
Jodi 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 is 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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Narrator
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Listener
Badabing Bada Boo.
Narrator
They say that spirits all have something that they want and ever since Jody Hildebrandt moved into the Frankie household, Jody 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's starting to freak some of them out. Whatever it is, it feels like Jody 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 Jody Hildebrandt, holding her so that Jody doesn't accidentally harm herself. This happens maybe once a day, maybe a few times a day. It's like another being just enters Jodi Hildebrandt's body and starts controlling her movements. And it's so easy to tell because immediately Jody 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, Jody 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 Jody Hildebrandt? Jody lays there, her eyebrows are crunched up in pain, and this new voice comes out, and it comes out like a deep, aggressive voice. She's mine. What did she just say? She's mine. She's mine. She knows I own her.
Listener
These are all recorded?
Narrator
Yeah. Who is she that Jodi Hildebrandt is talking about? What does she want to do with her? Perhaps she's talking about Ruby Frankie. Maybe she wants Ruby Frankie to be hers. And maybe she's gonna do everything in her power to make sure that she is hers. This is the case of Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrandt, the therapist and the YouTuber that were arrested for child abuse for holding two kids captive in the basement and torturing them. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to directly support a survivor, Jesse Hildebrand, who endured abuse at the hands of their aunt, Jody Hildebrandt. Their information will be in the show notes if you'd like to share your support as well. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team and we would like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available@roottenmangopodcast.com Today's case involves some very well known names in the family vlogging world. Ruby and Kevin Frankie plus their six children, best known as their channel name. Eight passengers. All the minors in today's case have been protected and will simply be referred to as either boys, boy, girl, or just their first initial. We will be using the names of the two eldest children, Sheri and Chad. They are of legal age. They've publicly spoken out about Ruby and Jodie. And additionally, Sheri 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 Sheri is able to convey her feelings about everything that's happened and she, 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 when they thought they were, but they should not be used as representations of what the faith means or how it should be practiced. We are also not here to discuss the LDS Church or faith as a whole. I personally don't have much experience, but like with any religion, there's going to be bad people that do bad things and sometimes if the establishment protects them, I do think that there should be consequences for all those parties involved as well. With that being said, this was originally supposed to be a three part series, but with the addition of Ruby's personal journals detailing the torture, Kevin's claims that he did not know the kids were being abused, as well as just all the online conspiracies discourse, there's another woman that a lot of people want to be arrested in connection with 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 8 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 Jody 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 Frankie and Pam. There's a woman named Pam. So with that being said, let's get started. Do you think that you can pinpoint when exactly you made the worst decision of your life? Because marriage counseling is ruining Adam Paul Steed's entire life, including his marriage. Not even in the. Oh, the marriage counselor is biased and she keeps siding with my wife. That a lot of husbands like to argue. It is so much worse than that. Marriage counseling will kickstart a chain of events that has Adam kicked out of college, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, hated by every single person he knows, and in jail, he's holding his little daughter in his arms. When the officers arrive. This is a protective order. We're 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.
Listener
How old is Adam?
Narrator
He's in his early 20s. He's a college student.
Listener
Okay. And the kid is one. Oh, wow.
Narrator
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 is not a single drop of tea or coffee that you're going to find on the entire campus. Yeah.
Listener
So what do you drink? Energy?
Narrator
No, you can't even drink energy drinks. They love soda. Yeah, the size soda shops are a big thing in Utah.
Listener
Like sugar?
Narrator
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 Adam 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 going to 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 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 and he was just giggling. He was like, oh, holding you over the third floor balcony? Haha. 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 Polstead 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 Jody Hildebrandt. When Adam first looks into Jody, 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.
Listener
Wow.
Narrator
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 Jody would not stop talking about it. She claims that she treated Paris Hilton not for drugs, but for bad Behavior at the, oh, the school that, the camp, if you will, that Paris Hilton was sent to. That was terrible.
Listener
But she was there working there.
Narrator
Yeah, that's what she claims. Now Adam did think that it was a little strange how little she cared to protect clients information, but maybe it's because Paris Hilton's personal life has been all over the tabloids since forever, so it's not actually breaking any patient protection laws. It is weird though, and Adam did think it was weird. Besides, it's fine because Adam and Mary, they're going in for marriage counseling. They've been married for two years. When they're recommended by a church bishop to go see 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 Jody 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.
Listener
Wait, 93,000 victims have come out against.
Narrator
The Boy Scouts of America?
Listener
He's one of the person who started.
Narrator
This whole chain of events. Yes.
Listener
So he was looked down upon.
Narrator
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.
Listener
So they're not allowed to drink coffee or even look at photos. But here you are, someone who's essaying.
Narrator
Boys and you are cured. Yeah.
Listener
That is so bizarre.
