alcoholic like sponsor or
whatever and being an alcoholic. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
So she holds herself out to be a therapist of
marriages and to be an expert on parenting children, even
though she has two adult children that she's estranged from.
And I tried to find information on them. You can't
find anything. Whoever these two kids are. I feel like
they've changed their name and they've scrubbed themselves from the internet,
and they want nothing to do with her. You can't

(10:15):
find it.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Who knows. They might have been adopted by the stepmother
or something like that long ago, and I don't know.
She wouldn't care anyway, she didn't strange for them.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
But this woman never remarried and never had more children.
But then she is an She holds herself out to
be an expert on marriages and children. So, following her divorce,
Jody Hildebrant returned to academia, earning a degree in English
from Brigham Young University before completing a master's degree in
psychology at the University of Utah, and this is in

(10:44):
two thousand and three. While training as a counselor, she
developed a professional focus on issues involving sexual behavior and addiction,
as well as the intersection of sexuality, relationships and teachings
within the LDS Church. Now, what I thought was interesting
is that they so, let's talk about the mission companion.
So they find her mission companion and they interview her,

(11:07):
and she talks about how she was never comfortable around Well.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
A former mission companage probably had a number of them.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Okay, well, why don't you explain that, because Shane has
been on a mission, and I think your perspective of
this is very interesting. So when you go on a mission.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Well I just met you're you go in twos, so
you're never alone, right, It's a safety thing. It's also
holding each other accountable, and it's also just you know,
team building, right kind of thing. So she probably had
she served likely an eighteen month mission. She probably had
you know, five or six companions, and this is one

(11:42):
of them. So I was just saying it wasn't like
for the entire mission, It was likely just a few
months and it could be six months. I don't know,
but I'm just I just wanted to clarify that. So
it's one person that they found out of a number
of people that interacted.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
With right, they only managed her.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
This is her experience.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
With her, right, And I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
A lot of them didn't have a good experience.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
With probably not, but they the one that they talk
to is in the in the Netflix dock.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
I always think like someone that probably knew me and
then they might see us on TV and be like, oh, okay,
that's cool. But then they see her on TV and
they're like, yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah I saw
this coming.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
So when you have a mission companion, you get more
than one. Is there always more? Are they that? So
you're not always stuck with the same person in case
there's like a but there's.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
No like sixty days. You have a mission president who
assigns everyone okay, and as they see fit and obviously
logistically and how they find if they find, you know,
some people might need to be together. You know, he
has inspiration and puts them together in certain places and
things like that.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
So where did you do your mission?

Speaker 2 (12:45):
You don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
I do know, but I think it's interesting. I don't know,
I just think people might want to.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
I went to Portugal for about a year, and then
I went to the Cape Verdi in the Islands for
about a year.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Shane has some really interesting mission stories of when, especially
when you were in Cape verd the.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Third world country out in the middle of nowhere that
no one's ever heard of.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Right, So, like a lot of your stories about just
eating and being on the island and I don't know,
like transportation and like your suitcase, and like all these
stories you told me. It's really it's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
I do struggles.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Mission stories, all right. So back to back to jod.
So what her mission companion said was that she felt
as if it wasn't even necessary for her to be
there because Jody had such a forceful type of personality
that she talks about a specific incident where there was
a family that kept pushing back their baptismal date, and

(13:41):
she said, you know, she was trying to persuade them,
but didn't really get anyone.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
So that's the problem. You're not supposed to persuade anyone, Okay,
you introduce them to it, you teach them as they
seek to be taught, and then they choose if you
persuade people, then they don't have their own conviction and
that's a problem.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Well, I feel like that's where Jody was really.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Like, that's what I want and what I wanted to
point out.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Right into her skills. So the other emission companion talks
about how she like wasn't really all that effective, which
makes me think maybe they weren't ready right.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Right then exactly.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Then she sits, Then they sit down with Jody, and
then they end up you know, converting or whatever it is.
And she said it's because of her personality and how persuasive.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
There's no shame in resolving some concerns that people might
have addressing them. But it sounds like she probably was
do things my way, you know, like she was steamrolling
the situation and dictating the terms and probably pushy, right
persuasive as you called it.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
So, Hildebrandt practice as a therapist with a focus on
what she described as quote porn addiction, and that concept, however,
is not formally recognized as a diagnosable disorder in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which guides mental
health professionals in the United States, but within LDS culture.
Pornography is treated as a serious moral issue, and the

(15:03):
church encourages members who struggle with it to seek support
through church affiliated recovery programs. So therefore, Jody Hildebrandt was
put on a list of therapists that bishops could send
members to, leading many LDS couples to follow her extreme teachings.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
But she sounds like she had such an ego and
probably thought she could save everyone, that she was just
out there all the time recruiting people, you know, and
persuading clients to seek her counseling, and she was probably
just dictating all the terms as she did with these kids.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, but what is confusing for me is that because
later on we'll talk about there, they interview several of
her past clients that were all members of the church,
and they all have such grievances about her and her
methodology and how extreme she was. And it makes me
wonder why she was on this list for so long

