Source: 8 Passengers Ruby Franke and "Therapist" Jodi Hildebrandt Arrested - The Mormon Angle | Ep. 1805
Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast
Published: September 2, 2023 | Archived: April 25, 2026
Video: 8 Passengers Ruby Franke and "Therapist" Jodi Hildebrandt Arrested - The Mormon Angle | Ep. 1805
Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast
Published: September 2, 2023
Duration: 3:39:54
Views: 579,329
Category: Entertainment
Video ID: 8VXaNZ89Yhc
Description
Join John Dehlin and YouTubers Jordan and McKay (@jordanmckay) to discuss the recent arrest of Mormon YouTube Mom Ruby Franke of "8 Passengers" fame and Mormon therapist Jodi Hildebrandt on child abuse charges. We will be discussing the history of the Franke family and the 8 Passengers YouTube channel, as well as the super-controversial work of Jodi Hildebrandt as a Mormon therapist focusing on "sexual addiction" (i.e. masturbation), marriage counseling, and parenting. We welcome your stories as well!
Jordan & McKay 8 Passengers Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5c7YT7oEpRQz04FU5uDm8\_KtiTBPEXH- https://www.youtube.com/@JordanandMcKay https://www.patreon.com/jordanandmckay
Julie Hanks https://www.drjuliehanks.com/ https://www.instagram.com/drjuliehanks/ https://www.facebook.com/DrJulieHanks/
Episode Show Notes: https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/8-passengers-ruby-franke-and-therapist-jodi-hildebrandt-arrested/
Chapters 00:16:04 Who are 8 Passengers? 00:25:55 “8 Passenger” started in 2015 00:33:35 Jordan’s profession/education - MA in social work 00:36:28 One of their Videos - 8 Passengers 00:44:12 Another clip from their vlog 00:48:33 - “Traditional Family Values” Video Clip 00:53:05 For the Strength of Youth - Video Clips 00:58:40 Getting into the child abuse - trigger warning 00:59:19 Clip - Child abuse 01:09:30 Clip - 6 year old goes hungry 01:17:55 Clip - Ruby starving her kids again 01:18:21 Ruby uses food as a punishment 01:20:48 Clip - Ruby delays medical intervention for her kids 01:26:31 Clip - Jodi Hildebrandt 01:27:40 Jodi HIldebrandt slide - background information 01:29:06 License put on probation 01:30:34 Mormon therapist rats on Mormon clients 01:37:00 John’s story with Jodi Hildenbrandt 01:42:50 Families and marriages were harmed for these practices 01:45:55 Julie Hanks joins the podcast 01:48:55 Addiction Recovery, everyone who masturbates is not a sex addict or porn addict 01:54:30 Why was Jodi reported so many times and nothing happened? 01:59:30 Slide - Classes offered by Moms of Truth 02:03:35 Clip - Ruby and Kevin 02:10:39 Ruby Takes Christmas away from her kids 02:22:22 Clip - Ruby talking about how to parent children 02:31:09 Reddit post, Kevin has moved out Jodi has moved in 02:33:33 The lack of action of Utah Child Protective Services 02:41:45 Clip of Ruby leaving 8 Passengers 02:47:58 August 30th, 2023 - Instagram story 02:56:40 August 30th Slide - What happened that day? 02:56:56 Twelve year old sneaks out, he runs to the neighbors home 03:02:30 Arrested and charged, both Ruby and Jodi 03:11:45 Ruby’s siblings speaking up 03:13:40 Post from oldest daughter 03:19:00 Final Slide - Neighbor called the police multiple times 03:23:16 Clip from Tik Tok about 8 Passengers 03:28:20 People should always be placed over principles 03:31:40 The sinister thing is these people are your neighbors 03:32:40 “I’ve never been more disappointed to be right my entire life”
Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)
0:01 hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast and a joint production a collaboration with the amazing Jordan and McKay YouTube channel uh we are here today to talk about kind of some breaking news um if you can call it that a day or two after the story actually breaks um for those who don't know uh famous Utah Mormon YouTubers uh the Frankie family um have gotten themselves into trouble along with a Mormon therapist uh uh named Jody Hildebrand but basically uh for those who have no idea what we're talking about uh for the past several years there's been the super famous YouTube channel called Eight passengers starring um and I I'm not a follower of the passengers um YouTube channel so that's why we have Jordan McKay here our Mormon stories to be our experts for today but apparently there's been the super famous YouTube channel called Eight passengers run by this big Mormon family with I think six kids and and two parents a dad that that worked at BYU um and uh they had like something like
1:13 2.5 million followers and let's just say uh their exhibitionism and parenting techniques were uh called into question consistently over a number of years and then recently their YouTube channel started to fade out and the mom Ruby Frankie uh started collaborating with this super problematic uh Mormon therapist named Jody Hildebrandt who I had been made aware of several years ago and I'll be talking about that as well um and together they started uh you know a Facebook group and a YouTube uh video channel an Instagram video talking about parenting to a largely Mormon audience and then lo and behold uh just a few days ago um Ruby and Jody were arrested in St George around St George Utah Southern Utah on abuse charges after one of their malnourished children was found uh begging for if as I understand that food and water with duct tape uh having been wrapped around their their wrists and ankles super disturbing dark story and uh one that we're going to be talking about today within a Mormon lens because
2:30 there's plenty of news stories out there to talk about um this this story in particular but uh we on Mormon stories and I think Jordan McKay as well do our best to try and analyze these types of stories from a Mormon lens and so without any further Ado Jordan McKay welcome back uh to Mormon stories podcast it's great to have you both it's great to be back in the glowing introduction that you gave us yeah it was great to hear well uh how long ago were you were you both on Mormon stories podcast because you have your own Mormon stories long-form interview do you all remember how long ago that was oh it was a year and a half ago yeah it was like January that we filmed it yeah yeah and your Channel's been going gangbusters do you want to give my viewers who aren't familiar with you and anyone else who's viewing or listening do you want to give them a sense for what your channel is all about just kind of broadly I'll let you take it away so we talk about a lot of things but
3:39 mainly what we've been doing recently which is why John brought us on is because we talk a lot about um Mormon influencers uh so your big like big vlogging big vlogging families and then like big Instagram social media people like you know Jordan page not enough Nelson's eight passengers prior to this um so we talk about them through you know an ex-mormon lens and then we also cover other um like pop culture Christians I guess you could say like Christians that have become more popular in the media recently from an ex-mormon lens so that's primarily what we do excellent yeah and and uh Jordan I think it was you who reached out to me and said hey let's do a collab and uh I was really happy about that because I wouldn't there's no way with the week I just had I'd be able to get up to speed in any way close to to the expertise that you both have now you you both have created videos in the past I want to make sure and plug that you both have created videos in the past kind of
4:37 longer form interviews specifically about um you know Ruby and eight passengers is that correct Yeah we actually have had a lot of content where we had discussed this I think we made a reaction video initially to something that we found real like grossly inappropriate um for really any family vlogger to do um probably like two years ago at this point it's been two years um and then over time we've we've done other episodes reviewing some of the stuff that has come up with connections coaching we actually did an episode where we applied the bite model to connections oh wow and Jody Hildebrandt yeah yeah there were a lot of red flags for sure yeah in that situation all right well we'll we'll make sure that um you know Maven and or Julia have some links in our show notes that point to some of those episodes if you guys can send those to us because we want to make sure yeah we have a whole yeah a whole playlist like a playlist oh good you have like eight passengers yep Jody
5:44 Hildebrandt playlist on YouTube that's amazing okay uh really quickly I want to welcome our viewing audience wow we've already got like 1400 uh live stream viewers that's probably normal for you guys but it's it's a special story on Mormon stories that breaks a thousand live stream viewers so welcome to all our live stream viewers we're live streaming both through Facebook and YouTube I'm just gonna ask right off please go subscribe to Jordan McKay YouTube channel and if you haven't subscribed to Mormon stories podcast YouTube Channel Please Subscribe there um or on Facebook because subscriptions really help promote the channel grow the channel and it's an important way we always appreciate uh Super Chat uh donations on YouTube and also we're simul streaming to Jordan McKay's YouTube channel so um so we welcome all those viewers as well and um yeah any other any other housekeeping before we jump in Jordan McKay um no yeah we appreciate the
6:45 subscriptions and everything last time you plugged us we got these mics so oh nice yeah we were able to put it right back into uh so yeah and can people donate directly to Jordan McKay like through a venmo or PayPal or anything we we have that we also have patreon and you could become a member of the channel they're they're all kind like the subscription based uh we have memorizations and stuff like that so so you go to what Jordan McKay at Jordan McKay on YouTube is that the way to direct people yep yep all right everyone.com Jordan McKay yep say that again patreon.com got it got it so all right everybody go do that right now uh support these creators they're important all right so just so people know what we're going to be doing today I asked Jordan McKay because I I you know I've consistently asked Ben asked over the years to cover uh eight passengers and other Mormons social media influencers and I just haven't had the time or the expertise to do it um as
7:49 much as I would want and I've had many people say you gotta expose Jody Hildebrand and frankly I haven't had former participants in Jody hildebrandt's programs who've been willing um to go on uh go on the public record to talk about their experiences largely because Jody Hildebrand in my understanding deals a lot with sexual shame pornography and masturbation issues and who wants to go on you know the internet and talk about you know the the shame in Mormonism and Christianity and in our broader culture that that is surrounding porn of masturbation but anyway um today what I want to do is for all those viewers out there in the world who want to know kind of the overview of who the Messengers are who the Frankie family is and uh who Jody Hildebrandt is and what led to this Fiasco we're going to be covering that with video clips um and again as I mentioned earlier we're going to be doing an analysis of
8:48 how Mormon is this story because anytime there's a murderer you know within the Mormons you know Chad Dabo Lori valo all these dentists that keep murdering their wives within Mormon context um you know it's always fair to ask like are these is this a Mormon story where where somehow the Mormon church is causing people or contributing to people doing bad things or are these just stories of people doing bad things that just happen to be Mormon and I think between the three of us we we might have some good things to say about um you know to what extent Mormon theology Mormon Doctrine Mormon culture Mormon practice might be contributing to all these freaking weird stories that keep coming out of Utah in Idaho we may have uh Dr Julie Hanks uh come on later towards the end of the show to provide her perspective as well she's a super well-known and well-respected um therapist here in Utah and she happens to be believing and active in
9:50 the Mormon church but is also super Progressive so we hope Julie is able to join us uh later um anything else you all want to do by way of introduction oh well I should say later this week I've called people to send me their Jody Hildebrandt connection stories I've already gotten 10 or 20 stories but we are going to be um showcasing stories of people that have had really unethical or horrific experiences with Jody Hildebrand and the connections program which in and of itself is important but I think there's a very much a larger problem within Mormon culture that is not just constricted to Jody Hildebrandt or connections um that needs to be addressed so look for another Mormon stories episode this week on Jody Hildebrand and connections and please email me at Mormon stories gmail.com if you want to share your Jody Hildebrand connection story and we're probably we hope to have at least two
10:53 um I'll just say I don't know survivors from Jody Hildebrand and connections who are going to come on Mormon stories and tell their stories but if you are willing and able to tell your Jody Hildebrandt connection story on Mormon stories email us at Mormon stories gmail.com and we'll have you on as well I think the FBI and the police are looking for stories to help build the case um anything Jordan McKay you guys want to say before we jump into the slide presentation um yeah I'm so glad you're covering Jody because she's I mean connections as a whole is awful we have our little connections book that one of our um fans actually sent us um so we're a little too familiar with connections at this point but I'm so glad she's finally getting coverage because the things that she's done are just awful like everyone I've ever spoken to who's worked with her has had like a horrifying experience and yes to answer your point there it appears that they're compiling evidence
11:54 um Ruby's oldest daughter who does not speak with her anymore has asked people to send her things um like any evidence that they have Clips they've compiled like a whole Google Document like um so that's what we know about kind of what they're doing so far and we'll do our best to include that uh in the show notes as well uh Julian Julia and or Maven can can annotate that anything else you all want to say about kind of intentions or hopes for today's episode I personally uh a while back probably about a year um I remember we were looking around on the the subreddit where a lot of people post about eight passengers usually in a critical Manner and they add a clip where they said this sounds like they're talking about Jordan and McKay and they shared a little anecdote on their little show or what whatever you want to call it that sound an awful lot like a video that we had um uploaded about them and so kind of in a joking manner it was like oh we have personal beef with these
13:00 people now because they've tried to call us out or or whatever but in all honesty everything that we've seen and heard of both of these people it has just really formed a almost a vendetta against them because they just go through life and take advantage of people and especially kids to see Jody getting the attention that she so desperately craved for so long in the way that she didn't want it it's just it feels good to finally get that the fruition of that yeah we'll get to it but my my concern with Jody Hildebrand and connections is that they pedal they monetize religious and Mormon shame and my understanding is they contribute to the destruction of of of marriages and families very vulnerable people including teenagers because I've had teeny teenagers email me that Jody was their therapist and for those who don't want the Mormon church to be associated so many people have emailed me and said that it was the Mormon Church Bishops in the Mormon church that referred them to Jody Hildebrandt so Jody was absolutely
14:19 on the LDS Family Services list and was formally many many many Mormons in Utah were formerly referred to both Jody Hildebrandt and connections really quickly thanks to Diana sorry Dana rain for the Super Chat thanks to she says Jordan and McKay are on it I agree love is a four-letter word thank you for that uh Super Chat as well as Riley Roo um you know I appreciate your patience as I as I call out the people who support us but we can't do this stuff without your support all right without any further Ado Jordan McKay do you all want to set up this uh PowerPoint uh slide presentation with video clips that y'all have so thoughtfully put together sure so what we compiled we tried to compile like as succinctly as possible with like the main highlights that I mean there's so much so I tried to encapsulate everything that we feel like is the most significant and important and of course there will be things that we've we leave out that are horrible that they've also done so know this isn't fully
15:26 comprehensive by any means but the way that I kind of the way that McKay and I kind of put this together was giving you insight as if you like if you have no idea who a passengers is because I saw many of you in the comments who didn't and so I put this together with you in mind like you know nothing about eight passengers you don't know anything about the family their history and so I've compiled who they are how they started their Channel what it originally looked like and then when everything started to go downhill so it's it comprehensive but I will not touch on everything so just know that that's why we have other videos and things to cover that absolutely all right let's jump into the first slide who are eight passengers so I went ahead and blocked out some of the kids faces that's something that McKay and I tried to do on her channel to try to afford as much privacy to these kids who have not had any privacy at all um so the four younger children um are still minors and then the two older ones that you see here are both