Narrator
Yeah. No, I think with any massive organization at least, I think religion is beautiful. But sometimes it can provide ways for people that should not be around children to be around children. And that's going to happen anywhere in any religion. And I think in this situation, the chain of command, they all should be punished. I don't think that this is representative, hopefully of the LDS church as a whole, but this whole chain of command, whoever his bishop was, I was like, you are cured is crazy as well. No, it's alleged that even after he was quote, cured, there were more reports, more warning signs that people have reported, hey, this Brad guy is really creepy. But the boy scouts and the church, they ignore it. They even cover it up. So when Adam and his dad, they try to get justice from the church because how do you let him still be around children? The church turns around and allegedly pushes the family out. They fire Adam's dad from the church as a seminar teacher. And they're just pushing this issue too much. They don't like it. They feel like if other victims, 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 victim, they fight to get laws passed. So this gives an extension of the statute of limitations for essay victims in the state of Idaho. Prior, if a child was essayed, they would have to report the abuse before their 23rd birthday. Adam's advocating, his dad is advocating they get a law passed in Idaho that you can report it at any point in your life. Now there is no statute of limitations which the LDS church allegedly really hated. Really hate it. Just curious, why would you not like that? No accusations, just thoughts. Just kind of weird. Now, even though Adam is a victim of the abuser that belonged to the LDS church. It appears nobody cared to help him. Nobody wanted to do anything. The backlash to telling the truth, demanding justice, trying to get other victims to get help. This is, I mean, his whole entire family has to relocate from Idaho to Utah because it was that bad. They were 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 fiance's family hated him, he said, I was depressed for a couple of days. And then I remember just being like triggered because I was a victim of child abuse. 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 Jody Hildebrandt. And that's when everything starts falling apart. At first the changes are really small, but Adam does notice it.
Listener
So Jodie likely knew Adam's history, like this whole thing?
Narrator
Yes.
Listener
And she's involved with all these leaders, right?
Narrator
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.
Listener
I see.
Narrator
Adam says his wife would just confront him all the time, just out of nowhere, confronting him with abstract things like very vague accusations. You're in self denial about your own addiction. What does that even mean? Adam says, I just have a million questions. I mean, it doesn't even make sense. What addiction are we? I was never diagnosed with any sort of addiction, nor was I actively struggling with one. Sure, he has PTSD from the abuse he suffered as a child, but what the hell is his wife on about? But Jody 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 Jody teaches her married couples is from the beginning, Jody tells every single married couple, relationships have to die so that it can be reborn again. It's like a resurrection.
Listener
How do you do that?
Narrator
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 direction 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, Jody 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 Jody, 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 group setting with other husbands. Jody 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 essay, child abuse, incest. Adam is traumatized. He's a victim of csa. He does not feel safe in this group. But Jody does not care. She tells him, actually, you're on the same level as these people. He's like, no, I'm not. I don't have predatory thoughts. These people are predators because they're confessing to these predatory thoughts. I'm a victim of csa. I feel triggered when I'm in this group. She's like, no, you're in denial. You're just as bad. I'm gonna help you see the truth. This escalates until three weeks after giving birth. Adam's wife is understandably in a very sensitive state. She's vulnerable. Adam says Jody 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 Jody's saying. Jody 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? 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. 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 sa. 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? But Jody tells him, see, that's your addiction speaking. The addiction knows that you are solving your addiction by coming to me. Of course the addiction doesn't want you to keep going. To me, addiction is a parasite and it wants to keep being fed. Mary rejects his idea. She's like, no, I'm going with Jody 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 Jody Hildebrandt Ruby Frankie case. That five hour long interview with Mormon Stories with Adam has been taken down due to a court order. So it's a, it's a little why Also, what's going on it. 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 and 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 Jody 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 your schoolwork, spending family time, sharing intimacy, sharing a bed, engaging in any kind of physical touch beyond the social acceptable boundaries of friends. I will consent to share our apartment as living space. I will Consider to have my responsibility to take care of myself and our two children. And I will not consider it my duty to inform you of my daily activities or plans. They have no physical, emotional, mental, or even verbal contact for weeks. And then one day, out of the blue, allegedly, Mary, the wife, asks Adam to give their baby a bath. So he goes, gives the baby a bath, and he says, quote, she totally walks into the bathroom in her lingerie. Like, I just remember thinking, oh, my God, she's finally listened to me. We're 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 dis and just turns her back and walks away.
Listener
That is wild. What is going on?
Narrator
That is the alleged honor code reporting of he had an erection in the bathtub.
Listener
But even if it's true, then this.
Narrator
Whole thing is like a setup. It's entrapment. Is if.
Listener
Yeah, but even. Why does that even. Is that even necessary to, you know, I don't know.
Narrator
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 Jody is what it appears to be. Adam doesn't even recognize her anymore. For example, Adam and his wife had this trip planned to go to Yellowstone. They're bringing some friends there. One couple from Brazil, they just had a baby, the couple from Brazil, and they don't have much money because they're exchange students on top of all of this. So Adam really wants to do something special for the Brazilian couple. And he's like, we're gonna go on this trip, and I'm gonna help you guys pay for it. Like, I will pay for all the food, 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 going to stay within an entire budget for the entire trip. Now, I believe most of the money that they were spending was Adams. 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 Jody at this point. So at this point today.
Listener
Oh, today, yes. Okay.
Narrator
But at this point when they're in Yellowstone, he has a little bit of money and he doesn't spend it lavishly. And this is one of the times that he just wants to spend money on his friends. Like, this is a good reason to spend money. They realize when they get to Yellowstone that all the food prices are astronomical there because it's a tourist zone. Everyone is hiking up the prices of all the food. Adam says it's fine, but Mary starts, 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 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.
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Narrator
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Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now. Even if all you've got is spare change. Sign up now and join the over 13 million all time customers who have already saved and invested over $22 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com rotten or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns tier compensation provided investing involves risks. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important disclosures@acorns.com Rotten 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 Jody has Mary because to confidently call the police and say that this is a transgression, that is an act of domestic violence, if not comparable. Like you cannot be in a place where your brain is functioning normally. That's how bad things are. She genuinely believes the cops are going to handcuff Adam, log in his little backpack into evidence. It doesn't even make sense. The next day, Mary calls the police again on Adam. This time she allegedly states that he physically abused her by pushing against her, which is very interesting wording. Like, did he push you? What do you mean he pushed against you? She states, yeah, well, I was standing here by the door and they ask, were you blocking him from being able to leave the apartment? Well, yeah. Did he hurt you? No. The police leave because Adam has been incredibly patient during all of this, but he finally decides, okay, that was the second time. I'm not going to do this anymore. Like, you got to stop calling the police on me. You're publicly humiliating me. I mean, not even if the police do anything. A lot of people are just going to assume that he's violent and abusive and that the police are just being incompetent. So Adam decides he's just going to get his life back and that means sleeping on his own bed for 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 sub human being. Adam's wife calls the police and states that Adam attempted to sa 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 Jody 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 Jody 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.