(15:56):
that people just like bishops kept referring her.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Well, probably it probably never came back to the bishop.
I mean, I imagine the bishops would only do so much.
It's voluntary service, so obviously they do the best they can.
There's probably a list and maybe some you know, when
when people chose to go with whomever, there's probably no
feedback of saying this lady did X, Y and Z
was inappropriate or whatever she was doing to them. I
don't know, for them to take her off the list.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Critics argue that the religious framings surrounding pornography can be
considered extreme. John Dellan, a former therapist and the host
of the podcast Mormon Stories, has said the Church often
portrays pornography as a grave sin and, in some interpretations,
a pathway to far more serious wrongdoing. Delan has also
stated that LDS teachings commonly frame men as sexual animals

(16:44):
and women as the gatekeepers. I don't know, I want
to know your thoughts on that, on pornography, well, not pornography,
but just do I do know, just from our time
living in Utah and just my little experience with the
church and things like that, that sometimes I felt as
if the constant you know, no, pornography has the opposite effect.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well maybe, but I mean, do you do you look
at it that way? With drugs? Are you gonna tell
your kids like do you want like if I say, hey, kids,
don't do heroin or coke. Are you gonna say, hey,
that's gonna have an opposite effect, Let's go easy on them.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
There are some things that should be excluded.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Entirely, and I understand that so, but I feel as
if from a very early start, it's a constant conversation
around don't look at pornography, don't look at pornography.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
I don't know who you're hanging out with, but I
didn't experience that one up there.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
No, But I it's a it's a thing that's always
like addressed and talked about. So I'm just saying, maybe.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Just like they also teach no cheating in your marriage
and no drugs, no street drugs, hard drugs.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
But also, do you think that it can be too
extreme where it's like sometimes men who just have I'm
just asking you, you're a man. I'm saying, sometimes men
who just have like a healthy appetite for.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Sex, then it ends up healthy.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
I'm not talking about porn in general, because it also
has to do with like sex addiction. It's not just pornography.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
It's a gateway drug. Put it that way, So what.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
You're saying it leads on to what, like, what does
pornography leave onto more pornography? Starring in pornography, You're cheating,
you're saying, Oh, so you're saying it's a gateway drug
to infidelity.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, and disconnecting with your spouse, not not valuing intimacy
with your spouse the same, right, Well, those are good points.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
In two thousand and seven, Jody started her own counseling
business called Connections, and that's Connections with an X by
the way. Jody first gain prominence in Utah after launching Connections,
a relationship focused counseling business aim largely at married couples.
According to the program's now defunct website, the service was
intended to help you flourish in your relationships. Former clients

(19:04):
later alleged that Hildebrandt selectively applied teachings of the LDS
Church to support her interpretations of relationship problems and to
reinforce her authority in counseling sessions. You know, I thought
that was interesting because when they interviewed a lot of
these past clients, they talked about how she ultimately ended
up destroying their marriage because I feel like she had
these tactics of first asserting this authority over them like

(19:29):
she and using church teachings to make herself the authority.
Then I felt like her next step was isolation, and
that was like a thing that she did. And this
is why I don't understand how she continued to do
it over and over because to me, that's a huge
red flag where she would have the husband's move out
of the home and have no contact, no contact with

(19:49):
the kids, no contact with the wife, like they needed
to work with.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Her out anti male I came out of the house,
out of the relationship, I think, so her husband. I mean, well, I.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Think maybe she was a lesbian, and I think but
it wasn't acceptable to be a lesbian in her family
and religion, and so she suppressed that. But then I
think there was some anchor because of that, because there
because we do know that she and Ruby did have
an unconventional relationship. Remember they they spent hours in the
bedroom together. She moved in with Ruby, then they ultimately

(20:25):
ended up going to her home in Ivans, which is
Saint George area. And I think even Sherry, the oldest daughter,
wrote in her book that she believed that there was
some you know, intimacy intimacy, some sexual relationship between the
two of them. But then that makes me think that
maybe she was she had some suppressed anger because she

(20:47):
wasn't really fully allowed to be who she was, and
then she took it out on her clients by using
this extremism with them.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
Who knows she was a nut.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
Washington County attorney Eric Clark addressed this dynamic and Netflix's
evil influencer, saying, Jody was so good at taking vulnerable
people who were coming to her because they were not
in a great place in their lives, and framing it
in a religious context that kind of fit enough with
other stuff they've been taught, and then pushing them to
do things that I know a normal therapists wouldn't be

(21:20):
encouraging people to do. She found a niche. Niche, she
found a niche, and she marketed it. Jody was very
successful at getting people to give her money.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
I mean, isn't it's the end of the day. It's
a power trip.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
I think.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
She knows what's right. Yeah, we'll call it, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah. Jody's counseling license was suspended in twenty twelve for
unprofessional conduct. Hildebrandt faced professional discipline after Utah regulators determined
she had violated client confidentiality, resulting in an eighteen months
suspension of her license. The document aligns with claims made
by Adam Stead, who at the time was newly married,

(21:57):
raising a young child, expecting another child, and enrolled at
BYU as an international relations and pre med student. He
said that church leaders encouraged him and his wife to
attend marriage counseling and referred them to Jody quote he says,
I was sent to Jody Hildebrandt, me and my wife.
The bishop was saying it was for both of us together.