16:23 now adults which is why I included them but then you have um Ruby and Kevin in the middle and they're standing in front of a temple I don't know which one this was but I'm not familiar with it yeah so that's our that's where we're gonna start and that's obviously like Mormon temple like for those who want to know if this is a Mormon story we're going to talk about so much of their their brand was was steeped in in Mormonism true absolutely um and we'll touch on that a little bit in a couple other slides okay so just tell me when to jump to the next slide you can go to the next one okay here we go so our player is here our first two obviously going to be the most important well I think of the three I guess so we've got Ruby we've got Kevin this is another picture where they're standing in front of a church building um that was from their Instagram isn't it that's what yeah this was from their Instagram this was a few years ago so
17:17 not the most recent but we've got Ruby who's 41. um she's been a stay-at-home mom which has been a big kind of part of their platform as well and we have Kevin on the right who is 44 and he's currently well formerly formerly it sounds like um a engineering professor at BYU so there was speculation onto whether Kevin was still teaching at all um we are not 100 sure things are starting to come out that he might not be BYU deleted his staff profile well they made a they made a statement and said that she was not employed at the um at the University since the spring since the spring so I'm not really sure if he taught at all last year when him and Ruby seemingly split up we haven't really heard anything on that but we'll come back to that but we'll come back to it so it was a pretty big part of their channel for a while they talked about the fact that he taught at BYU a lot and they were very heavy on like BYU was very much a part of like the family
18:21 culture like it is for a lot of Mormons um you know they had the BYU Decor in the house and that's where their oldest daughter is going to school now so that's a kind of big part of this also um so next thing with Ruby that I think is important to give context her parents are Mormon Kevin's parents are Mormon they are through and through Mormons um Ruby's parents are actually currently on a mission in Serbia they left last year right yeah around this time last year around this time last year so they've been gone a year um and they are Die Hard Mormons also it runs through and through with Ruby's family and for the for the never Mormons that are tuning in we often Outsiders often sort of associate Mormon missionary work with you know night you know 18 to 21 year old boys running around in white shirts and ties but there's this whole massive culture of what we call Senior missionaries which is as soon as you're retired and Wealthy the church will call you and will pressure you or teach you
19:27 to serve a full-time Mission as a senior couple and so you'll sometimes you get to pick where you go but you'll travel to a foreign country live there sometimes for years sometimes at the expense of your duties as a parent or as a grandparent and and you'll serve the church as kind of free labor and that's what I guess Ruby's parents are doing yep yep absolutely and it was a it was a big deal they it was a plot point for a lot of the family's content at the time which is my next point that I was going to bring up which is Ruby's whole family Vlogs on YouTube so all of the siblings but one have their own channel on YouTube and have very incredibly High um subscriber counts and so go to the next slide there we go uh here we are okay there we are so the older Ruby's parents are on the left and they have almost 200 000 subscribers and then we've got all of the siblings so we've got Ruby on the way left which she
20:36 has 2.3 million subscribers had we have to the right um her brother Bo who at one point was vlogging but does not anymore and they are suspiciously they actually follow some like Progressive Mormon accounts so there's like some speculation that they might not be as DieHard as some of the rest of the family um so then we have Bonnie in the middle who has 1.3 million subscribers um and then we have Julie 221 and then we have Ellie who has 1.6 so million yeah it's entire family blogs and they are considered like kind of the megaverse of YouTube vloggers because there is not many other families that I'm aware of that have like each of the family members have as many views and so the Griffiths which is Ruby's maiden name the Griffis have kind of started this weird phenomenon where they all Vlog together and then they do like joint vlogging at like each other's houses and then you know Ruby's parents will do like dinners and they'll do videos about
21:47 that so it's a very interesting Dynamic but what this also means is that all of them are also very wealthy lots of Subs lots of views um it is really an interesting situation because I think the only other families that I know of I don't remember their names but the crazy pieces and crazy middles I don't know if they're as active as they used to be like a year or so ago but nobody has had success in the YouTube sphere like the the Griffis family yeah and and what is it you may have already said this but you've got the grandparents with 199 000 Subs did you talk about that or what what are they doing so it's like are they even able to upload on their their mission not that I've seen they do very like cute grandparent stuff like her mom will do like cooking and recipe videos and then they do like family dinner videos and I mean it's like very cute and wholesome but they also don't have minors in the home right so their content is a little less like concerning to most people because they're not broadcasting children unless their
22:57 grandchildren come over but yeah it's very interesting wow so even even Grandma and Grandpa are kind of in in on the deal and I'll just say I watched just today I watched a video with Ruby when she had dropped out of and we'll get to this but when she had dropped out of um eight passengers and started with Jody she starts crying at how she gave up millions of dollars those were her words to give up eight passengers and start connections so so by Ruby's own mouth she's made Millions off of her YouTube channel yeah which where it's kind of a thing that we're torn on because obviously we don't yeah yeah I hope Jordan McKay make millions I don't think that it's ethical or right that people use their kids as content in order to get views and make money but she doesn't recognize where the wrong thing was in that video specifically she was more talking about the focus on materialism and she thought she was loving her kids by Taking It Away by giving them material things
24:06 and then that was actually not love and Distortion which is Concepts that we'll get into later and we included that video so yeah definitely get back to what's wrote in here so that's the Griffis and then I wanted to make another no on Kevin Kevin's family is also Mormon but he also went on a mission he went to a Spanish-speaking country if I recall but I don't remember which one and his family is has had a weird like relationship with their YouTube like they're not very involved um and they're not in the vlogging sphere and there was a while there that Ruby was talking very vaguely but critically about her in-laws so it made me kind of think that there potentially wasn't a healthy relationship between that side of the family um but yeah that's the that's the point I'll make about Kevin for now but we listed out and you can go to the next one with the response okay sew it a passenger started all the way back in 2015.
25:03 and so they've been around for a hot minute and they will talk about the content that they put out but they grew like crazy a hundred thousand Subs in one year is pretty unheard of especially for example like that's pretty crazy and then by the end of their second year on YouTube they had a million subscribers so between even just that time they were making pretty decent money just off that alone and then as of 2023 before the channel mysteriously disappeared they had 2.3 million subscribers and so they posted very consistently they posted all kinds of family content that we'll talk about in a minute but the main thing that we'll get to later that Ruby talked about as well is money comes from the ad Revenue so if you're familiar with YouTube they put ads on their videos that's how they get that revenue from the actual videos and then Ruby was sponsorship crazy oh yeah her whole Instagram was laid with Spa sponsorships and ads and that's how they got a lot of
26:07 their things and then they were also given a bunch of free things and she's reported all of these things they were given free vacations cars clothing um Electronics Furniture like anything that you can imagine these guys were given because they had such a large following and then they had a really big Instagram account as well that anybody who advertised on their channel was getting really good value especially if their target market was families and middle-aged women and so advertisers and companies really took advantage of that because of how much attention she was garnering on these platforms and because of how high her views are if you're not familiar with kind of the sponsorship angle the higher your views the more money you get for sponsorships and so she's up there with like the most popular YouTubers for having like high high high paying sponsorships and so just like John said earlier there's she was raking in millions a year at least yeah see and
27:10 you think about it from a brand perspective if a brand wants to run an ad on cable or on YouTube or what have you a video ad then they have to get somebody to write a script and somebody to shoot it and they have to pay for all the equipment and they have to have actors who are likely Union actors and all of this stuff or a YouTuber they can say hey we'll give you a thousand dollars for a 30 minute video spot they do everything for you and they sell your product to their target audience which is probably already coinciding with your target audience so and her kids were often involved in these sponsorships just like they were in all the videos like this is her this is her daughter Sherry who's now an adult but these were the kinds of ads you would see all over her Instagram that the kids were involved in as well um so yeah you can go to the next one really quickly um Gerardo's reminding me that a lot of the people joining are probably you know
28:08 some of them are your audience some of them are mine and then some of them I'm guessing the YouTube algorithm is just pushing people here and while I I was excited to have you all introduce your podcast maybe I should introduce mine uh again I'm I'm Dr John delin uh I have a PhD in Psychology and I run this podcast Mormon stories and you know we've been going since 2005 we're one of the longest running podcasts in the history of ever and we focus on uh Mormonism and specifically allowing Mormons to tell their story in long form but also members of other high demand religions and then we cover Mormon culture and current events as well but half of our audience has never been Mormon so there is this kind of global interest in high demand religions and or Mormonism and that's what Mormon stories podcast is about so if you're joining us for the first time uh as you're subscribing to Jordan McKay also consider subscribing to Mormon stories oh yeah we love to have you
29:05 um as an audience uh all right so let's go to the next slide um as we talk more about Mormonism you want to take this one yeah this I um funny enough the one of the brand accounts that um connections used was Ruby Frankie's old Instagram so all of these I just pulled straight off of Instagram if you want to throw them up right there but they were these were just ones that I thought were really representative of like Mormon values to throw up there there's for those who are for those who are listening only because we have a big listening audience describe the three photos that you see that people will see up there yeah we have Ruby in front of the Provo Utah temple and then we have the eight of them nelton prayer around a little family ottoman it's called family prayer and Mormonism and then a picture of the two youngest kids in masks during covid uh sitting reverently in the chapel in their Chapel seats yeah again big part
30:12 of their brand is Mormonism yeah so and not only just those things in Instagram but it was also like really prevalent in a lot of their their videos where they would casually mention things that are normal everyday things to Mormons that maybe a lot of people who weren't exposed to Mormonism ever throughout their life um would start kind of investigating Mormonism off of that thing so in that sense I think that these Mormon family blogs and channels and things like that are like a really big Grassroots missionary tool that the Mormon church probably is ecstatic about because it exposes such a large swath of people to um to the religion and to be fair like you know we've we've looked at many Mormon influencers over the years and it's some Mormons I would say most of them in the beginning were very discreet about Mormonism when they were starting off like it was kind of rumor mill like people would find out like oh they're Mormon and they're like oh my gosh I didn't know that they would come to us
31:27 and they would be like hey are these people Mormon yes and so a lot of them didn't make it like super obvious and I think there was because there was obvious hesitation there that there's some stigma around Mormonism and so a lot of them didn't really talk about it and then Ruby came on the scene and I mean it's yeah the whole Cornerstone of like half of what she does and so she was kind of unique in that sense and I think a lot of Mormons were drawn to her in the very beginning because she was very like out and proud about the fact that she was Mormon and even though she would get like haters and things like she took a lot of pride in the fact that Mormonism was basically part of their brand yeah really quickly we were really grateful for the comments that are coming in um uh Laura writes from the UK thank you for the work you all three do I am not a Mormon myself but I can see and hear the
32:22 value you have even to us Outsiders uh love to you all thank you so much Laura for that we have another I love when we crowdsource information uh the froggy 912 the tea froggy 912 says I can confirm Kevin taught at BYU in the fall of 2022 I found his courses um another another crowdsourced Veronica Hetherington writes the grandparents do upload from their mission that's so interesting so that's good isn't that fascinating yeah we've only been focused on the Frankies for a long time so we don't see much from them yeah we don't really dig into that as much and then um and then Alexis Smith writes a good point she writes I thought photos weren't allowed in Mormon chapels so that's an interesting Dynamic that maybe you guys have talked about that growing up Mormon you didn't take photos of Mormon chapels but with social media influencers I wonder if the church is even bothered because for the from the Mormon Church's perspective maybe that's good PR
33:25 um and then really really quickly I gotta share this one K McNally writes please have Jordan explain her own professional and education for for the audience she's super credible on the subject matter yeah I think that's important um you're doing important work there Jordan in terms of your education we talked just briefly about that yeah so I actually graduated in May um with my MSW my Master's in social work and so I have been over the last two years I have been in the social work profession doing various things in um primarily in Utah we only moved back to Colorado a few months ago so all of my work even still um is currently in Utah so I work as an associate therapist at a private practice and so I primarily see um adults um I primarily see couples right now and so my work kind of aligns with Jody quite nicely because I am a couple's therapist currently and so a lot of the things that Jody has like recommended and stated like I see those same concerns coming to me from my
34:30 clients and I see a lot of the harm that has come from like a lot of these porn programs and a lot of these you know just the Purity culture that stands within Mormonism and so this is this is absolutely my realm like social Works my realm I'm currently an associate therapist so I deal with this stuff day in and day out that's so great I you know I believe that the ethical training that you receive you know whether it's in a master's level therapy program or a PhD level I think the ethical training is probably the most important training you get and it's just so it's you know it is great advice to seek out a licensed therapist when you need therapy and that's all that should always be the go-to especially with their severe problems mental illness severe family problems severe parenting or behavioral problems with kids and um it's always just important to know that just because your therapist is licensed doesn't mean they practice in