Listener
So at this point he's not resentful of Jodie yet. Right. Does he think something is wrong with Jodie as well?
Narrator
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 Jody 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.
Listener
But he will be in Bigger trouble, right?
Narrator
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 Jody's problem is, why she's suddenly on this war path to kind of destroy his entire life. And reviews for Jody 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 relationship she has poorly hurt another. She's not worthy to be trusted with your marriage or relationships. My wife went to her counseling and glasses and the main result was that Ms. Hildebrandt brainwashed my wife that I had an addiction when I did not. My wife was so certain that I was hiding something as a result of this woman's lies that we had to go to an honest counselor to help dispel the dishonesty that Jody Hildebrand had told my wife. Do not go to this woman. Go to a specialist who respects both members of the marriage and does not spread so called empowering lies. And another, I have a very different history with Jody than most. I'm a pretty well known therapist and I trained under Jody Hildebrand 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 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 Jody. Adam was referred to Jody by the bishop from the church. Jody works as a therapist for this massive company called LifeStar which side note the bishop, the church bishop that recommends Adam to Jody. The bishop's brother owns that chapter of LifeStar which is already a massive conflict of interest. It just adds to all the foul characters in this case. Cuz the sick part is Adam gets money from the settlement from his abuse case for things like therapy and the bishop knows that and it's like he's thinking well why not give that money to my brother by going to his business where they employ a bunch of therapists and it's not cheap or affordable. It's like $500 a week per person. And that's not even individualized therapy. That's to join a men's group with a bunch of other husbands and then you have personal sessions that you have to pay for. That's one to two additional sessions per week between Adam and his wife Mary. I mean they're spending thousands of dollars per month to work with Jody. Lifestyle itself has its own controversies. It's known for being a network of LDS therapists and some have said if you go to lifestyle and you've ever seen like a naked body depicted on any sort of media, God forbid that you've ever watched explicit videos. You're an addict and you're going to need to enter a length 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 1:1. 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 Jody 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 Jody Hildebrandt, the therapist, but also Elder Hallam, the higher up in the LDS Church that when Adam was 14, he tried to allegedly shut Adam up for the abuse, abuse that he suffered. Then later he tried to prevent Adam from marrying Mary. He's just sitting right there, right next to Jody Hildebrandt, which, you know, what, with all disrespect, we hate Elder Hallam. 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, but burning.
Listener
Why is he there? They just all kind of linked up and.
Narrator
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 Jody. They allegedly found evidence that they were trying to manufacture evidence on Mary and Adam's child to accuse Adam of Sarah. So remember the incident in the bathroom? They were trying to enhance that with evidence. Allegedly.
Listener
What did they find? Like text messages.
Narrator
Obviously these are not available to the public. Just descriptions of it make it seem like there is evidence that shows Jody and Mary trying to get the daughter to pose in a way and to say like, daddy did this to me. Training her. 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 used those documents to now and 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 used it against him to say that he's not fit to be a dad. He says, think about it. A victim comes forward, tells the truth about the hell and the trauma. Maybe he's a decent person, but this is really traumatic and they use it to punish me, try and take the kids away. He says they kept arguing that because I was a victim of sexual abuse, I wasn't able to be a safe parent. They twisted it into something heinous to just stab him with. Now, an additional side note, Mary at one point accuses Adam of being gay 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 Jody and Adam's now ex wife Mary to just target Adam. Emails between Jody and Mary were uncovered in Adam's fight to exonerate himself from the accusations. So the two Mary and her therapist Jody are writing to each other about the contract that Mary is going to give Adam. They're going back and forth of like, oh, you should say we're living together, but technically separate. This is crazy. Mary emails Jody, I wrote up this contract yesterday afternoon after our meeting. It's still a work in progress. I'm open for any suggestions. Suggestions? Thanks. Jody 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 been. People do it like they're having physical relationships. Mary just responds, oh, well, then maybe they didn'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. 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. 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 Jody clearly breaks patient confidentiality by talking to them about Adam. But not only that, she has nothing to back up any accusations, suspicions or statements that she has uttered about Adam. He subpoenas her therapy case notes and the case notes about Adam, whom Jody Hildebrand 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 Jody 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. The Internet, that's about it.
Listener
So these are be being used in court.
Narrator
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.
Listener
Wow.
Narrator
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 Jody and Mary where they collude on how to take Adam down. Allegedly. There are emails of Jody 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 going to come up with those thoughts sometimes 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 and Mary allegedly wants to focus on dating rather than her kids. So it's just better for Adam to take care of the kids, I guess, allegedly from her perspective. So he is in the kids lives, but he doesn't have custody as of right now. He was also placed in jail for seven days for breaking that restraining order. He was kicked out of university. He was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from legal fees. His reputation has been ruined. He is much more extensive PTSD than before. Before his entire life was derailed by Jody Hildebrand. 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 w, but she just thought he was lying. Adam says Jody 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 Jody Hildebrandt. Adam says Jody Hildebrandt is like Ted Bundy. She is completely pathological. And that lady is going straight to hell.