(22:19):
He now alleges that during the course of counseling, Hildebrandt
shared private information with him without his consent, with LDS,
church officials and with administrators at BYU. There's a lot
of trauma here, he said. So, yeah, I did read
this article where he claims, and I think she probably
did it to other people, not just him, But I
think she was, you know, getting people into this therapy

(22:39):
type of situation. She was getting personal information from them,
then without their consent, She's going and telling the bishop
and then telling you know, administrators at BYU. Like what
she was dealing with with this guy, and I am
sure she did it to other people as well, which
clearly is a breach of confidentiality. Which that's well as
we know when you go talk to a therapist, because

(23:01):
we talked about that with Menendez, remember he, like the
Menindaz brothers, admitted to killing their parents with their therapist.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
You talking your sleep, Yeah, that's how you get around it.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Oh is that how? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Another therapist didn't like, Oh yeah, that's what the I
thought you were like the Menendez fan.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
I didn't know what you were referring to. Yeah, yeah,
he said he because it was his mistress that went
and told the police. And then he said he didn't
really tell her that he was just talking in his
sleep and she heard him.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Right. Yeah, that's an old moonlighting episode, is it? Yeah?
You do like sleeping with this guy and he was
a hitman, and every night he would basically say who
he was going to kill the next day or whatever.
So she finally reported it to Was.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
She a therapist? Was she a therapist?

Speaker 2 (23:45):
She was a prostitute.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
That's why I was in his sleep. So he fell
asleep after the deed.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
No, I think he was confessing like like he was
saying who he was going to kill, yeah, and who
he had killed, so he was then she I don't
know why she doesn't go to the police, right, but
she goes to you know, the detective agency, which is
uh okay.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
But where is the where is the confidentiality with the
prostitute and the hit man.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
I'm just saying, can be dangerous if you're a criminal
or a therapist.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Okay, because I was like, I don't think there's any
level of confidentiality between processes.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
It's like moonlighting. I just wanted to bring that in,
all right.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Other male clients have come forward and spoken out. Also,
can we just talk about Jody. If we remember back
with Ruby Frankie, she was she was treating Ruby Frankie,
but she was also treating the husband, and then she
was also treating the kids, which is total violation of
not confidentiality, but just ethics. It's not it's not ethical

(24:47):
to treat everyone you know in a household.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Well, even if she's just not ethical period, she doesn't
have any ethics. She's a nut. So if she was
treating one person that family, that's a problem.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Exactly. Other male clients have come forward and spoken out.
So five men told NBC News that Jodie Hildebrandt diagnosed
them with porn or sex addictions, even though they said
they did not experience any unusual issues. They describe being
placed in men's counseling groups that focused on porn, sex
and lust, which included weekly hour long meetings and daily
support calls to discuss therapy goals. See. I think this

(25:24):
was another way. Not only did she exhibit such control
over them, but this, I mean this house that she
when they searched the house, you know where they found
the two kids, it was a five million dollar home
in Saint George. So I think she had we were
talking about a power of persuasion, but she was also
very good at saying, okay, you need to be in
this group class which costs this much, but you also
have to talk to me daily at probably two hundred

(25:46):
and fifty dollars an hour or something, and you know
we have to have you know, a session every day
for an hour. And you know also I probably need
to talk to your kids and your wife, and so
you know, these people are spending thousands and thousands of
dollars to fix themselves, when really this woman is just
on a power Trip one. Former participant Spencer Tibbitts described

(26:08):
his upbringing as extremely sheltered with limited access to technology.
At sixteen, after getting in trouble for using a secret
phone to play video games, he was sent to Hildebrand
for two months. She moved him from her children's group
into the men's group so he could have more focused
discussions about his treatment. The men's group was intended for
those being treated for porn addiction. Tibbets, now twenty one, said,

(26:30):
I had a secret phone, but I didn't even know
what porn was. So he ends up getting moved into
this group of men.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Well, I bet you this Hildebrand lady can't even be
content with anyone. Everyone's got major issues and she has
to get involved and everything's dramatic, you know, like if
a kid looked at a picture of a naked person,
That's what I'm saying. She probably took it to the extreme.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
He said, you have a porn addiction, right, right, That's
what I'm saying. I guess that was my point in
the whole porn addiction was exactly what you pointed out,
where it's like, is it an actual poornography addiction that
they need therapy for or was it just curiosity that
is normal? Like, how do you distinguish between the two?
Where does it become a level of.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
She probably thinks everyone has problems but her.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Jody Hildebrant's professional relationship with Ruby Frankie began back in
twenty nineteen after Ruby and her husband, Kevin Frankie, sought
her help for marital and family issues. By then, the
Frankies were already well known through their YouTube channel eight Passengers.
As the counseling continued, Ruby became increasingly involved in Connections,
appearing regularly in its classes, talks, and online content. The

(27:39):
two women grew close and began collaborating across their platforms.
On the Connection's website, under the Meat the Business Team section,
Ruby Frankie was identified as a certified mental fitness trainer.
I don't know what that is or how you get certified.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
It mental fitness trainer.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Certified mental fitness trainer. Is this is made up? Right?