35:25 an ethical way and it appears as though Jody Hildebrand is a perfect example of that so I'm so thrilled to see Jordan that you're getting that formal training that's so important yeah that's and I mean I agree social work is I mean ethics was what I learned about for a two whole years so yeah yeah it's intersected nicely with what we do all right so let's uh should we jump to the next slide which is just kind of giving a sampling of their Vlog content yes normally um I I would have normally blown out blurred all their faces out but I did not have time we do have a life surprisingly and only during this time is our little toddler who I am a full-time dad for um gone is he gone with family so well these are public videos so it's not like we're doing private home videos normally I'm just saying normally I would uh but I would I didn't have time enough to do so this is a nice sneak peek into kind of where it all began and what they were posting yeah all right so this is giving a sampling of their early content right
36:29 yep yep okay okay I think your dress is on bathroom I can't let her get away with you we just got that Hedgehog and so is that like a normal reaction for a pet to have a seizure because of another pet welcomed into the home [Music] so for those who weren't able to see that just kind of summarize what what we just saw um so it is just kind of a snippet out of what you would see from almost any family Vlog Channel um the the content focuses on the parents and the kids and their everyday life a lot of times they would go on vacations or do some sort of activity or there is nothing like exciting about family vlogging like they're literally just doing their day-to-day life and I mean taking the dog to the vet I mean I personally don't want to watch somebody take their dogs to the vet but apparently a lot of people do because she has 2.3 million subscribers but yeah nothing extraordinary yeah it's like making the bed or a kid complaining that they don't want to eat
37:42 something for breakfast and it goes viral right some some one and a half or two-year-old pouting about not liking broccoli right and it yeah gets 10 million views right yeah and that's kind of where the cracks start to form with this content because you think about when you brought your fiance to your parents house and you started looking through these embarrass she want your mom wants to pull out all these embarrassing photos of you as a kid and just the feeling of that and then multiply it by a million views of people that you will probably never ever in your lived Experience run into that for anybody to to stumble upon so there's that kind of stuff and then the mundane stuff usually is just filler content but every now and then you'll have a car accident or a kid will have an injury or something like that and you have to or someone gets cancer or some sort of serious disease right suddenly you're getting
38:49 an astronomical amount of clicks because somebody's in a monetization position they monetize the heck out of medical events and emergencies and all of the family bloggers do that but Ruby especially like you can't a child gets injured and the first thing Ruby's gonna do is pull out the camera yeah it has nothing to do with actually helping the kids and that content that is like one of the more concerning things is in basically any of these channels you go and you sort by the most popular in the first 10 there will be at least one medical situation that a kid got injured and then they're in the hospital with a camera in their face yep um and they're basically having to do a job while they're getting medical treatment yeah I was I was watching a clip today maybe you're gonna show it where like Ruby's complaining that one of her kids does blurry vision are we gonna show that one yes I have that one okay okay well I'll just I'll just well that's a cliffhanger that's a cliffhanger so um really quickly let me share a couple comments because they're
39:53 they're kind of fun um one person writes Jamie writes watching kids go to the dentist no thanks um another another Valerie Stevens writes I don't understand why people are bored enough to want to sit and watch that stuff and then um and then S.L Conley writes 2.3 million stalkers which is a really succinct way to kind of describe that but but I mean clearly it has a huge demand but the other thing that's just kind of worth noting is there's a Mormon element to this it's like why are there so many of these family vloggers that just happen to be Mormon I would can we say with absolute certainty that Mormons Utah Mormons and Arizona Mormons are disproportionately represented in the YouTube vlogger universe is that fair to say or am I stretching though yeah and I think because Mormon uh bloggers initially there are huge ones who's the one fashion blogger uh Rachel parcel Rachel yeah and then um the Genesis of kind of the Vlog movement on YouTube one of the big names
41:07 was Shaytards Shay Carl and his family they're all Mormon and they're also kind of um they were not as upfront with it as uh Ruby was it was a whole Scandal one and all yeah but yeah like disproportionately Mormon Utah Arizona so they saw hey the Shaytards can do it let then I've got a big family I could totally get this kind of attention on us and start making money off of it because they Shaytards made an incredible amount of money up front multi-million dollar deals with um um a a conglomerate that they had formed with people like Philip DeFranco and other big names on uh YouTube just recently um I had Janae Janae Thompson um on Mormon stories podcast and she and her husband Grant had a super famous YouTube channel still do I mean Grant's passed away but it's but it's called The King of Random tkor oh yeah and we just recently had Janae Thompson on to talk about her and her husband building up this massive multi-million subscriber YouTube channel and then he passed away in like a sky
42:24 not skydiving but like one of those um pair of paragliding kind of accidents but I could we could name 10 or 20 Super Famous what's that Mark Rober there's yeah yeah Mark Rober is at least was raised Mormon um yeah yeah and then and then if I I would say some of the other reasons why so many Mormons are successful family vloggers is they have large families they care about their families I think so many Mormons serve serve missions and and they spend a lot of time together the Mormon church is um very family oriented and then if you have a stay-at-home mom and she learns um how to use her camera and how to upload stuff she can be the original you know photographer and uh you know vlogger until they get wealthy enough to kind of hire their own camera people and editors but don't you think kind of the the stay-at-home mom Dynamic and the large family and the focus on the family it's not uniquely Mormon but but those Mormon elements don't you think they tend to make
43:38 um you know help Mormons be disproportionately represented what do you guys think yes 100 the only other one that I would add is they're usually wealthy and so there's I think an appeal do they start out do they start out as wealthy or do they become wealthy some of them start out like it's Sophie and Kevin were Rich prior to to YouTube okay not nearly as rich as they yeah not at all but yeah yeah okay got it okay all right well should we go to the next uh next slide is this another example of their Vlog content yeah this is just a little more okay so people get a feel okay here we go [Music] gross Chad we're good bathroom so that's like kids in the van in the minivan doing crafts blowing bubbles yeah training to Mom and Dad with with Mom making sort of like 100 mile Death Stare muggings to the camera right yeah and someone one of the comments that you had highlighted earlier was like this is
45:04 so boring who would ever watch this and it's so weird and and for people that there's a lot of people who are like that who are like who how is this appealing to so many people but you have to take into account that there are moms out there who maybe feel like they're the only one whose kids are just Bonkers all the time and it's relatable to them there are kids on YouTube who are like oh my gosh they have a big family just like mine or there are also people that maybe didn't have a family Dynamic at all or in the traditional Mormonism that one is surprising the amount of people that we've had that have reached out to us that said you know like I grew up with abusive parents or things were traumatic in my household and so I watched these family channels as a way of like you know looking at and seeing the things that I didn't have is almost like a comfort yeah kind of like a cope so in a lot of these senses I don't blame people for wanting to consume this kind of content because when you're just
46:06 looking at something that appeals to you you're not thinking in the back of your head these kids are putting out for this like putting on on a show for all of us and their parents are making money off of it and they are not required to pay these kids anything there's nothing set in place there's no unions for kids of family vloggers or anything like that child labor laws need not apply in these situations these kids are filmed constantly so that's exactly why I wanted to include that because it it's relatable for a lot of people yeah we we recently did an episode and I'm sure you guys covered it too on the Duggar family and you know based on the Shiny Happy People documentary and that was one of the what is his name Jim Bob like what was that guy's name the uh like the way that the parents made millions and the kids walked away with with nothing other than like an Overexposed family with a wrecked reputation and and it was just so clearly exploitative that's kind of the
47:09 dark side it's just a lack of informed consent because an eight-year-old or a three-year-old literally ethically can't give informed consent yeah and their parents are constantly shoving cameras in their faces and stopping every supposed to be authentic you know private moment and they're just constantly saying wait let me let me get the camera rolling and again it's a free country it's a free world and families can choose that and parents run their families but as we'll probably mention it again and again there's some ethical concerns and there's also just some mental health concerns for the kids yeah yeah and in Shiny Happy People you saw in full display that there was contractual agreements that the kids had to um they had to fulfill and most of them hadn't even they couldn't sign for themselves for them yeah right yeah we have a we have a viewer that wants to make sure everyone knows that the Duggars are not
48:12 Mormon and that's true Bridget Bonner the Duggars aren't Mormon but Mormons watched watched that show and I think we related a lot to what we saw yeah and um was it 19 is not enough what's the show called 19 Kids and Counting yeah 19 kids again all right so this next is a it's a video entitled traditional family values in marriage do you want to set this up or just roll it we'll just let it speak for itself yes all right so here's the next clip us waiting in line to eat at Chick-fil-A because we're supporting marriage between men and women and here's the end of the line and we're just gonna follow the line we've got a long wait um I mean for those who didn't see it's just it's just this commercial shopping mall with this massively long line and it's showing the University Mall in Provo oh is that it yeah yeah I think yeah did you hear them bragging about sort of like anti-lgbtq solidarity by standing in a
49:21 Chick-fil-A line as a part of their exact social media it's cringy it's gross knowing that there's such a high prevalence of LGBT depression and even death by Suicide within Utah specifically because of Mormon doctrinal teachings about quote traditional families and about um being gay or lesbian or bisexual as being a sin is being evil is being perverted uh to see them like monetizing that and sort of virtue signaling their religious beliefs in a mall that was disgusting to me yeah that's my bias but that's not disgusting just a little context for this this was that clip was back from 2012 before they had their business and blog channel and that if you'll remember if you were living in the United States that was when um Chick-fil-A I don't remember if it was Chick-fil-A corporate or who it was really they had come out and they were giving money to anti-lgbtq lobbying groups and things like that and it had surfaced in the
50:27 media and there was a lot of outrage about it rightfully so and so I think it was Mike Huckabee who actually pushed back on that idea and was like no we should be supporting Chick-fil-A so this date is going to be Chick-fil-A day everybody go to Chick-fil-A and it was huge like I was working at Chick-fil-A at the time at a location that was owned and operated by a member of my ward a lot of the employees were Mormon even though it's not a Mormon company but like everybody I knew who was a Mormon was going to Chick-fil-A just to Virtue signal that same thing so such a bizarre thing yeah really awesome so there everybody was like yeah we only want marriage between a man and a woman because that's what we want to do so we're going to go eat the chicken sandwich okay and that's again where Mormonism and Mormon Doctrine and Theology and then this Mormon family vlogging and in this case um the yeah this this family they just
51:29 all kind of intersect it's hard to really separate them should we go to the next slide all right next video clip living the for the strength of Youth standards uh Jordan why don't you explain to us what the for the strength of you standards are really quick so so the word I like to use is pamphlet but it's kind of a man for the Youth of the Church of a basically like a long drawn out list of things that they have to follow so in this specific instance it's like you can't date till you're 16 or you know if you're gonna go on dates they have to be in groups and it's just like very specific things that teenagers are supposed teenagers and younger are supposed to live by and it's changed over the years but it's like tell me if I'm wrong it's like women you know don't show your shoulders dressed modestly don't let your skirts go above your knees you know have clean hair cuts don't wear beards or facial hair and then there's always that kind of in this
52:24 this pamphlet has changed over time but in the past it probably would have condemned not just homosexuality but any sort of same-sex sexual behavior prior to marriage it would have said something like don't arouse the passions but what it means is don't masturbate don't look at porn and don't have any sexual relations before marriage um and uh and I I wonder if past episodes would say things like past versions would have said like don't see our movies but just think of Christian Purity culture you know encapsulated in a Mormon pamphlet is that right exactly that that's a perfect way to sum it up so that's that's for the strength of these standards now we'll run the video clip um do you allow your kids to date um and then other people will get on and comment and they're like no Mormons aren't allowed to date before they're 16. no it's forbidden for her kids to date before they're 16. so the word allowed and forbidden I think are
53:29 depends on how what you think aloud means so do I allow Chad to date before he's 16. um if by that you mean am I gonna stand in the doorway and forbid him to leave the door if he's going on a date no I if that's what the word aloud means then yes he's allowed all right what'd you guys find interesting about that clip Ruby and Symantec um yes and and this is why we what do you mean what do you mean we are so literal everything is like so literal if she can dodge something based on like the literal sense like you guys accuse me of doing this but what I actually do is like the same thing but I'm just gonna word it differently yeah yeah and this is this is why I'm so um dead I will preach that this is a Mormon story because just think back to any time when you were a true believing Mormon and you had to explain to somebody the word of wisdom it was always in a a sense of well I could go out and take a drink
54:40 whenever I want to but I know that I too that's not the commandments so yes I can drink but I choose not to that kind of language is just so emblematic Mormonism in my opinion and probably by extension a lot of other fundamentalism and do we have the video clip of uh of Ruby talking about her kids don't have privacy and live it and live it in the home that that clip do you know what I'm talking about yes I think so if I didn't put it in there I will get it now there's one that matches it for sure but um the reason why we put for the strength of Youth in there is because the idea that you're supposed to date once after you turn 16 and not prior to that does come from the for the strength of Youth pamphlets at the time that that was filmed I think it may have been revised to exclude any sort of hard age recommendation but yeah at the time it definitely did well what I'm getting at and we'll get to this is within Mormon culture and the for the strength of the youth pamphlet just barely touches the