Listener
He's not suing Jodie or going after.
Narrator
No, he, he, hopefully he will. But he thought about going after byu. They admitted him back into the school, but he didn't have time or money to hire babysitters or time for anything at that point. He was also too traumatized to go back to byu. He thought about suing byu. He asked how would the settlement be paid.
Listener
He asked an attorney.
Narrator
He asked the assistant dean of byu, I believe. And she said it would be paid using ti tithes, which is offerings from the church. And those are supposed to be used to help people that need it. And he said then he didn't want to sue. So he says Jody is going straight to hell. And there's a road to hell. Actually, it's called Hell Hole Pass Road. Yeah, Hell Hole Pass Road, that's the road name. It's dry, it's hot, it's like hell. The road runs through the Beaver Dam Mountains. On both sides of the road you just see mountains, dry red rock mountains and desert scrub bushes. The road is gravel, it's completely uneven, and there's usually not a lot of cars going up and down the road. I mean, one does not choose to drive up and down Hellhole Road for fun. Except for Jody Hildebrand. She likes to bring her niece to Hell Hole pass Road, her 14 year old niece, and make them run up and down. Run up and down the road until they tell you to stop. I don't care that it's 100 degrees in Utah. You have no shade, no water. Just run. Run for your sins or you'll go to hell. Licensed therapist Jodi Hildebrandt has taken on the courageous task of helping her 14 year old niece, Jessie, who goes by they them pronouns. By the way, this is before Adam Paul Steed. They were also interviewed by Mormon Stories.
Listener
How old is Jody?
Narrator
At the time she was much younger. Not Jody, the niece. Oh, they were 14 when they first got taken in by Jody.
Listener
What about today?
Narrator
Today they're probably fully adults, right? Yes, yes. Now Jody is itching for a big project and Jesse is her biggest one yet. Jesse is probably one of the biggest sinners that Jody has ever laid eyes on. What is the grave sin that they committed? Being too Mormon. Jesse, now adult, tells Mormon Stories podcast during an interview. I've always been a very curious person and always, I think, very challenging in that way. So both of their parents are super religious in the LDS faith and obviously very well connected. Joe is Jesse Hildebrandt's aunt. Jesse's father is Jody's brother who also happens to Be an attorney. So Jesse's father is Jody 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 Jesse's mom. My mom is very docile, sweet, obedient, very efficient housewife. I mean, everything was always very clean and very organized and very efficient. I think I was kind of a wrecking ball to them, always asking why about everything. No answer was good enough. And it wasn't coming from a place of disrespect. It was genuinely, I didn't understand and I was very curious about things. In Jesse's mind, this is true. The LDS faith is true. The Book of Mormon is true. Their entire family are devout LDS Church members. Their logic is true. And they're thinking, I just need to find all of the supporting evidence to back it up. Now, I know a few people like that as well. Like they grew up in super religious. You can't watch Marvel movies because they're not rooted in faith. And there are just certain people that grow up like that but still want to know, but why? It's not that they're trying to be mean. It's not that they're like, I don't believe in this. It's just 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, 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.
Listener
So this podcast also.
Narrator
Are they dedicated to Mormon stories? I believe the host. I, I don't think they're ex Mormons. I think they've been excommunicated but still hold a degree of faith. I think that they just don't like the established religious aspect. So they, 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.
Listener
I see.
Narrator
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 rebel against the religion in a snarky teenager kind of way. Jesse says, by the time I was 16, I had read the Book of Mormon six times. I believed it. So in my head this is true. My logic was just backwards. I started with the belief or I was like, okay, this is true. So I will find the evidence to support it instead of following the evidence to the eventual truth. But also I was a total nerd. And then you know the adhd, you know they say that they have ADHD and they say this was a hyper fixation. And then the layer of wanting familial acceptance, it's very powerful. I was emotional, I was strong willed, I questioned everything. And neither one of my parents I think knew what to do with that. They were not prepared because of the culture of the church. Jesse also likes to experiment with their clothes and makeup which makes everyone in their family freak out. 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 Jody's parents parents home and Jody happens to be there because Jody is Jesse's aunt. This is Jesse's father's father's home. When everyone leaves, including Jesse's parents, Jesse didn't even know that their parents had left. Jesse was down in the basement. They just left them. Yeah. Now it's just Jody and their grandparents and they sit them down and explain that their life is gonna change forever. Jesse will not be going home. Jesse will be going with Jody and Jody is going to fix them because.
Listener
Jesse asked too many questions that they can't answer.
Narrator
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 be in the rural areas dropped to zero degrees. All Jesse would get to sleep on the balcony every single night would be this flimsy $5 sleeping bag from Walmart. The risk of hypothermia is significant, but Jody does not care. She even lies to Jesse's parents telling them that Jesse 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? Jody would tell Jesse that this is the start of getting Jesse to confess to their sins and addictions. Jody 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. Jody would sit there watching Jesse. If Jesse moves their hand back and forth or if they tap their feet, Jody 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. Comes out like this by you tapping your foot. This is all the shame just itching to leave. Like I said, if you are angry, if you are depressed, if you are anything, it's all a result of shame. Shame is the cause. Shame is the result of sin. Sin causes shame. Shame causes mental health issues. Your body and spirit are full of shame. What I am doing for you is to make you physically so uncomfortable that it forces the sin out. Just remember a lot of this verbiage because it comes up in the next episode. This comes up when Jody is torturing Ruby, Frankie's kids. I have to make you so physically uncomfortable that it forces the sin out. Eventually, Jody moves Jesse in from sleeping out on the snow on the balcony to this little bunker of a room in the closet in Jody'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 they're to sleep on the floor. This is going to be Jesse's life from now, now on.