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah? But certified? So there's there some.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Organizing that means by a certified. But I feel like
you could just get on a computer and create your
certification and front it out and hang it up on
the wall. Her role included producing material for Connections, social
media accounts and podcasts, which were promoted as being focused
on empowering parents and children to live in truth. Their
relationship deepened in twenty twenty two when Jody moved into

(28:27):
the Frankie home. Later that year, Kevin Frankie was forced
out of the residence and he and Ruby separated, which
was largely influenced by Jody's teachings. Now, when we did
the Ruby Frankie episode, we did talk about this because
Kevin Frankie, even though he this is the dad, even
though he can't so so many people ask me, why
was he not legally charged with something because those kids

(28:49):
were being abused? And we talked about I believe that
there was no It wasn't a criminal.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Act the Federal with the mom's care.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well, I'm just saying the fact that this guy their father,
and he was completely negligent, and that he did willfully
remove himself from the home and the children and had
no interaction with them and was not checking on them
and was not being forceful at all to be a
part of their lives. There's no criminal act in that, correct.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
However, you might have opinions on it.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
I do think that he is a weak, weak man
who allowed Jody Hildebrandt to move into his house and
to basically take over his life. And I don't know
why any.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Maybe he was convinced that he was no good, that
they would the kids would be better with them too,
I don't know. Maybe she really got him.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
So Jody moves into the house and moves into the
daughter's bedroom. And then this is when Ruby and Jody
are spending all their time together, like locked in the
bedroom all the time.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
So I know, so how much could he have done
with people like that?

Speaker 1 (29:52):
I don't know. I'm just saying this is the part
that I don't understand. I get that maybe she was like, Okay,
you need to move out, and he's like, fine, all right,
I'll move So Ruby Frankie kicks him out of the house.
Then she tells him he can't have any contact with
the children.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
I'm just saying, yeah, I know, I know it's messed up.
I'm just saying, we just don't know the whole story.
She's psycho. They're both psycho.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
No, I get it. But I'm saying, the dad bugs
me that he allowed it to happen, And I understand
there's nothing you can do criminally, he's not criminally liable
for anything. But his children were abused, and he did
not even know that they were located in Saint George.
He knew nothing, and he was a good dad and
he had a good relationship with the kids. I'm saying

(30:34):
when he walked away and was like, Okay, fine, this
therapist moved into our house and thinks this is best.
When do you push back and say, no, these are
my children and I'm not going to disassociate with them
and not know anything about them and not see them.
And that's the part where I don't understand how she
has that much power to do that to people. I
don't get that part. He also wasn't allowed to go

(30:56):
upstairs because that was like JODI's dwelling was upstairs. And
he also wasn't allowed to go in the kitchen unless
Ruby Frankie allowed him to go into the kitchen. So
they're just like they made They've just berated this man
into just nothing. I guess, I guess that's how you
what do you do? Isn't that like in the military
when they beat you down, you know, until you're nothing,

(31:17):
and then they build you back up until into what
they want you to be. But they forget. They didn't
build him up. They just beat the man down and
kicked him out. Jody and Ruby's personal and professional lives
became further intertwined when they launched Moms of Truth, which
was a rebranded channel that took over Ruby's large Instagram following.
Through the account, they promoted rigid parenting philosophies centered on

(31:40):
discipline and boundaries. In May of twenty twenty three, the
partnership took a more drastic turn when Hildebrand and Ruby
relocated to of Frankie's youngest children roughly three hundred miles
away to Hildebrand's residence in Ivan's, Utah. At that point,
Kevin Frankie had no contact with the children. So I
guess it gets to the point where these two youngest children,

(32:01):
I think they're aged ten and twelve. It's a boy
and a girl. They end up in this house in
Saint George. Yeah, and this is where these two young
kids are tortured. Now there's two middle children too, two girls.
And I was always interested because even when we talked
about Ruby Frankie before, it was hard to understand where
the two middle kids were because it said something about
them being at a family friend's house.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
But then I think, oh, yeah, that's right, I remember that.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
But now, you know, I've read things that said that
they weren't actually with a family friend, that they were
actually living in that Springville home. You remember when they
did the eight Passengers YouTube channel and they were making money,
they built they bought that nice house in Springville, and
I think the two middle kids that were still in school,
their miners, were left there alone to take care of themselves.

(32:44):
And I think that Ruby and Jody took the two
youngest kids because they could have influence over the young gid.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah. As funny as those two girls, if they stayed back,
they probably were better off, oh y, on their own,
taking care of themselves without any real adult care, which
they should have had. Exactly know why did was she
attracted to this family like she had Well, apparently a
lot of clients didn't give a crap about anyone. She's
spilling the beans on all of them.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
I think that she was attracted to Ruby. I think
she was in love with her, That's my thing. Why
I don't I don't know. I mean, maybe her personality,
she's attract she has all these YouTube followers. I think
she used that.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
The thought that was a platform like this lady is yeah, somebody.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Because when they start making their podcasts and they're doing
content together, they start doing it on Ruby's with all
her followers.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Did they have eight kids?

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Should six? That's why it was called eight passengers?

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, but then who's the driver, the mom and the dad.
Then there should be six passengers, seven passengers and one driver.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
I don't know, I didn't really, I just there's eight
people total. There's a mom and a dad, Ruby, Frankie
and Kevin Frankie. And then they had six kids. They
have the two older kids, Chad and Sherry, that were adults.
That are adults.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Now we agree with drivers, not a passenger, okay.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, okay, all right, well then it should be seven
passengers and a driver. That's right, yes, all right, I'm
glad that you figured that out. On August thirty of
a two thousand and three, Ruby's twelve year old son
escaped and sought help from a neighbor, which prompted police intervention.