55:46 surface there's this massive Terror around pornography viewing and masturbation and starting at like age 11 and even sooner if you count General Conference denunciations of pornography and masturbation just like it's like Mormon top Mormon church leaders just can't stop talking about masturbation so you grow up now within Mormonism from age three just constantly hearing the word masturbation and pornography all the time and before you even really know what it is y'all know it's t it's promoting yeah promoting the behavior by talking about it all the time but more importantly parent you know the other than like killing somebody like the worst thing to a parent that could ever happen would be to find out that your young boy or girl is masturbating or looking at pornography and so from age 11 or more Bishops start interviewing Mormon kids when they're 12 sitting alone with them behind closed doors asking them do you touch yourself how
56:47 often do you touch yourself where do you touch yourself do you look at pornography oh you need to come into my office grown mid-aged Mormon male with the 12 year old girl yo you're masturbating well you need to come in my office regularly and we need to check up on that one-on-one alone and uh and then parents you know a whole cottage industry of like software programs and internet filters uh have come out of Utah to try and help parents lock their computers TVs down their their computers down their their mobile phones down so the kids are never tempted to look at porn or masturbate but what that leads parents to do is to have this massive Obsession Mormon parents to have this massive Obsession like constantly like going after their kids monitoring their kids checking their kids um checking their browser history putting filters on to make sure their kids never masturbate and and so when you hear later if we're going to show it Ruby talking about things like I don't know did she talk about taking the doors off of her kids bedrooms her kids not
57:51 being allowed to have privacy I'm sure this whole controversy about her son getting kicked out of his room and sleeping on a beanbag and then later I'm guaranteeing you the marital problems between Ruby and her husband are all around people being caught on the internet looking at stuff they shouldn't potentially masturbating and then this Obsession and that's I think that's why Jody Hildebrandt and connections come in later is because of just this constant tension and Terror around heaven forbid your your kids or your spouse you know doing those Unholy and unnatural things and I say that in jest yeah yeah am I wrong did I did I overstate that no you you hit on a lot of the points that we'll come back to okay well I'm setting them up all right so what's this next slide about um so we're about to get into the child abuse we've uh yeah we've given you the honeymoon stage we're into the thick of
58:49 it now and now it's over so yeah obviously yeah okay this this is the least of it it could it'll get worse later so we'll we'll watch the video and then I'll give context on this also but this is this is 2020 I mean she was doing terrible things also before then but they were more subtle and now the mask starts to fall things start to slip and it's becoming more obvious all right so let's uh let's play it have I ever given something back oh sorry let me play it now there we go have I ever given something back more than six less than six months um my bedroom was taken away for seven months and then you give it back like a couple weeks ago I don't think our viewers know that yeah I'm gonna give my room back like two weeks ago yeah so that's that's the sun what's his name that's Chad he's now an adult yeah and so he let's slip out this idea that he's been kicked out of his bedroom and sleeping on a bee bag for how long seven months seven months so we're aware of at least I'm sure that wasn't the only time that happened but that was
1:00:02 during that time during that time but that was kind of her designated parenting tactic at that time was he was not allowed to sleep in his bed and he slept in a bean bag so he didn't have I mean just like when what John just said I mean it aligns with you know no privacy he was sleeping in just a regular room with a bean bag in it before we leave Chad were you gonna go to other things or were we going to talk about that yes I have another Point okay on that slide but I will talk about kind of what it is so Chad was kind of designated what I would say is the problem child um he was kind of in addition to the two youngest kids he was very picked on as far as like you know in the videos he was always the one that was in trouble Ruby was always taking things away from him and so he was kind of the focus for like as the bad child in a lot of the videos for a long time and so part of what happened is one of the other horrible things that Ruby did a Chad particularly is she sent him to a Wilderness Camp
1:01:06 um for troubled teens so this is part of that troubled teen industry that we've talked about particularly a lot in Utah where they send kids to and some of them actually die um and you know Paris Hilton was here in Utah for one that she'd actually attended when she was a teen major not a few years ago I want to say that she came here and talked about it yeah but Ruby yeah we don't live there anymore no but Ruby decided that she was going to send a Chad to A wilderness troubled teen camp and part of that decision we learned kind of as brief mentioned from the video was that Jody was Chad's therapist at the time and Jody recommended that Chad attend this troubled teen Wilderness Camp and so they ultimately decided to send Chad he was gone for months at least yeah I think it was the whole summer because they um there was an article that they were talking about it and I included a like a little snippet at the bottom but just to be brief they were saying they had made like a video dedicated to him explaining
1:02:13 why because people were asking why he wasn't in their summer Vlogs and everything like that um so they kind of like laid it all out on the table and they were like oh he was out of it was a lot of backpedaling because there was a lot of backlash but he was out of his room because of an incident that had happened with his brother and a therapist recommended that they be separated a therapist who we're led to believe is Jody Hildebrandt and then when he was able to go back into his room he had to make the choice to prove that he was trustworthy enough to have a door back and everything like that and but this was a whole storyline for eight passengers because everybody was asking where's Chad so they did a video and then about it and she even posted a voicemail that he left her once and people were asking her like when's Chad gonna come back and she thought it was so hilarious she was like I don't know it could be like two weeks could be like six months like she was just so like almost jovial about the whole thing yeah
1:03:18 and if it's okay like we'll we'll come to this at the end but I just want to insert a little bit of my analysis having got my PhD in Psychology here in Utah and having spent six years uh doing Psychotherapy with predominantly with Mormons um a couple things number one it's the pure it one you know of course troubled teens are everywhere in the world and in the United States so um you know that's that's not a particularly a Mormon thing outside of Utah and sometimes in Utah you know kids will get in trouble with drinking or drugs or that sort of thing and of course Utah has had some very serious drug epidemics specifically around um you know opiate opiate addiction um but but uh but also within Mormon culture um porn and masturbation and I'm saying this as someone who was trained again with the psychology PhD um masturbation is viewed as an addiction as a legitimate addiction within Mormon
1:04:24 culture so the Mormon church has 12-step programs that it sponsors um called addiction I think what addiction recovery um these adult service missionaries that we talked about are often called as Leaders of these addiction and Recovery groups and instead of having people's you know go to these little support groups and saying you know I'm an alcoholic or I'm a for a recovery meth addict they say I'm a sex addict and when they say sex addict they don't mean necessarily seeing sex workers 12 times a day they literally mean I masturbated within the past three weeks and I'm an addict um and I'm trying to recover and this is not just adults married men married women children as well and so again there's just this massive um pathologizing of what a mental health profession would would say is a very normative healthy uh Behavior which is masturbation so um when someone like Chad has the door taken off to his room or he's forced to sleep on a beanbag in the public or sent
1:05:36 to an Anastasia named Youth Camp uh the subtext that I read from it is that he was caught doing things sexually that his parents didn't like and now he's being sent to a troubled teens camp and and that's a core reason that these camps are so prevalent in Utah is to cure their children of masturbation and and quote sexual addiction uh um and then the only other thing I'll add is that one of the reasons why there's a cottage industry of these troubled teen camps in Utah as I understand it is that the Utah legislature passes laws giving parents the right to abduct and force their children into these camps without their children's consent and that's why wealthy people from all over the United States send their children like Paris Hilton to Utah because the Utah legislature which is like 70 or 80 percent Mormon make laws giving parents the right to force their kids into these sorts of camps now did I get any of that wrong Jordan McKay that you know no and I I've had clients who have been to you
1:06:54 know various TTI type places within Utah and I have yet to hear a positive experience and there are also people online who have shared their like kind of horror stories related to the camp that Chad actually went to and so we know that there was some not great things going on but Ruby took much pleasure in that so this is just one aspect of yeah kind of the things with Chad but the next slide is where things kind of get worse yeah and when you say bad things happening in these camps like sometimes physical abuse sometimes sexual abuse sometimes starvation sometimes unethical working conditions or go ahead other things mental abuse and things like that and psychological abuse yeah yeah um I think specifically in the the we were looking into people's stories about this Anasazi camp and there were people trained people certified licensed people in mental health fields that were doing grossly unethical kind of things if not straight up criminal
1:08:03 kinds of things and a lot of times they there's no sort of like consequence or anything that comes to happen because the uh the parents essentially sign their rights away in a lot of these instances so it would be really tough for these things to come to light in a credible way that could be prosecuted here Cassie's Circle time rights lack of Medical Care is one of the problems with these camps thank you Cassie also buddy Beau says that this Camp was in Arizona so is he saying that the Anastasia Camp was actually in Arizona yeah that one is in Arizona which also has a legislature with a heavy Mormon population correct yep yeah and then here's a fun little fact um this is kind of fun Ray Lawler says Mormon stories podcast and in this joint production with Jordan McKay is showing up fourth in the list of Live Now videos on YouTube that's kind of fun so that's awesome for helping make that happen all right thank you keep going guys okay so
1:09:08 next slide we venture into Ruby's relationship with her youngest daughter which has always been problematic in addition to Chad she's kind of always picked on the youngest to particularly the youngest daughter and so this clip in particular was the one one of the ones that went viral and got Ruby on the map yeah six years old remember this is six years old [Music] sure did not pack a lunch today and can I bring a lunch over to the school this happens quite often when you're having raising children um because I know that her teacher is uncomfortable with her being hungry and not having a lunch and it would ease her discomfort if I came to the school with lunch but I I responded and just said Eve is responsible for making her lunches in the morning and she actually told me she did pack a lunch so the natural outcome is she's just going to need to be hungry and hopefully hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch
1:10:26 I mean I have no words yeah it's particularly the last bit that really sends me because not only is she totally brushing off the fact that other people are like this is wrong uh but she's also adding it it's almost as if she's trying to drive home a point like she has to be responsible this six-year-old has to be responsible or else she has to suffer the consequences by whatever means even if I'm not there her peers can't give her anything or anything like that she should suffer which in my opinion with also a bachelor's degree teaching degree this is not developmentally appropriate for a six-year-old a six-year-old can only be so responsible and food being one of those things to teach them about is generally not the thing that I would pick withholding food absolutely and you will see even prisoners are afforded food and she said and I she put up a bit big stink it wasn't in this clip or any other clip that I could find
1:11:37 but she had mentioned that the the school was 45 minutes away from the house big whoop uh it's not a defense or anything if you are able to choose a school that's 45 minutes away from your house then you can put down whatever you need to do or and it was like two hours before the end of school just go and pick her up that's honestly but it it's indefensible it's gross and and most importantly it's a pattern yeah and she was willing to upload it to YouTube for the whole world to see and didn't see anything wrong with it yeah I just have no words a six-year-old right like it's just so but there's just there's this idea of like worthiness and Justice and Punishment and retribution and tough Stern learning we're gonna we're gonna show a little clip later to talk about how sometimes a a Christian and a religious or even a Old Testament biblical view of God can be used as the basis to justify this type of behavior I
1:12:48 have so many really good comments coming in if y'all don't mind I'm just going to share a few of them um macrograms wants to just correct me that it's Anasazi not anastasi is that right so I think I was getting that wrong um miku's headphones writes my high school boyfriend was in Telos Academy on Center Street in Orem and whatever their Wilderness Camp was they lived in a halfway house on Center Street I've heard the worst things ever there so that's just one example of uh of what's going on in Utah in that cottage industry KB 5 5122 says I'm a victim of childhood camps and institutions longest at once I did was a year and sometimes these people are going to be sent there for for like um having premarital sex like a parent will catch a 16 year old girl or boy having premarital sex and they're off to like a Mormon Wilderness concentration camp for six months and it's just it's just because of that Purity culture and this
1:13:55 this driving obsession with sex and the need to keep your kids pure because in Mormonism I think it's worth mentioning sexual indiscretion is next to murder in terms of severity and I'm not exaggerating there are scriptures in Mormon Doctrine and theology that say that uh premarital sex is a sin next to murder literally am I am I making that up Jordan McKay nope I was told that as a teenager yeah it's right there in Alma yeah it's in Alma it's in the Book of Mormon um a couple other quick uh comments that are really useful Kayla writes yes they do I live in Utah and the place I was sent to they would come abduct the kids in the middle of the night so I'm not making that up there literally are practices of abducting children in the night to take them into these camps forced um and parents again um sign away tell me if you you guys remember this Ashlyn writes Chad broke his toe at Anasazi and never got it taken care of have you guys heard that
1:14:58 I've heard various things with her in denying Medical Care and Ruby was very encouraged like if he wasn't eating if he had to sleep on the ground without any like equipment underneath like she took pride in those things yeah yeah um someone asked me to remind everyone to please hit the like button please subscribe to both Jordan McKay and Mormon stories so that we can blast this video far and wide the more support we get the more subscriptions uh the more likes the more people find out about this and here's an example of why this episode is so important Charmed girl writes I just talked to someone from a Wilderness Camp from Utah to help me with my teen I'm so glad I'm watching this show now I often like to say silence is the enabler and silence is the Killer and that's one of the main reasons Jordan McKay and Mormon stories um do what we do couple more quick ones Matt stoker writes the message that
1:15:55 masturbation is normal and there's not a clinical diagnosis for casual masturbation reviewing pornography is not outside of normal human behavior is a message that needs to be heard um and we totally agree um exmo Robo writes in Mormonism and is often implied that parents essentially own their kids eternally so it's unsurprising when some parents take advantage of that that is such a good point um finally we can't forget this message from Jesse banana insane the idea that I would ever be introducing my child's sexual development by asking them about their private masturbation habits is beyond the pale um and the fact that adult men in Mormonism can sit uh with your 12 or 13 year old girl or boy behind closed doors and talk to them as a as a stranger about their sexual behaviots is also ridiculous and then Jacob writes sarcastically these porn addiction recovery groups are run by licensed mental health professionals right and of course he's being sarcastic because it's literally like Grandma and Grandpa like