Listener
How long is was that already like?
Narrator
Oh, I think they were with Jody 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 Jody would be there and they would be terrified. Like, they were terrified that this would be another way to facilitate them going back with Jody.
Listener
What's Jesse's emotion towards this whole incident?
Narrator
So much trauma. I mean, the. They're very eloquent in the interview with Mormon stories. They're able to articulate exactly what they felt in the moment that makes you feel like you were there with them. 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 Jesse's life from now on. Just the inside of this room. Jody tells Jesse along the lines of, you're no longer going to school, you're not going home to your parents. As your therapist, it is my duty to fix you. You're going to live and work here full time. But the first rule, rule number one, you are not allowed to leave this room. All you can do every single day is write your sins out on a piece of 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 Jody a few things, the reasons for them being taken to Jody. One of them included that they had kissed a girl before, which is like a huge thing, I guess. So it's not like Jesse is uncooperating, which even then, this is sick and cruel. Jesse just doesn't know what else to write down. So Jesse's sitting there trying to think, and they're trying to think back to every single living action that they have ever done in their entire lives. I mean, maybe once while drinking from a public water fountain, they accidentally pressed 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? Jesse sitting there writing down, one time I lied to my best friend Scotty. Like, just the stupidest things. These are the times types of things. And at the end of the day, Jody walks in, snatches the paper out of their hands, reads it out loud, and makes Jesse get on their hands and knees. Beg, beg for forgiveness while I read all of your sins back to you. When she's done reading the piece of paper out loud, she looks at Jesse, who is still on their knees. Nope, that's not it. This isn't it. There is more and I need to know there's more. I know you've had multiple abortions. Jesse did not. Jesse did not. Jesse 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 ducking duct taped. Everywhere Jesse went, she had duct tape on her mouth because every word I said was a lie.
Listener
That's crazy.
Narrator
Which is like the most unhinged accusation. So first of all, Jesse has never had intimate relations that could result in pregnancy at that age. They didn't even really know or understand how it works. Also, Jesse likes girls and that's what Jesse told Jody. So Jesse's like, how would I, what are you talking about? 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 accuses Jesse of terminating like I think it was like 14 pregnancies. It was a lot. It was just a lot. Even though Jody 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 going to become really important in part four, the final part of this episode, because Ruby starts accusing her own children of doing some heinous things. 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 going to torture you. It's like no matter what they did, Jody just wanted Jesse to be the devil. There was no way around it could not prove that Jesse was not the devil to Jody. They say Jody 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 Jody's manual on complete destruction of a human being. How to take a human and break them in every aspect. Physical, mental, emotional. The physical is likely the easier part for Jesse and that's saying a lot because it's just torture, plain and simple. Jody would make Jesse run up and down Hellhole Pass Road 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 this 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, Jesse says, that they finally stood up and said, no, I'm not doing that. Jesse says, that was the day that I walked away. And I. I was like, no. And I turned around and she punched me in the back and knocked me down. And Jody, 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. Jody 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 Jesse gets sent back mentally. It's confusing, though. Jesse says they ran away three times only to end right back up at Jody's house. And the punishment for running away would be to be blindfolded, tied up by their arms and legs, roughly thrown into the back of a car. Jesse had no clue where they were being taken. They're driving for like an hour before finally they hear the car shut off. They're in the mountains. Jesse will be forced to run up and down the mountains as repentance for running away. The worst part is it gets to the point where the torture and the life is so bad that once they're done running up and down the mountain, Jody would start showering Jesse with praise. I knew you could do it. I knew you could repent. And my niece is still in there. Jesse 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 Jody 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, is instilled in the Mormon Church of having to earn love. So it's like this very sick cycle of abuse. But emotionally, Jesse says they thought about jumping from the balcony to break their legs because they felt like that would be less painful than the torture, even going to jail. If they're so bad, just call the police. They would ask Jody just like, let them arrest me, please. If I'm that bad, let them arrest me. Jesse says, I would rather be in jail. And the isolation was the worst part. Jody would tell everyone that Jesse is a nightmare, a terrifying nightmare. Jody 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 Jesse believed it. They believed. Maybe she's right. Maybe I just don't see it. Cuz I'm young and I'm not connected to God, I guess. But like, why am I so evil? Why is everyone so scared of me? What about Jesse's parents believed it, that they're evil? Jesse's.
Listener
Does Jesse have resentment towards the parents or.
Narrator
Yes. I believe right now Jesse is no longer in communication with their parents. I think even some of their siblings had reactions of like, get over yourself. When Jesse spoke about the trauma that happened when they were with Jody, Jesse says, again, I believed all of this. I trusted these people, I trusted the church. The isolation got really bad. It's like Jody is just practicing on Jesse before she evolves into trying to throw Adam Paul Steed into prison to isolate him. Jesse constantly had duct tape on their mouth. And they were told, because you're a liar, every single word you say is a lie. You need to be physically reminded that everything you say is a lie. Sometimes Jody 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 Jody 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 Jody's kids. Jodie has two kids. Jody'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 Jody screams at Jesse to get the hell out. 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. Jody 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. Jodi would tell Jesse, no one actually cares about you, and you just manipulate them into caring. Nobody believed Jesse, 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 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, too. It was traumatizing, but it was still better than being with Jody. Now a big question everybody has, though, is why the hell is Jody Hildebrandt so goddamn angry? Like, it doesn't make sense. Why is she so upset with everyone? Why is she so Angry. Why is she such a vile person? Maybe this. Jesse remembers one very interesting conversation they had with Jodie because Jodie makes it her entire life mission to make sure that Jesse is not gay. But they stay. She did say something to me when I was living with her that was very strange because I've known I was queer since I was 7 and I was experimenting with girls and friends since I was 7 or 8. 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. Like what? Yeah, that's called being gay. Like, what do you think gay relationships are like? They have deep emotional connections.