(34:19):
Once the twelve year old was with paramedics, he told
investigators that his younger sister was still at Hildebrandt's home.
Police acted quickly, entering Hildebrandt's home without a warrant and
securing the ten year old girl that same.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Day body that too.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, so police entered her home under the legal principle
of exigent circumstances. You know, it's interesting because the police
immediately go to her house because I think the I
think the boy when he's in the pair and when
he's you know, picked up by the paramedics and you know,
they're talking to him and he I think he says
he was at Jody Hildebrandt's home. I think even in
the nine to one one called, the man that called

(34:55):
said it was Jody Hildebrant. So they immediately go to
the house and she is on the phone. She says,
I'm on my phone with my attorney. You can't you
can't come in, and they're like move out the way.
They basically like pull her out of the house, and
she's like, you don't have a search warrant, Like where's
your search warrant? But as we know, there is a

(35:16):
Fourth Amendment right to privacy. However, there are always exceptions,
and because this boy was found in the.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
State, there's no time to get a warrant.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
There's no time to get a warrant, and it's called.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Out without irrele harm, right.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
And it's called exigent circumstances. And when the boy says
that his sister is still in the home and he
has not seen.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Me duct tape on him, no alnutrition, he abuse.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right, and there is still a child in the home.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, they're going to bust down the walls. They're going
in the house, save.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
The kid exactly. So Hildebrandt objects to them coming in
the house. But body camera body camera footage shows Hildebrant
asking police if they have a search warrant and stating, you,
you can't just come into my house without a search warrant.
She's a little more a little more fourth amend and
exceptions research first.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
He also can't kidnap children and secure them in a
room and not feed them and abuse them.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
So once the police enter and they do a sweep
of the house. Also, this is interesting, they can't really
collect evidence when they're doing that because it's under exigent circumstance.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Well, if they're there to find a child, then that
is their focus, to find a child. They're not going
to search drawers right in computers and hard drives. They're
going to search where a child can be right, So
it's limited, yes, So they happen to see something in
the meantime.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Right in the plain sight. So during a protective sweep
of the house, officers found the youngest of Ruby Frankie's
children in a closet with her head shaved. That is
sad too, I tell you, every time I see that,
that breaks my heart too well.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Because there's only one reason you shave a kid's head,
to torture them and control them and break them down.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Very skinny, and she's sitting in a closet on the
floor alone, and I do believe that. I think. I
think it took about four hours for them to coax
her out of the closet.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
I remember seeing a little bit because I didn't You're right,
I didn't watch it, but I didn't watch it for
a reason. But I remember coming into the room and
you're watching it, and it looked like they were gently
trying to put her at ease.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, and I think they ordered pizza for her. I
do believe she finally comes out so that she can
have some pizza. She's very thin. The severity of the
children's condition, which was severe malnourishment and open wounds treated
with cayenne pepper and honey. I don't know how that's
considered a treatment. I guess they got wounds from being
tied up and then they would put this cayenne pepper,

(37:30):
honey like salve or something on top of it. I
don't know if that was supposed to heal the wounds.
But how putting cayenne pepper anything on top of open
wounds makes me think that was torture and not trying
to heal anything supported the police's use of the exigent
circumstances exception. Later on in the investigation, search warrants were
obtained to seize further evidence from the home and electronic devices.

(37:55):
You know. Also, she has this, Jodie Hildebrant had this
safe room in her house, like a panic room because
his house is huge. Who probably to I don't know,
to torture kids, I don't know. But anyway, the cops
go to her and say what the code, and she's like,
I don't know, I don't know the code. Nobody uses it.
We haven't been in there for years. Nobody touches it,
nobody goes in there and you see the cop he

(38:17):
goes up to you.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
That's a flag, right.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
He goes up to the safe room. You know, it's
got one of those whe you know, like you put
a code in, and then he turned the wheel like
like on right, Yeah, like one of those safe yes,
And he goes up to it and he goes one, two, three, four, five, six,
and then he turns it and it clicks and opens,
and so I was anyway, what was inside, Well, they
did find evidence of that. I think that's where the

(38:40):
kids were being held because the boy had to skate before,
so they were they.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Were evidence that they used it to keep kids in there.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, so they found rope and handcuffs, So I think
what they were doing with the sun because he had
to escape before, and in order to keep him from
escaping again, they had like hog tied him. So they
his hands together, his ankles together, and then tied those
together like while he was on his stomach, and like
left him in.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
That hog tie. And then so did they take our
license away for another eighteen months?

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah? Well, I mean she's in jail, So.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
What's your sentencing? Do we remember? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (39:18):
She So each of them got four counts of child abuse,
and I realize it's four counts.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
We want, how long are they going to be in jail?

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Well, it's one to fifteen for like each count, with
like a max of thirty concurrent. Yeah, and they're both
in prison right now. But they it's basically I read
it's at the discretion of the parole board.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
So it's up to fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah, it's up to fifteen years. And they I think
they have they're eligible for parole in like four years
or something.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
So you know times like this where it's like the
sensing should be they go in that little safe room
and they get hog tied. Oh yeah, and then we
put Kaya and Pepper on their wings. Well you know
what else I think this is?