1:17:05 Ruby's parents that are on a senior Mission without a mental health training leading addiction quote addiction and Recovery recovery groups for porn and masturbation okay Jordan McKay I'm sorry this is just a passionate topic for me so I'm going to be I'm going to be hitting it hard because it's a it's a deadly it's a deadly issue within Mormonism because there are Mormon Youth and adults that die by suicide because of the shame and Obsession heaped on about sexuality definitely yeah oh yeah it comes up all the time okay so anything else you want to say about the six-year-old for getting her lunch and and Ruby no but the next slide will continue to demonstrate the pattern with which we've described okay so should we just play the clip of Ruby starving her kids again yes all right here we go okay and my kids are literally starving I hesitate to say this because it's gonna sound like I'm like a mean Barbarian but I told the kids I said I'm not even gonna let you eat breakfast until you
1:18:09 get your chores done if I let all right what's wrong with that Jordan McKay I don't even have words but Ruby uses food as a punishment like she withholds food there's been videos that have surfaced of one of her kids like having hid food in her bedroom because Ruby would take away food so often and using food as a punishment I mean I can't even begin to say how inappropriate it is but I mean when we're talking about things as severe as we'll come back around to like malnourishment and the effect on the brain and brain development and you know very early on developing a bad relationship with food for all of these kids and so I just it's ridiculous to me that food would be used as a punishment for not doing a chore yeah and you just think in the grander sense of humanity when people commit like crimes against humanity and things of like of that nature usually one of the most cruel things that they do is
1:19:13 cause a famine or take out or take up the means of their production of food and things like that doing that to a child I could never imagine even in such of a seeming and not seemingly innocuous situation is this yeah yeah um and Donna writes uh that's that's the stuff of eating disorders and I think that's a really important Point Donna that Donna brings up there's a very strong appearance culture in Mormonism and in Utah plastic surgeries there's probably a higher than average implementation of plastic surgeries not to to cosmetic surgeries not to shame anyone for that um at all but they're just as a heavy emphasis on appearance and and so there's a lot of eating disordered behaviors I would say probably larger you know per capita than many other places just because you know Mormon moms and sometimes dads just really want and need to look their best and so you know these punishments to kids around eating and nutrition can be
1:20:21 easily intermingled with disordered eating behaviors of their parents and specifically their moms did you want to talk anything about that Jordan no absolutely and Eating Disorders like I don't know what the incidence rate is in Utah but it is I mean more often than not especially with Mormon women I've encountered Eating Disorders quite often and so it is definitely a problem yeah all right well the next clip is Ruby delays medical intervention for her daughter do you guys want to just play it yeah send it all right I'm cleaning the sink I'm cleaning the countertops marking the floor I'm stalling I think I'm ready now I think I'm ready to leave I put on a little little lip gloss and that will be as much stalling as I'll go and so she woke up this morning and she's like Mom my vision is really blurry like more blurry than it usually is Kevin just came in he's like I think we need to take Sherry to the emergency room I said well let me take a shower and then I'll be out
1:21:20 since it's been an hour so yeah and we apologize that that video just clip just came out with a accelerated voice but do you guys want to summarize what we just heard yeah so literally do not understand for any purpose but her oldest daughter Sherry needed medical attention and her husband even advised that they needed to go to the ER like immediately because they didn't understand what was going on with her and it was severe and Ruby decides to wait for an hour just because and she literally admits to stalling but that there's like nothing wrong with that in her eyes like she's talking about putting on lip gloss well her daughter needs to go to the emergency room and is needing medical attention in the other room yeah yeah it's just mind-boggling there there are a couple points that people are making that are really important B writes Sherry talked about eating 1500 calories a day uh three weeks ago now Sherry is the daughter at BYU is that right yes yeah
1:22:23 and Ruby did have her on kind of a restricted calorie diet for a while she did monitor her calories yeah Merlin and and I think that comes with kind of the social media YouTube kind of dynamic totally um Merlin writes she talked about being obsessed with being thin in the video with her and her siblings Alexa writes and I'm not sure this is true but Alexis Smith writes Utah is the number one state for breast augmentation per capita um if if our uh sleuthors want to verify that that's what one of our viewers and listeners is uh alleging Emily writes that's what they did with Josh Duggar speaking about these work camps um uh that they sent Josh Duggar to a Work Camp instead of a licensed mental health professional um and obviously the Work Camp didn't work so well for Josh Duggar who ended up um you know being accused of sexually abusing his siblings and and maybe other people correct the record on that Mormon parents are sending their kids to these camps for nothing Josh confessed
1:23:28 to a sheriff's deputy that he had abused one of his sisters and that was their response and then the Sheriff Deputy didn't report anything and he is now serving time for sexually abusing children so it was just like a whole thing and I wasn't trying to say he didn't do anything um but here's the rub you want to send your kids to a licensed mental health professional but Jody was so that's true yeah ideally it's a licensed mental health professional that has more allegiance to their ethical code than their religious institution because the problem with LDS Family Services which was the Mormon supported therapy Consortium the Mormon Church Bishops referred their Ward members to and maybe still do is that that the way you get on a Bishop's list you know to get referred to is if you communicate or signal more of an allegiance to the religious Doctrine and the principles than you do uh to the
1:24:35 ethical code of your profession and a perfect example within Mormonism of the problem is Natasha Helfer Parker Natasha Helfer you know is a licensed marriage or family therapist sex therapist who you know a couple decades ago started advocating for um ethical therapy over mormon-based therapy and you know normalizing masturbation normalizing being lgbtq and of course within the past few years she ends up excommunicated um from the Mormon Church literally for nothing other than practicing as a as a you know under the ethical code of of uh marriage and family therapists and sex therapists and so the final point I just have to mention because my wife arguments this mentioned this Margie was so disturbed by Ruby's um as Pamela puts it the Glee on her face when she seems to be um you know punishing her children through starvation or not taking them to the doctor did you all notice that Jordan McKay oh you will see that
1:25:39 throughout everything that Ruby does like the woman has no shame but it's it is like you're they put it perfectly she almost gets like some sense of Joy from inflicting pain and suffering onto her children so it's almost sadistic and again that might be mental health as much as it is any Mormon influence but then did she was she encouraged to seek help or not or did she get the right help or did her Bishop refer her to Jody Hildebrand right which doesn't really doesn't really solve that problem so we just showed the Ruby starving our kids again right we did the medical intervention one okay so now okay now we come to Jody Hildebrand anything I want to say to set this up before we play the clip um play the clip first and then I'll add everything else yeah okay all right here's a clip about uh Jody Hildebrandt protection requires someone to live principles of being honest responsible and humble
1:26:46 [Music] so vulnerability means I'm willing to accept the state of existence in this world [Music] oh wow honesty and responsibility and humility are at the foundation of living a life that's connected [Music] I mean already it's so ironic because the accounts I've heard about Jody Hildebrand is the the last thing you would say to describe her is humility and accountability that she sort of ran her therapy sessions and these support groups and these workshops and Retreats as the absolute Authority in everything that she said and no accountability but what what did you want to say do you want me to show that slide and have you talked through it Jordan yeah you can pull it up so what some of this we already know but she is the founder of connections and we'll talk more in a minute about what connections is um and then she's also she claims to be a coach um we mentioned before that she is she
1:27:54 was Chad's therapist um Ruby's son's therapist and she was also Bo's therapist and Bo is Ruby's brother and so when I mentioned earlier that we had mentioned earlier and so when all this was happening in the beginning Beau had actually left a negative review for Jody on her business page and had said that she was basically awful and did not help at all and was just all around terrible and so there was a lot of kind of Scandal around that in the beginning because everybody was like oh Jody and Ruby are starting this business together and she was beau's therapist and there's like you know confidentiality and things there so she's been involved in the family in more than one way and then like we've talked about she's a licensed mental health counselor um she does not operate within her license right now as she says um she primarily like John mentioned before her like areas of forte were sex addiction and pornography and she ran
1:28:49 like a lot of you know recovering from porn groups and those kinds of things and then she was on the LDS Family Services Referral List for a while so she was recommended by a lot of Mormon Bishops and then as we'll talk about in the next slide um her license was actually put on probation for an ethical violation and it shouldn't have been the only one because evidently as John is hearing and as I have heard there is now plenty to talk about but we'll talk about that in a second and then her and Ruby become business partners which I'll return to in a second and then later on you'll also see that Ruby and Kevin attended some of her classes when they were having some problems were part of filmed discussions that they had couples and things yeah and and for those who weren't able to view the video they're just listening Ruby showed up on that um Powder Puff marketing piece with Jody Hildebrand her face was in one of those Workshop groups so clearly you know they were they were super
1:29:51 connected even uh there was other material that I had seen earlier today um even in some of that Sherry her daughter showed up in the the little promotional material so yeah they were very involved right okay really quick I I I'm gonna just be candid I have to run down the hall for just one second so I'm gonna have you guys just take the mic for a second and just know I'll be right back do you guys mind maybe telling this next story and uh and uh taking it through till I get I get right back totally yeah go for it guys okay so next thing that we were going to talk about with Jody was the ethical violation that she committed that garnered a lot of attention at the time um so the article that we referenced in it that General show in a minute is came from the Salt Lake Tribune um but since like essentially what happened is Jody in her porn addiction therapist role um was reprimanded by the state and had to go her license was taken and she was
1:30:55 put on probation because she discussed um like confidential private information about a client with a Mormon Bishop and BYU yep so she disclosed likely information that this man was in therapy for like overcoming porn addiction and these kinds of things which is something that you can be disciplined by the Mormon church for including if you were at BYU that might kind of interfere with your good standing which could get you kicked out of school depending on the leadership and so she communicated private confidential information about this client to his bishop and to his BYU leaders basically and the worst part about it is if this already couldn't be horrible enough the worst part about it is that all of the claims according to the person all of the claims that she made were false and so that's wanting even worse but two as a consequence of this as a result of all of this he got ejected from BYU and and even worse how much was he paying a month so
1:32:15 he wrote in he was interviewed for this article we don't know who he is he kept his identity private but he said as talking about Jody she just lied wherever she went to further her agenda to destroy my life and he said that the bills that he was paying for Jody's Services was two thousand dollars a month two thousand dollars a month and that he quote says we came there for marriage counseling and she pulled us into what he calls her porn Marathon and so this isn't inconsistent with other information that we have seen and read about Jody she's kind of like the horrifying joke is that she ruins families and this I mean just on a social worker level who has to abide by an ethical code sharing confidential information about a client with another party when the client has not consented for that information to be released is a huge ethical violation huge ethical violation like she absolutely should have been disciplined by the state and she was she was disciplined
1:33:19 and so she had a set criteria for things that she needed to complete in order to obtain her license again all of this was documented she actually includes on her website if you're interested in reading it and so basically she had to meet a list of things which was like additional supervision with another client she had to record sessions like there was a list of things and then once she did that then her license would be reinstated and she would no longer be formally disciplined so she did all of those things and her license was reinstated and as of I haven't checked over the last few weeks but as of when I checked probably a month or two ago her license was still active you can check license status in Utah um and so that's why she got in trouble to that time but this is only this is only one instance that we are aware of where she was publicly disciplined by the state with consequence of her license well and it's
1:34:17 also as John might add some context for the only circumstance that we know of where a client or a patient was like this is not right and they were able to find the proper channels to report this kind of unethical Behavior to the proper licensing bodies in order for there to be any action taken because a lot of people probably don't know that that's wrong that whatever she was doing that may have affected their life so much to the point where they would consider it to be ruined in the case of this guy they just moved on they didn't do anything about it and they were like well that was crazy and who knows that the outcomes that could have uh come out of that and just went totally unreported yeah and and I'm going to go ahead and just share um share on the screen you won't be able to see it but I also shared as a link a very courageous gentleman named Adam Paul Steed made a public Facebook post and I believe he's the person that's uh
1:35:29 spoken about in um this uh in this slide that you have which basically the the headline what's that that we were just talking about that one yeah yeah important therapist disciplined for uh telling church and BYU about a man and um so so uh kudos to Adam Paul Steed for speaking out if it's okay uh Jordan McKay and of course we're gonna be um we're going to be addressing this topic more when we do an episode dedicated to kind of the victims and or survivors of Jody Hildebrandt and connections later this week on Mormon stores podcast so if you have Jody Hildebrand or connection stories or if you've been a victim of her stuff if she's if she's harmed you or harmed your marriage or harmed your family please email me at Mormon stories gmail.com either with your story I'll keep it confidential or if you want to appear on the podcast we would love to have you because we are going to be spotlighting Jody Hildebrandt and