Listener
Jesse was taken back by Jody'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.
Narrator
Yes. And Jesse is like, that's literally called being gay.
Listener
So Jesse believes that Jody is gay as well.
Narrator
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Narrator
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 Jody Hildebrandt, it's not funny. It's not funny. This is not cute. As the world's worst life coach, Jody will give advice to viewers who submit their life worries to Jody. In one particular clip, she's responding to a viewer who states that she's going through her 13 year old's daughter's phone, comes across her search history where she's talking about taking a quiz. It's called the Am I gay quiz. Jody 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 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. Jody 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. I think there's now an I+++. 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 every day, but probably once a week, somebody says a word like cisgender. You know, that was a word I learned. I'm like, what in the heck is that? It's just a made up word that someone placed meaning on. Now, because of what happened with Adam Paul Steed, Jody 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. Trombo. 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 guys, guidelines. But as a life coach, there's no governance.
Listener
Oh, so she got suspended and now she's a life coach.
Narrator
Yes, A counselor.
Listener
She can do whatever the hell she wants.
Narrator
Yeah. They call themselves mental fitness trainers. They say, like how you would need a fitness trainer for your body, your physical body. You need one for your mental state. And it's all about living in the truth with a capital T. Living in truth and not distortion means having impeccable humble honesty, rigorous personal responsibility, and humility, which, I mean, those are like really vague words. I feel like you could apply that to anything. Yeah. 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 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, Jody 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, Jody, 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 spirit spouse. That's living and lust. So these principles get built upon through the years and they actually do get worse as they develop. If Jody 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's offended by a boundary is someone who is being selfish and wants what they want 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 Jody Hildebrandt's great teachings. I think fortune cookies make more sense and are less vague than her so called teachings. She would also hit couples with the Jesus said, having the thought is the same as actually doing it. So if you think about your hot co worker, you actually did your hot work. Coworker. One therapist who was training under Jody 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 Jody was the prophet. That person also didn't like the way that Jody 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. Would say to me, we really got to take care of this one. And I thought, that's odd. So this was when Jodi was a therapist, and he would say, like, we're therapists. We're trained not to care about if that person has money. I think she was salivating. She was salivating about money and power. Like that excited her. What can I do with a client with a lot of money, influence, and a lot of power? Jodi was a businesswoman.
Listener
I mean, she really has a lot of addictions, huh?
Narrator
Yeah. Yeah. She knew how to hit on a pain point. And the biggest pain point for people in order to turn a profit. Jesse says, this is the crazy thinking about it now, but I used to do her billing. So Jesse is Jody's niece, remember? And they say I used to do her billing. She would force me to do it like free labor. Jody's billing for the therapy session. Jesse says, I did her billing, and she bills the LDS Church. So every client, essentially, I would say the vast majority of her clients were from bishop recommendations just based off the billing that I would do. So the host of Mormon Stories mentions, in the Mormon Church, if somebody can't afford a therapist, sometimes tithes and offerings might be used by the bishop who recommends his ward members to Jody. He will then foot the bill from the church. Offerings, pay Jody, she's making money off the church, allegedly. Right. But they pay the bill. Now, here's the problem with that. One, Jody 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 Jody ruins people's lives is once your bishop pays for your therapy, they are entitled to all therapy notes. What that. Like, there's no such thing. Like, you usually have to sign things that say, my bishop can also know what I talk about in therapy. So it's this Jody will alienate you from your bishop, accuse you of doing some heinous things. Allegedly. Allegedly is the allegation against Jody. I mean, multiple allegations against Jody. 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 Jody, gives Jody a full rundown, like, these are what people are saying about Jesse. Jesse says, bishop wins. Jody 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 Jody, 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. Jody would facilitate meetings with the bishop and with Jesse to tell them no, tell them, Jesse, nothing is wrong. Right, Jody? Great. Which is already highly unethical. Okay, side note, already unethical if you are a therapist, every single therapist, at least the ones that should be licensed anyway, they say if their family member, a niece, a cousin, a cousin five times removed doesn't matter, they would never be their therapist. They would recommend someone. That's it. You do not become the therapist for your niece. And not only that, but you don't have them move in with you. And since you know Jodie is in competition for the worst person alone alive and just bring the gold home. Jody would facilitate meetings with herself, Jesse and Jesse's bishop and the church leader. The bishop would tell Jesse, you're like a horse, you got to be broken in. Jesse says, we drove to all the people's homes, all the church members that were concerned for me and Jody 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 Jody was doing something wrong to me when she was actually saving my life. Jesse says also, Jody 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 Jody is the all knowing oracle to the truth. One review reads. Jody'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 Jody's tactics are questionable are simply not ready to take responsibility for their choices. Five stars for Jody Hildebrandt review left by Ruby Frankie 18 year old Ruby is not looking for a degree which seems counterintuitive because she is a student at Utah State University. But where else are you supposed to find the love of your life who is going to be athletic, handsome, smell good, comfortable to talk to, well groomed, not skinny, five inches taller than Ruby, doesn't have anger issues, is not snappy, is not studie, is good with music and teaching, wears khakis and collared shirts, Eagle Scout, is good with siblings, likes yard work, praise 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.
Listener
How do we know that she.
Narrator
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 5 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.
Listener
What?