Speaker 1 (39:57):
So here were some other things that you probably don't
know this because you and watch the documentary, but I
will tell you to hear some other things that they did.
They would make him jump on the trampoline in the
hot sun.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, I don't want to hear that.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
You don't want to hear it. No, Shane has a
real problem whenever we talked about kids. He doesn't like
kid cases. But let me just so at first, you know,
even the I think it was the DA that they
interviewed that said Ruby's parenting it was very it fringed
upon being extreme, but not criminal because.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Remember she got kill. It's like spanking. Yeah, you can
spank a child. It's not abuse, but you can sure
get a close, get really close to it being considered
so violent and abuse.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
If you remember, Ruby Frankie and her YouTube channel basically
got canceled because remember she made that video talking about
how her son Chad, she made him sleep on it.
She took his away and made him sleep on his bag.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
You said, on a ball or something something.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Slept on a bean bag. Oh yeah, for seven months
in like the basement or something.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
She bragged about it.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
She did, she bragged about it on it, and she
got backlash, so much backlash as should like, she got
canceled good. And then I think there's another video where
one of the daughters, the younger ones, she cut like
the teddy bear, the head off of a Teddy bear
with scissors or something. So what they were saying, which
made sense to me, was that she was pretty extreme

(41:24):
in her parenting already before Jody Hildebrant came into the picture.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Thing before this is all before. So this is why
in the mix right the fire exactly.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
So what I'm saying is she already was on the
fringe of this not criminal but extreme parenting style that
was getting a lot of backlash, and she ended up,
I believe, canceling her whole YouTube page because of so
much backlash.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yeah, and then she probably blamed the kids for that probably.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
But then when you introduce someone like Jody Hildebrant into
your life and you're already living, you know, like on
that line of extreme parenting anyway. I mean, if she
would have stayed with her husband, who seems to be
to me to be like a normal, kind rational guy,
even though I think he's a woosp but besides that,
she probably would have gone the other way, back to

(42:17):
like being a good parent and probably caring for her children.
But instead she meets Jody Hildebrant, and this woman comes
into her life and takes her the exact opposite way,
where now the extremism is now become abusive and becomes
more abusive and more abusive. I think it started out
with like, okay, you're going to carry boxes up and

(42:38):
down these stairs as punishment to get the devil out
of you. Everything has to do with the devil, do
you know what I mean? That was like Jody Hildebrandt's
I think that's how she got her crass was the
pornography with the men, but with the children, it was
the devil. They have the devil in them, so in
order for them mats No, we're going to talk about that.
Oh well just a little, but yeah, we talk about

(43:00):
that because I think someone like that just they can't
ever stop. It's just who they are, right, So she
uses the devil as her way of like these kids
need the devil, you know, punished out of them.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
Which you can't pinpoint right because you just constantly say
it's the devil, it's the devil. More punishment, more punishment,
and you just kind of throw that superlative out there.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
You know, right. So anyway she gets she gets Ruby
Frankie on board that her these youngest children are you know,
possessed by the devil, and that in order to get
the devil out of them, I guess you have to
sweat it out or work it out or punish it
out or something like that.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
You have to jump on a trampoline.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
So it was always like these extreme things of like
carrying boxes up and downstairs, that.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
She doesn't really know how to parent, Like there's no compassion,
there's no love, there's no teaching by example or you know,
teaching opportunities is just punishment, punishment, punishment.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah. And then also I don't know if you remember this,
but Joe, but Ruby Frankie kept a journal of everything,
like explicit detailing, because I think that's something that's in
the LDS faith. Isn't that encouraged to journal?

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, diaries right now? Well, but not in not this crap.
You want a diary, I know, like your experiences you're learning,
you know, I mean, how much would you love? Wouldn't
you love if your grandma had kept a journal? Or
do not read that up and down? Yeah, that's exactly what.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
It is, right, and I agree with that type of journaling.
But I guess Ruby Frankie was journaling like every day,
like the devil and the children and what they did
to them and how they were like trying to get
the devil out of the kids and everything they made
them do and like the extreme. It's it's just all
written in a journal, which obviously the police confiscated when
they came back later with search warrants. So it's alleged

(44:42):
that when Ruby moved to Hildebrand's home, which is about
three hundred miles away from her Springville home, the two
middle teenage daughters were left to stay at the Springville
home without adult supervision for weeks at a time. All
four minor children were eventually placed into protective custody and
are now under the soul care of their father, Kevin Frankie.
So I do love even though we don't know what

(45:05):
these kids are dealing with, trauma wise or therapy wise.
But all four minor children are now with their father.
And he also recently got married. That was in the news.
So he met someone.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Else and he married a therapist.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
He didn't know. He did not marry a therapist, I
don't know. I forget her name. But he married another
woman and then sherried the oldest daughter, the one that's
an adult that wrote the book. She posted on her
Instagram that she was happy for her dad and it
was like the first time she'd seen him happy in
a long time. So it seems that there is a
good ending.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
They're on the right path right.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
So in February of twenty twenty four, a judge sentence,
Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrandt to prison terms of four
to thirty years, the maximum for their convictions. Under Utah
law governing consecutive sentences. Neither woman will serve more than
thirty At sentencing, Frankie acknowledged her actions, apologizing to her
children for the abuse she committed. Hildebrandt, however, offered my