1:36:35 connections but I'm just going to tell my story because this is where things kind of converge in kind of really weird ways because I've had people um you know telling me I should cover eight passengers for years and I just haven't really had an interest and that's why Jordan McKay do the good work that they do what I did what I did have happened to me years ago is um I had a listener uh reach out to me and I'm going to call him Terence uh to protect his identity but Terence was a grown man married with kids living somewhere here in Utah and I don't know the full story of how Terence and his wife ended up with Jody Hildebrand um but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with let's just say Terence either admitting you know pornography and masturbation to his wife or being caught masturbating and looking at pornography with his wife or maybe somehow the bishop was involved but long story short they ended up in couples therapy with
1:37:42 Jody Hildebrandt and um one of the things that Jody did was uh require uh Terence and his wife to attend these support groups that uh were very expensive that Jody Hildebrand and connections sponsored and weirdly these support groups weren't run by Jody uh you paid a lot of money and they were run by um again as I understand it non-licensed um people who were not mental health professionals but were simply friends or former uh you know addicts that participated in um in Jody's therapy but but imagine this sort of like addiction and Recovery Group modeled after a 12-step program where couples are in there with you know the the masturbating and pornography looking husband or wife with the non you know presumably non-pornography viewing and or masturbating house you know coming to the support group in confessing their quote addictions to the support group without a mental professional there paying a lot of money to Jody and then talking about sobriety
1:39:07 confessing um you know their sins so to speak and then apparently Jody would assign sort of like an accountability buddy to the masturbating partner as I understand it such that like let's just say it's a Tuesday and they're getting the urge to masturbate or look at pornography they're supposed to text you know their their their accountability buddy or call them or literally call them and start clapping their hands to make sure that their hands aren't you know anywhere where they shouldn't be and receive that level of daily support as if we're dealing with alcoholism or meth addiction and you know that in and of itself is wrong and disturbing and unethical in so many ways but it gets worse um if you admit to your accountability buddy or if you come to the group and admit to the group um that you have uh you know fallen off the wagon or you know relapsed and you masturbated again and it can be as infrequently as once every three weeks or once a month the group is encouraged as I understand
1:40:20 it by Jody to make sure that punishments are exacted to the offending spouse and so what that means is the group you know jumps on the Confessor but more importantly to the spouse of the Confessor Force the spouse of the Confessor to enact some sort of punishment and in terence's case when I met Terence he was sleeping on a mattress in his office in his own house why because Jody hildebrandt's connections Therapy Group pressured terence's wife to punish him for masturbating and the punishment was no sex right no sex for months and you can't sleep with her you gotta sleep on a mattress in your office and you think about the shame in the humiliation of your wife or your spouse kicking you out of bed your kids are like Hey Dad why is there a mattress in your office and they wake you up at night and you're trying to explain why you're sleeping in your office on a mattress trying to hide it or maybe you tell them maybe mommy
1:41:41 says there's a punishment yeah Daddy is Doing sinful bad things and so he's sleeping on a mattress because he's not worthy of sleeping with Mommy not to mention the fact that you're deprived of any sort of sexual Outlet you can't masturbate you're not having sex with your spouse like that shame spiral is only going to make masturbation more and more likely and so of course you're relapsing sleeping on your mattress in your shame cycle you're coming to the group they're all shaming you for what you do and then if you relapse and it gets out to the group the group ultimately and this is terence's own report to me pressured the wife to kick Terence out of the house that he was providing for as the primary Breadwinner so my memory is that Terence ultimately was kicked out of his own house by his wife because of the teachings and the support group that Jody Hildebrand of connections was sponsoring with this
1:42:45 couple and who knows how many of these support groups are out there how many um marriages and families were um harmed or destroyed by these practices um and uh and ultimately if a spouse can't um you know can't quit the Habit quit the addiction they're they're taught um to uh to divorce their spouse and that's how so many of these marriages and families ended up being destroyed and again they're these weird teachings about being synchronous or in harmony or um or in in any other ways sort of like being out of alignment frankly with Jody hildebrandt's own cult-like theories that are religion based that are in many ways by her uh interpretation theologically uh based in her interpretation of Mormonism and while this in no way is the norm within uh the Mormon church or Mormon church culture so much of this sexual shame sexual Obsession um sexual policing and monitoring is absolutely in my opinion interwoven into Mormon marriages and Mormon culture
1:44:03 um and in that way it's it's it can be very culturally and even theologically based and and I asked Terence to come on Mormon stories and tell a story and of course he didn't want to because who wants to talk about shame and pornography masturbation and he was so torn because he he felt on the one hand I don't want to be shamed but on the other hand if I let um if I let uh this story go and I don't speak out against Jody Hildebrandt then I'm enabling her to harm more children harm more families harm more marriages and Terence was not the only person that came to me reporting very similar stories and once you know I text once I saw the news story of Jody Hildebrandt in connections I reached out to Terence and I said did you see sent sent him the New York Times article on Jody Hildebrandt being arrested and after swearing he said to me I wish I kind of wish I'd spoken up earlier because I think my silence maybe enabled her own children and maybe many other people to be hurt and of course uh I do not hold
1:45:18 Terence responsible uh people deserve privacy they don't have a Duty or an obligation to bring on the the world of Shame um for uh you know what what a certain culture might deem as sexually deviant Behavior so Terence don't feel bad any of you who didn't speak up don't feel bad but kudos to anyone including ultimately Ruby's siblings that did their best to speak out out against Jody and these horrific practices now as a special guest to Mormon stories uh we are so grateful to have Dr Julie Hanks here um joining us on Mormon stories podcast hey hey Julie Hanks how you doing I'm great how are you doing John good sorry to bring you in in such a sort of a heavy moment for the podcast no it's okay I've been listening to the whole thing so really enjoying it and Jordan McKay I'm I'm a fan I've watched several of your your episodes we appreciate you we've always from even when we were Mormon I always appreciated your perspective so thank you for what you do thank you and Julie for our
1:46:33 viewers and listeners who don't know you you are and actively attending faithful uh Latter-Day Saint who has also been a therapist in this space for what a couple decades now three decades I'm getting old John so Julie uh and Julie's been on Mormon stories as well Julie take a second to talk about who you are and what you do and then anything you want to say about kind of uh what you've just heard so far and if you want to speak about Jody Hildebrandt and connections or practices like that including the Mormon Church's own addiction recovery program let's just give you the mic for for a little bit is that all right yeah oh that's great okay so I am a therapist uh and I've practiced in Utah for almost 30 years I own Wasatch family therapy clinics in Utah and Mesa Arizona and uh written some books at my specialty area is LDS women and I am on Instagram a lot and post a lot and advocate for Latter-Day Saint
1:47:38 women um it's interesting this topic I have been following Jody and Ruby's videos for the past I I think it's been about a year and I've been very very concerned in fact I reported Jody uh to I think it's been two months ago because of some of the racist sexist homophobic Things She Said online and because she is still a licensed therapist were Bound by ethical responsibilities even when we're not officially acting as a therapist so I I felt like it was reportable um and so concerning to have a therapist speaking so just disrespectfully of of minority populations um I have never worked with someone who has been a client of Jody's but I have had people say what do you think about Connections and that's when I went down the rabbit hole and I have watched hundreds of videos and have been just compiling my own list because it's it's I've been afraid about what I've been hearing um okay that the addiction recovery oh yeah
1:49:00 um my biggest problem with that is that everyone who masturbates is not a sex addict everyone who looks at porn is not a porn addict that's been my experience that a lot of LDS people come in and they label themselves as addicts when it's like I masturbate once a month right like you were saying John so I think that's so damaging and also we have victimized we have created victims in spouses like you've been cheated on uh we frame things as you know if if your partner looks at porn you've been cheated on you're a victim and that's created a whole uh other host of problems for clients that I've worked with um so that's kind of off the top of my head um I I've I'm horrified by the events that have transpired this week or what's come to light and unfortunately not not entirely surprised I'm surprised by the magnitude of the abuse that these poor kids had suffered but um I'm not I knew there was I sense there
1:50:12 was something not right because of the the teachings of uh Jody and and Ruby and the ethical violations that have been going on uh particularly with Jody as a licensed therapist well Julie I just want to say how grateful we all are that as a you know actively attending Latter-Day Saint therapist you're willing to speak out publicly about these sorts of things because as we mentioned Natasha Helfer and others sometimes there's a price to be paid but we really really appreciate your courage in speaking up anyway and I'm so excited you've joined us today I want to encourage you to jump in at any point in the discussion from now to the end that you do you want to jump in and on is that okay that sounds good yeah okay thanks Julie Jordan McKay I I gave a big kind of a ramble rant um do you do you all want to respond to any of the stuff that I said real quick no I mean I I personally accurate I mean my experience associate therapist validates everything like that you and both Julie have talked about it's that I mean I
1:51:20 can't tell you even in my two years working in this field how many men I've had come to me and say you know I masturbate once a month and they lead by telling me I'm addicted to porn and so it's it is rampant the shame is intense and Jody is truly and that's why we've been covering her for as long as we have because Ruby is horrible but Jody is also pretty Sinister and it's it's a shame that she hasn't gotten as much attention as she has now um but we're glad this is at least coming to light and hopefully it highlights some other you know groups or people who might be doing similar things that are also not okay so that's kind of yeah everything that you've said completely agree yeah just piggybacking off of what Jordan was saying it's been kind of disappointing to see a lot of the other YouTubers who report news and even in the media people kind of focusing and zeroing in basically just on Ruby because she is exhibiting parenting techniques that are abusive and arguably I've always thought she is
1:52:27 an abusive person and but I think really where things took a turn for the absolute worst were the things that Jody had added into the mix I don't think that Ruby would have gotten this far on her own if it were not for Jody's involvement with her yeah yeah um will you say something Julie yeah supposedly Ruby is a certified mental health coach by Jody which is actually not a thing it's mental fitness trainer yeah and and so that's just another you know uh pet peeve that anybody can be a coach you can just any any one of you listening can say you're a coach so be be warned uh that doesn't necessarily mean anything although there are some amazing coaches out there um but can I just speak to an ethical issue that it's so unethical for Jody to partner with what with one of her former clients parents in business like that has that alone is a red flag um that's a dual relationship and creates a lot of of ethical issues as
1:53:50 well yeah also yeah potentially to do social media business stuff with current and former clients again that's I mean it's just yeah that's why I said at the very beginning one of the most important things you get as a licensed mental health professional is the ethical training yeah um so that's a great Point um I just I don't I don't want to beat this drum too hard but I just want to make sure that if we focus on Jody Hildebrandt alone being the source of all evil here I think we're really missing what is is a more important message you know one viewer listener Monica wrote We all reported Jody and you have to ask yourself why why in Utah was Jody reported so many times and nothing happened well I have a couple theories one is that you know one of the things Jody as as I've heard was fond of telling people was that she had the ear of high-level Mormon church leaders she would tell people she interacted
1:54:53 regularly with uh Mormon church Apostles and so I don't think she fully made that up the fact that she uh so many people tell me that she was referred they were referred to her from their Mormon Bishops um there there was a there was a religious culture that was approving of and recommending her institutionally and so I I don't think uh you know I don't want to skip over that also Jody by no means is the only person dealing with this sorts of stuff you know in the past whether it's the sons of helamans or sons of Helaman or other types of groups or the Mormon Church's own addiction recovery programs support groups led by non-mental health professionals if you just Google right now go to Google Maps type in addiction recovery you know program or group Utah or Salt Lake City you're going to see a Google Maps with just infinite dots all down the map of local addiction and Recovery support groups hosted by the Mormon church by service couples called
1:56:10 to lead these groups um hosted as I understand it in Mormon chapels and I may be wrong about some of that but just try it and um you know Jody is just sort of that unhealthy practice gone extreme but um you know and I know that one of the Cardinal rules of the Mormon church is don't criticize the Mormon churcher's leadership having said that Julie is is there anything you feel comfortable saying saying about this not being purely a Jody Hildebrandt problem within Mormonism yes um this may not be where you're headed but many of Jody Ruby's teachings are based in Latter-Day Saint teachings gone kind of to the extreme totally I in our analyzes that we've done of it I have titled it a reskin of Mormon ideals like you just look at some of the basic ideas of Truth Versus Distortion you can see that there's obedience and sin and it's all just kind of redefined with new words and and I think it's not very different and I think maybe Julie you can speak to this and maybe John also there's I mean
1:57:38 the way that she's kind of skirted it I feel like kind of from what we've seen is she's kind of isolated her role as like I'm not operating as a therapist I'm operating as a coach and so therefore the ethical rules that apply to being a therapist don't apply to being a coach and so that's kind of how I think she's skirted that rule but Julie maybe you can speak to why that is also not okay yeah in in ethics we're not just bound as therapists by the work we do with clients but also our work in the community and as advocates and so I don't think she's skirted that that aspect uh at all yeah really quickly I just just for just just to kind of illustrate the point um I just typed in arp Salt Lake City um uh uh what What's the what's the acronym for the groups do you guys remember for for the church support groups I can't ADR I thought yeah something like that well anyway I'll just yeah I think I think we've made that point enough anyway so okay so maybe let's go to the next slide
1:58:57 which then deals with what connections in moms of Truth is because that's where I think Ruby and Jody really come together and force do you guys want to talk about that yeah so this is just I just took this screenshot from the from the slides off the website um and I'll just talk about this briefly basically these are the main kind of services that Jody had listed as part of what her and Ruby do and so there's additionally in to these things there's also a private Facebook group that if you join like their classes and things that you get access to which is problematic just in a different way um but what you'll see on here is we have the first one which is connection insiders which is literally you get to interact with Jody and Ruby like personally on an app like you can ask them questions um you get 24 7 access to their online community and you can video message with them and then pricing on there is 21 a