Narrator
Yeah. She's like, efficient with her dating. That is crazy. 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. She wants to drive the car. Which also side note, a lot of netizens have been asking eight passengers, then who is driving? And then a lot of netizens come and Jody. 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, when 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 Frankie 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.
Listener
Does the kiss shift?
Narrator
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 Sherry move out and Kevin moves out, it'll be the youngest, too. Chad is the eldest son, the second born. And in part one, we go over Ruby taking away his phone, his bedroom, his bedroom door, even sending him to a troubled teen wilderness camp for over a month. It seems like this was all done at the recommendation of Jody, which Ruby meets Jody 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 him online five days a week. But she says, if anyone can, quote, fix Chad, it's going to be Jody. 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 Jody lady, and I'm going to be done with it. They hop on Zoom. Jody 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, Jody is not taking Chad. That's.
Listener
Is this, like, in the middle of their YouTube journey, like, they're already famous.
Narrator
Already famous.
Listener
So do you think Jody coming in already, like, oh, I want these people.
Narrator
As it seems like I Want to.
Listener
Latch on to this?
Narrator
Yes.
Listener
Dumb. Because they're famous.
Narrator
Famous, rich, influence. Everything is perfect.
Listener
I see.
Narrator
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, Anasazi Wilderness Camp. He doesn't get a bedroom. Eventually they take away football, which was. That was honestly Chad's. He was really good at football. Really good that he wanted to get a scholarship and just get out of there. Chad says, my mom was trying everything in her power to fix me, but I never felt like she was doing it for me. It always felt like she was doing it for herself. At one point, my mom got kind of teary eyed and she said, chad, this is your last chance. Jody and I found a military camp in Virginia and we are just waiting for one more time of you acting up. And if that happens, we're going to send you there until you're 18. Chad says, I don't know. I think I really just sensed something in my mom that realized that she's not going to let Jody go. This is just how it's going to be. This is how it's going to be from now on. And I just decided to start listening. Ruby's thought is, if this is going so well with Chad, why not Kevin? Maybe Kevin 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, versatile. First and 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. Some would argue he's not very good. His rate, my professor rating is 30% would take again with a solid 2.2 out of 5. One review on rate. My professor says he's very rude and mean. He spoke down to students in a very condescending, disrespectful manner. I truly did not have a Great experience in this class. It wasn't an insanely hard class. I take schoolwork very seriously and have never had issues with a professor before. Professor Franke, Hard professors are one thing, but downright rude, dismissive and arrogant is another. Save yourself the misery if you can, and take something else 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 session seminar. Like, you know, a whole workshop. It's like one of those hotel conference rooms that you book out. Jody's hosting it, Jody's up on the stage, and the whole workshop is love versus lust. Jody 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, they're being selfish. So we have a huge problem. Okay? That's what Jody'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. That's what it felt like to me in there. But it's confusing because there were a lot of people that I respected, a lot of people that were on that stage with microphones. In hand, giving testimonials of how great this was and how it changed their lives and their marriage. The seminar does come at a very vulnerable time, he says. To be honest, we were pretty lost. And Ruby believed this was the roadmap back to the place that we both wanted to go. So after the seminar, she sat me down and she said, I'm concerned about our marriage and I'd like to invite you to 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 connection 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 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 Jody 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 Jody is very meticulous about how she tortures people in these group counseling sessions. 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 had 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 Jody 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 Jody 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.
Listener
Does Jody have a husband?
Narrator
She did briefly. An ex husband for two years. And it was apparently a very messy divorce. Now Jody 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 Jody piles on somebody, they all pile on. If Jody praises somebody, they all praise. And so it really felt like a pack of dogs. And Jody was the alpha. And whoever she sticks the dogs on, they would go. Whoever she prays, 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 Jody about $30,000 thousand dollars 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 child that's getting concerned about this is Sherry. She's very suspicious of Jody. Something about Jody is cold, not maternal, but in the worst way possible. It's like the absence of any maternal energy. Sheri starts looking into who exactly Jody Hildebrand is. And she seems like a grifter, honestly, like a con woman. On her website, there's packages that you can purchase. Leadership training 6 week program 1 person 800 team leadership program 5000 company leadership training 15 13,000 Jody learns the reason that Jody 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 Jody was disclosing patient information to the honor code at byu. It wasn't the level that we know today.
Listener
Mm.
Narrator
Even the way Jody responds to criticism is alarming. In one video, Jody 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 9,005 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. 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. Jody would say extreme things, like, it's extreme, but it has to be because we're surgically removing the sin. We're surgically removing the sin from your souls. May 2021. Jody calls Ruby, freaking out. She's wailing and sobbing into the phone. This is Jody, 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're 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 Jody'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 Jody, I guess, with exorcisms, but nothing's working. Bishop even suggests maybe the demons are attached to your $5 million house. Maybe you gotta leave. Which means maybe Jody 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 it won't be for long. And so I relented. And I was like, okay, actually, this could be kind of fun. And let's make it fun. And she needs a vacation, so we'll just do all of this. And it turned into, you know, the. The moment she showed up at my house, which was just. The weirdest crap started happening.
Listener
Wait, so the church leader told Jody to live with Frankie?
Narrator
Well, it was more. So I don't know how to help you. Maybe the demons are in your house. I gotta go.
Listener
Oh, so Ruby just took her in?
Narrator
Yeah. Jody and Ruby were like, oh, let's go to RV house.
Listener
Okay.
Narrator
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 Jody'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 Jody 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.
Listener
This is the desert house.
Narrator
No, this is the friend Frankie house.
Listener
Oh, the desert house is not Frankie house.