(45:58):
bad no apology, claiming that her actions were done out
of love. Now, I think Ruby Frankie because I've listened
to some of the calls that she had with her husband,
because there were some jail time calls that were recorded
that I listened to.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
The father of her children, Yeah, he remember he former.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Husband, right, But it took a while for him to
divorce her. Even when they interview him at the police station,
he still says he loves her, even when he finds
out about this abuse, and he's still I feel like
it takes a long time for it to click in
his head that this woman is not a good woman.
But so Ruby, Actually, I think she was smarter because

(46:36):
I think she realized that if she apologized and repented
and removed herself from Jody and didn't have contact with
Jody that it was better for her for right because
she's gonna come up for paroles. So she's thinking, what
do I I gotta you know what I mean, I
need to apologize and say I was wrong and that
you know, I'm separating myself from this woman and she

(46:57):
has no control over me anymore if.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
She stays in jail.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, well, we'll see. It'll be interesting to see how
long her sentence actually turns out. Hildebrant is currently serving
her sentence at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Dell
and the General Population, according to inmate records. There was
also an interview so Jody Hildebrandt has a niece that
has since come out with claims against her aunt. Jesse Hildebrant,

(47:21):
Jody Hildebrandt's niece, who uses they them pronouns, says that
they live with their aunt as a teenager and experience
what they described as brutal abuse. She would lock me
in this room and write out my sins on paper.
She made me sleep outside in the snow. She duct
taped me. I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's a lot of parenting. Like that's a lot of
like you have to really work hard at being like that.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, Like that's harder than just being a good parent, right,
is what you're saying, right, Like, it takes more time
and energy to torture kids and to be this horrible
than if you just tried to be compassionate and speak
to them and communicate it be a good parent, right, Right,
That's why I'm saying, there's something innate, Like, there's something.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
No, this is the path they choose.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Right. Reflecting on the arrests of their aunt and Ruby,
Frankie Jesse said they were not surprised. We knew that
Jody does this. We knew fourteen almost fifteen years ago
that she's already done this to me and people saw
and people witnessed and did nothing. Just because you reframe
it as tough love or tough parenting, that's not love.
That is abuse. And that's actually a really good statement.

(48:26):
I Mean, you can call it tough love all day long,
but I mean she's right or they're right. Right, you're
just rebranding it and trying to make it into something
else when really you're just abusing children. So director sky
Borgman lends her thoughts on Jody Hildebrand. Now Sky Borgmann
is the same director who also did The Catfish Mom,

(48:47):
which I thought was interesting. If that young boy had
not escaped that day, Borgmann reflects, I think those kids
probably wouldn't be with us today. Now that's a profound statement.
I mean, do you think if the police had not
intervened and he had not escaped, Like what was there?
What was their ultimate plan with these kids?

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Like when would it have surfaced right or right at all?

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Or when would they have stopped, or when would it
have been or not.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
I think it would have just carried on until it
somehow surface a death or medical care or a neighbor
saw something. I mean, that's the only way it had
a surface somehow, But it may not have been for
maybe more years.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
I felt as if Jody was pushing the limits as
much as she could, just to see how much she
could control ruby, Like it came down to a control thing,
like how far can I get this woman to just
go along with all these things? Like you know what
I mean? First it's like, well, let's make them carry
boxes up and down the stairs.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Think of it this way. If she, if she truly
in her mind, thinks it's the devil, it's the devil.
It's the devil. You have to carry these boxes, jump
on a trampoline to get the devil out, or however
she operated. That's never going to happen. Kids are always
going to make mistakes, but they're not going to learn
by jumping on the trampoline, right, I mean, they'll be
fearful of her and all that, but they're not going
to like magically be this kind one her full angelic person,

(50:02):
because you're putting all this trauma on them. And I
would side with the kids on not being any better
because of the way they're treated. So she's going to
keep doubling down and to work harder because that's what
she believes is how it should be done. So she's
going to be cracking down on them, and it's bad.
It's never going to get better.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
How far would she have pushed it if he would
not have escaped and they would have just been in
this huge house in Saint George with these two young children, Like,
where where would it have ended if he didn't escape?
I mean, would Jody have just continued to push and
push and push until these kids were on the verge of.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
We probably said it, But why did Why did the
child at this point in time seek help. I think
he escaped, he was able to get out.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Yeah, he went, he got he somehow got out through
a window.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
So he probably always or maybe for a long time,
was looking for opportunities to seek help and get out.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
And then because he had, he had escaped one time prior.
That's right, you said that Ruby had found him. They
had driven around until they found him walking down the
road and they picked him up and took him back.
And I in her journal she had journaled, please God
protect me, protect Jody, protect us, because I think because

(51:15):
she knew that if this kid is found like they
were going to be in trouble. So she was literally
writing in her journal asking for protection while he was
out and they had not found him yet, which shows
me that she knew what she was doing was wrong
all along.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Well, yeah, she knew, or at least optically she knew
it was like not good. Even if she believed in
what she was doing, she knew it wasn't going to
be accepted by society or authorities.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
So director sky Borgmann told Tutem I'd heard about this
story and it was really just Ruby, Frankie Ruby, Frankie Ruby, Frankie.
But as she worked on the documentary, she realized that
Jody Hildebrandt was central to the abuse. Just the simple
fact that this little boy escapes from Jody Hildebrant's home
where the abuse is happening, not from his mom's hown house.