1:59:52 month and 21 for 20 minutes of direct video messaging um and so remember also you know when we look back at that article that was posted in the Salt Lake Tribune like apparently Jody was charging upwards of two thousand dollars a month for therapy which is absolutely unheard of in my regard even you know as like very licensed well-respected people I mean Julie you could probably say that that's probably pretty astronomical yeah per month that's a lot that's a lot so that was bizarre to me as well and then we have the master classes where she gets a lot of people um she claims it's her best-selling course and it talks about how to transform your mental health in relationship in six weeks and that's 218 dollars and also covers the materials one of which that we talked about earlier and then there's the parenting class where Ruby got involved basically was the two of them kind of creating let
2:00:49 us tell you how to parent and how to it says connect meaningfully and parent effectively in five weeks and if you've seen any of the videos and if you watch any of the ones we're going to show you today it is not healthy parenting so this is just a snippet of kind of the things they provided and then they also did like small Snippets of what they taught in their courses on social media so it was free and accessed on YouTube and on their other channels also and this is tricky because uh it's it's not uncommon for therapists to run workshops or support groups or retreats um it's it's not uncommon for therapists to have online courses um and to do parenting training or to have Facebook groups or you know that sort of thing but but I guess it gets tricky when number one the content isn't ethical or evidence-based or science-based and I would say a second problem is when it's it's exorbitantly priced and or folks are pressured
2:01:53 um you know to buy it all to buy the individual therapy the couple's therapy the support groups and the courses because if a Mormon wife is terrified that her husband is going to masturbate or look at porn or their child and then a therapist with them with with you know the appearance of the Mormon Church's support because the bishop referred them if that therapist is pressuring that wife into the couple's therapy and the support groups and the online courses just the terror the religious based Terror of your spouse or your children you know committing the sin next to murder is going to be undue influence to pressure people to opt in to these super expensive sometimes two or three thousand dollars a month kind of expenditures Julie do you do you want to add anything to that no I just I just agree I totally agree I'm just reading that I'm reading the comments and um enjoying those so thanks everybody for the comments yeah all right so Jordan McKay should we go to the clips
2:03:05 yes so this next one that you're gonna see is when Ruby and Kevin started participating in connections and so you know the complex relationship with Ruby with Jody being Chad's therapist and then Ruby's Brothers therapist and the inappropriateness of all that on top of that we have Ruby and Kevin were also participating in her marriage classes in the very beginning also when it turned into promotional materials for the class but this clip is one of the many that you'll see from Ruby and Kevin talking about their experience all right let's uh let's Let It Roll so you know Kevin would show up in a distorted way or a controlling way or in drama and what I learned was I don't need to point that out I don't need to get Kevin to be responsible for him being in distortion I only need to be responsible for my response to it I am responsible for the emotions that I go into and I need to own that and so when I like quite literally Drew this line in
2:04:15 the middle and said whatever Distortion he's in it it could be the reality and most a lot of the times it was the reality that you were in Distortion and I don't have to engage that in fact it's not my responsibility at all to engage that my only responsibility is to earn mine and to be honest about my myself yeah so Julie I just kind of have a tongue-in-cheek joke like in all your training you know your your doctorate Level Training in mental health how often did the the clinic clinical word distortion come up and what does that mean exactly yeah never and trained with with Jody speak it's like you don't even know what they're saying because it all these words have their own meaning like truth and Distortion and what's reality and they use agency a lot they've borrowed that one from the from the LDS church um so I get that one but truth and Distortion the black and white thinking which is a sign of ill health is like at
2:05:23 the core of the teachings right it's either this or this something else that I have pointed out and we both have blown it out a lot of times is the the ambiguous nature of a lot of these things because the definitions are coming from them so in a moment's notice in a conversation they're able to redefine what Distortion is to make themselves be in the right and the person who's like a member of the group or who is paying for this course is in the wrong so they always come out on top because of this ambiguous kind of language well and the like the reason I included this clip was because it demonstrates kind of the weirdness of the language like Julie just pointed out like we actually after we started investigating kind of this with Jody and Ruby like our followers eventually asked us to like make a video on like what the heck truth is what is Distortion why do they talk like this why do they always capitalize the teen truth like it's very weird and vague and
2:06:25 it sounds like they're kind of speaking their own language which is why I included this one because it's kind of very bizarre to listen to yeah and uh and I'll just say that um you know one of the things we try and talk about on Mormon stories is uh awareness around either high demand religions or Cults and uh while we don't uh we we don't find that it's useful to call the Mormon Church of cult on Mormon stories podcast we do think it's essential for people to learn the principles of unhealthy organizations or high demand religions or Cults and newsflash religions aren't the only Cults out there whether it's some multi-level marketing or pyramid schemes whether it's yoga instructors like Bikram whether it's uh you know sometimes life coaches or even self-improvement groups uh certain businesses certain educational institutions sometimes in a marriage it's essential to learn the fundamentals
2:07:27 of high demand religions um there's a really really good book that I recommend called recovering agency by by Luna Lindsay corbton um about the 31 sort of practices of unhealthy organizations Stephen Hassan World cult expert has a book called combating cult mind control where he's laid out the bite model where Cults have excessive control of behavior they unhealthily control the information that's the eye and cult um they have excessive control over thoughts that's the T in byte and then the E is emotional manipulation they manipulate you through either excessive love bombing and praise or excessive fear guilt and shame the bite model cult or high demand religion or unhealthy organization awareness is crucial and you can just very easily fall out of the influence you know of an unhealthy religion or marriage or whatever and fall right into an unhealthy business or therapist or coach or whatever and I think it's fair to say that that Jody Hildebrand seems to exhibit many if not
2:08:39 most of the traits of a co-leader and this this idea of um the jargon that she uses and the principles that she teaches as if they're the absolute truth I don't know how to distinguish that from Keith renery or L Ron Hubbard or Jim Jones or Warren Jeffs or any you know any modern cult leader that we might um want to hold out Judy I see Julie I see you nodding your head yeah it there are lots of aspects that feel um cult-like like like she defines what truth and Distortion is she defines what principles are most important she defines when you are in Distortion or when you are in truth right right and and uh in in some of her Facebook groups if people challenge they get booted out so it's like anyone who challenges The Authority gets removed and so all of those factors uh definitely are concerning yeah and and I've had many many people tell me that they tried to speak up in one of these support groups they got kicked out in a therapy coaching session with Jody they try to disagree with her they were
2:09:57 yelled at shouted down or kicked out people join these Facebook groups and tried to express concern or even disagreement they were kicked out um just a lot of boundary policing based on you know Jody's own kind of Doctrine so um Jordan McKay should we go to the next slide about Ruby taking away Christmas from her kids yes this this was this caught this went a little bit viral for her as well put Ruby back on the map every once in a while she does something completely awful and then social media takes hold of it and this was one of those things and this was in a video with um Jody where Jody encouraged her to talk about this because she felt it was important all right here's the clip I'm scared to share this because knowing people these days I don't know if people are gonna you know how they're gonna respond um so Kevin and I we have two well we have six children the two youngest are showing long patterns of selfishness they have been showing um through their choices their
2:11:07 unwillingness to repent their unwillingness to feel sorrow over some pretty egregious choices that they've made um so Kevin and I have decided that we are going to give the gift of Truth to them this year for Christmas we are going to give them the gift of boundaries and we're going to give them the gift of repentance so so we sat down with them and we we told these two um what our expectations were again and we let them know how deeply sorrowful we've been because of the choices that they've been making and how it's affected their teachers at school it's affected their peers it's affected um in our home the siblings um and we just laid it out very clear and we told them that this year they are not going to be visited by Santa so they will and we prepped them we we let them know that the Christmas morning they're for older siblings will be getting Christmas presents to open and that they will have the gift of love from their dad and I
2:12:25 because we want them to really have a visceral experience that hits them so up until now I was really hoping that like keeping them home from school and wiping the floorboards would like really bring pain like like oh my gosh I really want to change this behavior that I've been exhibiting and it didn't it didn't they like it wasn't painful for them they're like oh yeah we get to stay home from school and clean floorboards this is kind of fun it's like ah so you know they've had these visceral experiences uh you know and they haven't they haven't affected them it's because they're so numb and so the more numb your child is the greater experience the big the bigger the outcome they need to wake them up you're not going to push a boulder with just your hands you need some real leverage and the biggest leverage that a little child has is probably Santa Claus and so I I expressed them that I love your soul more than anything in this world and I
2:13:33 literally would do anything to to invite you into repentance and I know parents say that I'll do I would do anything for my kid but really what I think most parents are saying is I would give anything to you if I I would pay any price monetarily I don't know how many parents are actually willing to put any boundary in place that would bring a turnaround that would really bring repentance so that is our gift our gift is a reflection of Truth to our child of this is how selfish you have shown up and it's not like once or twice it's not one week if this is like months and months and months and months and months you have shown up this selfish and so I'm going to reflect truth to you equally which is about the equivalent of Santa not coming I mean I just again I have no words and really quickly just as a just as a reminder for those who are joining us new I'm John Delan of Mormon stories podcast I'm here with Dr Julie Hanks at
2:14:40 Dr juliehanks.com and of Wasatch family therapy and we're here with Jordan McCabe from the Jordan McKay YouTube channel Jordan McKay why don't you guys uh oh yeah please uh like And subscribe please like this episode so it gets shared far and wide please subscribe to Jordan McKay's YouTube channel and Mormon stories check out Julie Dr Julie hanks's stuff and we appreciate the super chats that are coming in the donations to make this all possible Jordan McKay what do you guys want to say in response to canceling Santa out of love for your youngest children the kids that she is talking about you would think are 17 years old sneaking out of the house taking the car places they shouldn't near adults no the the youngest one of the two was baptized the following month when she turned to eight yeah there you go so these are these are her two youngest children children that she's talking about saying that their behavior is
2:15:43 egregious and that she wants to inflict pain by a way of punishment and that she wants them to be numb that so that they will finally come to repentance because they've been hurt so much what could they possibly be doing what could they possibly be doing I just don't understand and then I included this one also because some of the language in there like it when we first started listening to that numb like numb came up awake like these are very much like culty terms like you know everybody needs to be awake and everybody else is numb and even you know similar to not to be extreme but McKay and I have talked about this since the beginning similar to how Lori valo described her kids um sort of as like that zombie like numb like to consider your kids in this light is just so harmful and for her to just be so willing to like blatantly put this on the internet like she does not like she had hesitancy but she still put it out there anyway the woman has no shame
2:16:47 um Dr Julie Hanks you you uh do family therapy uh couples and and uh and and so does your uh was such family therapy do you have anything to say about this parenting approach or this parenting technique and whether or not you think it's empirically supported and or helpful to children absolutely not this is one of the First videos I saw and I was shocked what can an 8 and 10 year old do that's egregious like name something I mean there's and if they are doing something that's egregious they need therapy they don't need to hate Santa for not coming to their house I mean I just I can't think of anything that an 8 and 10 year old could do I mean yeah they can get in trouble they can do you know but be calling them selfish developmentally that's normal for eight and ten-year-olds to be self-centered because that's they they haven't learned that the world doesn't revolve around them yet and this is developmentally
2:17:56 inappropriate and so cruel and they're gonna watch their their older siblings open up presents and they're gonna sit there and cry I mean I think that is traumatic very traumatic yeah well said thanks Dr Julie hinks all right so let's go to the next slide Jordan McKay uh Ruby starts working for Connections in 2021 that's two years ago they included this on here and Julie said this earlier but I wanted to put it on here officially so you guys could actually see she is on the website so she was formally working for connections but yeah the terminology that they used is certified mental fitness trainer not quite sure what that is certified by who yeah not quite sure what that is at all but this is when she officially started working with Ruby and she was put on the website she started appearing in like the promotional materials like it's a her and do like her and Jody combo um and so the her whole purpose was focusing on empowering parents and children to live in truth again truth yeah
2:19:03 and then the next slide shows Jody and Ruby getting close yes anything about that so there's I'll just describe the photos really quick on the left it looks like Jody and Ruby laughing in a car in bathing suits there's one where I guess Ruby's got her arms around Jody wearing a University of Utah sweatshirt and they're both laughing and smiling clearly kind of photo shots with the professional photographer and then there's them posing in front of the Red Rocks in southern Utah with kind of Christmas and Santa um outfits on which is dark for two reasons it's making that reference to Santa Claus and Christmas and that's super dark but also the red rocks in the background that's where that's where they end up getting arrested right correct yes and that's why this is I included this because it just seems like they have more than a business partner relationship like it seems like they are very close very close friends like
2:20:07 whatever it is but it just seems more than like a traditional business partner relationship and this is around the time 2021 that Ruby starts getting included in all of the connection stuff like she is with Jody on everything which is why I wanted to include it but the following video and really quick what what some might glean from that is maybe an allusion to some sort of romantic relationship between them having said that Jody is just super anti-lgbtq homophobic you know condemns same-sex sexuality which is rooted in Mormon church doctrine and teachings um and so it's hard to know what to make of that and then you find out that that like eventually Ruby moves in with Jody and then Kevin's out of the pitcher it's just hard to know what to make of this but without and I'm not trying to be um you know gossipy or in any way um scandalous you know what I'm saying tability totally because it's just