Narrator
No, that's Jody's house. Oh, yeah. This is like their family home that they've been vlogging in.
Listener
Okay.
Narrator
Now, Jody is still suffering from her demonic possessions, her trances. Both Ruby and Kevin are trying to help her through it. But eventually, Jody starts responding best to Ruby. Ruby even volunteers to stay in Jody's room overnight, which is her daughter's Cherry's room, to Comfort Jody. 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 Jody, 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 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 French 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 Jody. Also, Sherry says Ruby and Jody 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. 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.
Listener
That is crazy.
Narrator
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 5am she hears something and she writes in her book, quote, I cracked one eye open just in time to see Ruby tiptoeing out of my room, her hair messy, her cheeks flushed and her robe hastily tied, heading back to the bedroom she shared with my dad. A strange smile on her face. She looked mischievous. What the hell was going on? Why was Ruby sneaking around in the middle of the night like a teenager, trying not to get caught by her parents. Were they really doing candlelit massages in my bedroom? How could all of this be happening with all of us in the house? She continues. It was equal parts fascinating and horrific. Two women who preached, quote, truth while living lies, who condemned queerness very publicly in their connections videos while embodying it privately in my room on my bed. Most likely later, Sherry will find notes in Ruby's computer detailing how frustrated Ruby was about having to cater to Jody's needs for physical affection without getting anything in return, which is a lot going on. But at the time, all Sherry is most concerned about is her family's safety. Sherry starts Googling is my family in a cult? This is where I leave you with Part two and stay tuned for Part three and Part four. So part three we're going to go over if people could have seen more warning signs 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 arrest. Stay tuned. Let me know in the comments. What are your thoughts? Stay safe and I will see you in the next one.
Co-host
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Rotten Mango Podcast Summary: Episode on Ruby Frankie, Jody Hildebrandt, and Adam Paul Steed
Episode Title: "Ruby Franke 'Shares Bed' With Evil Woman/Marriage Counselor To Get Rid of Demons"
Release Date: March 20, 2025
Host: Stephanie Soo
In this chilling episode of Rotten Mango, host Stephanie Soo delves deep into the disturbing case involving Ruby Frankie, her husband Kevin Frankie, their YouTube-famous family, and the manipulative marriage counselor, Jody Hildebrandt. The episode uncovers the dark underbelly of family vlogging fame, religious manipulation, and orchestrated abuse that tore the Frankies apart.
Ruby and Kevin Frankie, alongside their six children, became well-known through their family vlogging channel, "Eight Passengers." Their online presence showcased a seemingly perfect family life, garnering millions of views and substantial income.
Notable Quote:
“Today, this episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team...” [02:30]
Jody Hildebrandt enters the Frankies' life as a recommended therapist by a church bishop. Initially appearing charismatic and supportive, Jody soon begins to exert control over the family under the guise of therapy.
Notable Quote:
“She is one of the most recommended therapists in the Wasatch front of the Mormon Church for the past 20 years.” [14:25]
Jody's methods quickly shift from conventional therapy to manipulative tactics aimed at destroying Ruby and Kevin's marriage. She introduces oppressive group sessions, relentless accusations, and physical intimidation to break down the family's unity.
Notable Quotes:
As Jody's influence grows, Ruby and Kevin find themselves isolated from friends and family. False accusations of abuse surface, leading to police reports and legal battles that jeopardize their custody of their children and their standing within the LDS Church.
Notable Quote:
“You are a predator because you are trying to hurt your kids and me.” [03:17]
Adam Paul Steed, initially a victim of child abuse himself, becomes entangled in a web of false allegations orchestrated by Jody and Ruby. His attempts to seek justice are thwarted by the church's protective mechanisms and Jody's relentless campaign to discredit him.
Notable Quotes:
The episode reveals how Jody manipulates not only Ruby and Kevin but also extends her influence to other families within the LDS community. Her methods resemble those of a cult leader, enforcing strict obedience and punishing dissent through psychological and physical abuse.
Notable Quote:
“This is Jody's manual on complete destruction of a human being.” [70:43]
Sheri and Chad Frankie, the eldest children, come forward with testimonies exposing Jody's abusive practices. Their accounts detail the relentless psychological torment and the deliberate efforts to fabricate evidence against Adam, aiming to dismantle his life and reputation.
Notable Quotes:
The Frankies face severe repercussions, including legal charges, expulsion from the university, and immense financial burdens due to legal fees. Despite Adam’s attempts to clear his name, the orchestrated efforts by Jody and Ruby leave lasting scars on the family.
Notable Quote:
“He had to pay a fine. No jail time. He did spend like a few days in jail...” [48:31]
Stephanie Soo wraps up the episode by highlighting the intricate web of manipulation, abuse, and institutional protection that allowed Jody Hildebrandt to orchestrate the downfall of the Frankie family. The case serves as a stark reminder of the dangers posed by unchecked power within therapeutic and religious institutions.
Notable Quote:
“The magnitude of courage and empathy that Adam has is pretty awe-inspiring.” [56:11]
This episode is part two of a four-part series. Upcoming episodes will explore:
Notable Quote:
“So, to hear what’s going on, listen to part one if you haven't already... And stay tuned for part three and part four.” [03:17]
The Rotten Mango team presents a harrowing account of how personal trauma, religious manipulation, and psychological abuse can intertwine to devastate a family. Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, the episode sheds light on the complex dynamics that allowed Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrandt to wreak havoc on Adam Paul Steed’s life.
Disclaimer: This summary is based on the provided transcript and is intended for informational purposes only. For the full and nuanced understanding of the case, listening to the original podcast episode is highly recommended.