(52:00):
That to me was the simplest and the most diabolical
part of the story. Borgmann says. The film explorers how
harm can exist both in plain sight and in the spotlight.
All of these things were happening in full view and
broadcast to the world. This kind of manipulative behavior and
coercive control can happen right in front of your eyes.
It's essential to understand that if we want to prevent

(52:21):
this from happening again. She adds up making the documentary
gave her insight into Hildebrand's methods for controlling families like
the Frankies. It's like the one oh one of how
to get somebody to fall in line. She uses threats
and all these culty techniques and she isolates them. It
really is just the methodology that she incorporates that really
works to separate these people from anything that is positive

(52:44):
in their lives. And you know, I was thinking about
this because when you talk about abuse and relationships, especially
with men that are abusive towards women, a lot of
times their tactic is isolating them from friends and family.
So that is a real tap and controlling people. And
that's what Jody really focuses on. And this is how

(53:04):
she controlled people was by the isolation, you know, was
taking these men and removing them from their families, because really,
at the end of the day, doesn't isn't the man
supposed to be the head of household, the protector. You know,
if you want to talk about a hierarchy and a family,
you have the the man is the protector, and you
remove him from the family and you you separate the parents.

(53:26):
You isolate him out by telling him he has some
sex addiction or poor an addiction, and that he needs
to go work on himself and he needs to be
away from his family. And it's horrible.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
You have Ruby who's like, yeah, yeah, don't treat me
like that. Yeah, you're right, Like she's it's in her
head now that he's the problem.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
He's the problem, right, And then she convinces you that
your children are possessed by the devil and that you
need to do all these torture type of things to
get the devil out of them, and then I think,
at the end of the day, that's that power she
needs in order to feel alive or something. That's how she,
you know, feels valid in some way, which is sick

(54:05):
and demented, but that's what it is. Although Connections is
no longer operating, Hildebrand's influence on clients from the LDS
community remains significant. Sky Borgmann said some former clients were
eager for the film to share their experiences. The participants
that I spoke to who were seeing Jody for some
kind of therapy are very happy that the film is

(54:27):
coming out. They wanted to tell their story of how
Jody manipulated them, how she used sort of this intersection
of trust and power and harm to really obscure their
own sense of self and family and religion, and how
it can happen to pretty much anybody. So wow, that's
it's interesting because to me, I felt I felt as

(54:50):
if when I was watching it that that could never
happen to me, and I feel like it could never
happen to you. But then maybe I'm maybe I'm naive,
Maybe someone like that whis with such a power full influence,
maybe she can't infiltrate and control. I just don't see that. Ever.
I think she takes people at their lowest and she
she I mean, look.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
At her clients. Who are her clients, People that are troubled, right,
people that are looking for guidance, people that are needing answers,
and then she's there to give it to them. So
they're already vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Exactly when they approach her.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
What about her cellmates?

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Oh well, I read, Okay, this was interesting. So at
the end of the of the documentary, I don't know
if it was in the documentary or I read in
an article, but I did read that she is now
basically setting up groups within you know, the prison system and.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Like counseling people.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yeah, she's like got her groups and she's you know.
So I was like, basically, she's still doing certifying other
people and mental health whatever it was. So she's still
doing that in prison. But I thought, at least.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
There's no men in prison for her, right, So yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
They're already isolated. She doesn't have to do that. Part's
already done for her, right. So also at the end,
I think it was a phone call maybe that I
heard where you know that because they record their conversations,
and I believe and I thought this was like very
telling of what type of person that these people have
been dealing with.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Was.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
I believe she was comparing herself to Jesus Christ because
she was talking about how she is unjustly in prison,
like she's being persecuted, right, and she's being.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
So she's bringing good to the world trying to suppress her.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
So she's being unjustly persecuted and she's in prison and
she shouldn't be. And so she's like Jesus Christ who
was persecuted. And so basically she's like, I'm fine being
in prison because this is like my calling, you know
what I mean, because I am you know, this amazing being.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
It's what the devil does. They tried to break me down,
and I'm.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Going to make it through this, and you know, I'm
going to help all these people and I'm just being
persecuted because I'm such a clean soul. So I was like, wow, that.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Was well, I hope that clean soul can stay in
prison for a very long time.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Well, let's hope. So we'll see. We'll definitely follow their parole.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Here maybe we'll still be around for her parole hearing
to do an update to us in thirty years.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Well, no, they're up.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
They're up for parole in four in four years.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Yeah, yeah, it's a max of thirty total.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
So can we go to the parole hearing and try
to would you like to go to the pearole Yeah? Like,
don't let her out, let her out? Yeah, I like,
watch this documentary then tell me she shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Be out exactly. All right. Thank you so much for
listening to legally Brunette. We really appreciate it. Again, if
you have any cases that you would like us to
talk about, to discuss, to break down, please dm me.
I really appreciate it when you do that. And also
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Speaker 2 (57:52):
Thank you so much, Thank you,