2:21:11 bizarre and they 've Zen and then Ruby is always at Jody's house and so it begs a question of it sounds more than just like a professional relationship yeah all right let's go to the next slide where Ruby and Jody begin offering parenting advice should we just play the clip or do you want to set this up first this is probably the one clip I mean of the many this is the one that stands out to me is like almost a very like a forewarning and this could have even been going on at the time but this is like very foreboding for me for what eventually would happen after this clip because I I just because it's a little bit coded I think when I've seen this clip should people kind of listen for signals of of physical abuse is that kind of why you're playing this clip yes like an unveiled kind of unveiled coded language yes correct okay all right not to poison the well but you know sometimes she talks in a bit of a coded veiled way is that fair to say yeah the waters are already poisoned here so yeah
2:22:17 okay all right all right let's uh let's play it this is what love sounds like when you see someone hurting you acknowledge the hurt if your kid came to you on fire would you say I'm so glad you trusted me to tell me you're on fire that if I put out the fire that's gonna really hurt and you're gonna end up with scabs anyway so I'm just gonna love you where you are right now no you you throw them on the ground and you start rolling them you get a blanket and you start hitting the flames and they're gonna say you're hurting me you're you're beating me you're controlling it's like no dear hold still I'm getting the fire out that's what a loving parent does because nobody will do it it looks to the world crazy and because they've never been Loved Before it looks like I'm angry to them it looks like I'm controlling it looks like I'm militant it looks like I'm a monster it looks like I mean it looks like I'm full of hate it looks like I'm not accepting it because they
2:23:15 don't know what love looks like or sounds like man I've heard the saying uh well I won't say it but but you know uh Julie Hanks do you do you have a reaction to that clip you just saw especially within the context of her providing parenting advice as a non-you know professional non-licensed mental health professional well she shouldn't be giving parenting advice that was a very frightening clip in light of what's happened right the justification of being rough hitting throwing down I mean it's just it's just eerie and so so tragic and the way that she puts down empathy right like oh you know that's not loving to say except you where you are it's like don't show empathy you have to show kind of this tough love approach that that's really loving I mean that's that's frightening especially in light of what has transpired yeah yeah and an apologist is going to say well she's giving a metaphor she's talking
2:24:30 about a house a fire and so the throwing your kid on the floor and rolling around on the ground some of it say she doesn't mean be physically abusive to your kids she was giving a metaphor about what happens when there's a fire and your response to that would be yes she is and look where we are why are we having this conversation because two children appear to be severely abused yeah so is you know is it a metaphor I mean you think so but look where we are yeah it's just the the sort of punishment retribution discipline mindset without love and compassion and mercy which in all fairness you know you read the book of Mormon you read Mormon church doctrine it always says mercy and Justice need to be balanced and you have a you do have an Old Testament God sometimes or a or a book of Mormon God that can cause Havoc but you also have that balanced with the loving all-loving heavenly father I am a child of God
2:25:34 christ-like figure so I think a more tempered Mormon Doctrine in theology would always be balancing mercy and unconditional love with Justice this is sort of just the Justice part taken to an extreme is that fair to say Julie yeah I think that's that's right on there's there doesn't seem to be uh in a lot of these clips there's not empathy that's what's lacking yeah the empathy and uh connection ironically right yeah oh wow nice nice t-shirts Julie I did not mean it but that was that was good that was super good mic drop uh Jordan do you have anything you want to add no I mean I completely agree this was you know it was unsettling to me at this point I suspected that Ruby might have been abusive to her children when we started covering her just because of how she speaks but the justification that Ruby always gives is that this behavior is okay because every other parent that compassionately cares for and loves their kids doesn't truly love them like
2:26:46 this behavior is love like not acknowledging what my kids need starving them like teaching them things that are not appropriate given their age like to to Ruby and Jody that's love and everybody else is doing it wrong and so there's no that's the kind of really disturbing thing about this is there's no limit to what they can justify when they have reframed abuse as love yeah and and I I'll just say you know part of the theme of today's program is is the Mormon angle so I am gonna add one element of the Mormon angle that's really important to me you know many many people including Ruby's own siblings including many of her followers have reported that they reported these um scary utterances and videos and and signals to the authorities to whatever the equivalent of childhood Protective Services is in Utah but I just want to say this that if we want to kind of look at a Mormon church angle when it comes
2:27:52 to issues like being gay or uh apostasy which is teaching asking tough questions about the validity of the Book of Mormon or asking tough questions about you know the polygamous practices of Joseph Smith if you utter just a sentence on social media that goes against things that the Mormon Church really cares about whether it's people like me or Jeremy runnels or Cody and Leah young or just the dozens and dozens of people that have been excommunicated over the past several years for apostasy or like I mentioned Natasha Helfer who simply spoke up too much about masturbation being normative about LGBT stuff being normative you know you can find yourself with church sort of paid investigators copying you know your internet uh videos or um utterances sharing them with your local Bishops or leaders and then you find yourself in a Mormon church disciplinary Council getting communicated there are all sorts of issues the Mormon church is very
2:29:01 Vigilant about but why in the world whether it's Jody Hildebrandt or Ruby here or even Lori Lori dabel and Chad Lori valo and Chad dabell there are all sorts of really problematic teachings or utterances or videos or Expressions on the internet that for some reason the Mormon Church doesn't seem to be vigilant about and care about and why wouldn't the way we talk about raising children the way we talk about love and mercy and parenting why wouldn't that be something that is reported to the Bishops of of uh of this this family of Jody's Family and and shut down and if they don't stop teaching these sorts of potentially violent and disturbing and family wrecking teachings why aren't they ending up in disciplinary councils and disciplined by the church now I miss I'm assuming that they never were maybe I'll find out that they were excommunicated or facing church discipline but I know Julie Hanks
2:30:09 yourself have sometimes been repo reported on and questioned about for some of the things you taught do you ever wonder why these people were allowed to speak publicly and teach the things that they've been able to teach for so long without any action by by the church because they're not threatening the church they're threatening other people I think unfortunately that's why I mean I think they absolutely should but her being a bad parent or being an abusive parent isn't a threat to the church and tragic I mean this that's tragic but I think in a lot of situations the church or or people in the church are worried about protecting the church more than protecting victims yeah for sure for sure well that takes us to the next slide uh Jordan McKay which is just a a Reddit post on eight passengers snark the subreddit that that announces Kevin has moved out Jody has moved in do y'all want to talk about that at all Jordan McKay yeah we talked about it a little bit I'll just cover it briefly they this
2:31:23 is kind of when things went nuts for eight passengers in connections like as soon as this I remember the day that this came out our DMS were flooded with this because this was such big news after not really hearing anything from them like because Ruby stopped posting videos on eight passengers and so she had kind of taken up connections full time and there were rumors of Separation but nothing had really been like super confirmed and then this came out that the moderators of this subreddit had a verified source that was able to verify that the information was accurate um saying that basically Kevin moved out her daughter had completely distanced her oldest daughter had distanced herself from Ruby and the rest of the family like the immediate family completely which we later confirmed and she later confirmed herself she went on a podcast and talked about it um and so family's starting to turn
2:32:19 because her siblings wouldn't really talk about it but would like comments that were like dissing on connections and things so you knew that the people in the Inner Circle were aware but nobody was really saying anything and so essentially what came out of this was there was also suspicions that Ruby was being physically violent that the CP like the DCFS had been called multiple times that you know the kids had been left alone for longer periods of time which was later verified to be true and then they also said that Jody's car was spotted outside their home starting six months from this post and basically it was there so often that it was insinuated that Jody was basically living there and then Kevin kind of disappeared from the house and wasn't really seen there again and then apparently had found an apartment and moved out and so this was Earth shattering to the eight passengers image because we're operating on a whole you know modus
2:33:15 operandi of family values Traditions like marriage and suddenly all of that is crumbling and this her apparent business partner has moved into her house yeah and Julie Hanks I don't know what to make of the lack of action by child Utah child and protective services or whatever the formal name is other than to say that I'm sure social workers are swamped with so many reports they're underfunded they're under-resourced but then again I would say if Utah which is overwhelmingly an lds-backed legislature and you know the politicians um Etc in the in the population you might think Utah would invest in childhood protective services at a higher than um per capita rate because of you know the the predominant cultures stated values of valuing children of valuing families Etc do you have any experience where you can speak to the lack of action on on the on the part of child and protective services for so long Julie Hanks
2:34:30 yeah I think there are a few things going on I think that uh social workers in the CPS system are totally overworked and overwhelmed so I don't want to throw them under the bus I think everyone that I know who've been investigators uh have been doing the best they can with limited resources I think we don't have more resources because you actually have to admit that we have a serious problem in order to uh have more resources right we value families but we don't necessarily acknowledge the level of abuse that is happening in our communities and so that would need to happen first before resources are put there also there seems to be privilege for well-known uh wealthy families right they're you don't you don't think like they're not the quote-unquote type of family that abuses their kids I think there's a an image piece to this too where you know unless there is physical signs of obvious abuse you know they probably
2:35:43 um wouldn't investigate yeah yeah I'm thinking about the extent to which uh the Mormon church has sort of embraced social media influencers over the past 10 or 15 years just as it's trying to remake its image and embrace the internet age the last thing the Mormon Church wants is a family Mormon family known and loved by millions to be found out to be in in disarray or unethical or or heaven forbid to have the kids taken away from them or or you know incarcerated so I could see just like with O.J Simpson in the in the University of Southern California Community you know if you watch um you know the documentaries about O.J Simpson you'll know that there were many many reports to police and to local officials about his behavior and his abuse of of um his wife that went unreported and and not acted upon because the community the local community tended to circle around and protect his image in part to protect the image of the surrounding
2:36:58 community in the same way there would be all sorts of cultural and religious and social influences just wanting to hide this Tamp it down because the last thing the Mormon Church want would be Donnie Marie Osmond to have mug shots you know and I'm saying that metaphorically right right right and and look what look what's happened because because we didn't intervene yeah I mean it's it's so tragic Jordan McKay you all want to add anything there I mean I I completely agree you know as a social worker everybody's overworked underfunded and we can we only can do what we have in the moment like I can only do something about the information that I have and so it could have been that at this time you know Ruby could have been behind the scenes like physically abusing her children but if I were a DCFS worker and I walked into that house and the kids didn't have any visible physical injuries and the house was not in complete and utter disarray and there weren't any other like obvious glaring signs of abuse other than
2:38:02 potentially some Outsider reports like that's not a whole lot of information to go off of that's pointing me to that direction the other thing that I think is important to keep in mind in this case is that people have been calling DCFS on eight passengers for years yeah like since the dawn of their channel so I would not doubt that that potentially played a role because DCFS has come to investigate them multiple times and this is words out of Ruby's own mouth and everything up to this point Ruby has stated was unfounded and nothing was done and so I wouldn't doubt that that potentially plays a role that every time they've gone to the eight passengers house and every time there's nothing that they can do anything about that once they start getting calls like that at some point like at some point it kind of falls to the back burner right because how many times do I have to go there and see nothing's going on before
2:38:51 we realize that nothing is truly going on and we don't know the degree of the abuse that was happening at that time like when Ruby and Kevin were there versus when the children are in Jody's home in Ivins which is not even a place that the kids should be like if I were to you know if I'm a DCFS worker looking at the child the Ivan's residence would not be an address that I would even have and so there's a few reasons I think this flew under the radar but yeah I completely agree and I mean there's a larger system here at work too if we don't you know we have to acknowledge the privilege of the fact that they are wealthy and white and I think that also plays a role here so there's so many factors here and I don't blame any of the social workers that were involved in this I think this is a much larger issue yeah it kind of It kind of plays into there's a lot of since everybody here at stuff for me has like accomplishments and edu and education um coming from the YouTuber angle you
2:39:47 see a lot in the internet your age now of people who are taking people that they don't like and they're weaponizing uh services against them especially things like swatting to the point where some creators the the police are the dispatch or whoever takes the call they recognize oh this person's a YouTuber and they have a lot of haters we don't need to send the SWAT team this time because it's already happened a couple times so it could be happening in that capacity as well where they're aware that these people are in the public eye and they're saying we've been there we haven't seen anything we can just totally disregard this yeah that's great that's great feedback uh just got a text just got a message in Jamie says still appreciate your perspective and feedback McKay um what's that Jamie's Jamie's from our channel so I love having people in my corner and and Jordan thanks for reminding us
2:40:51 that the acronym in Utah is is DCFS Utah Division of Child and Family Services and we still want to encourage people to report any abuse that they're aware of to dcfs.utah.gov we won't get into the fact that in Utah Mormon church leaders are not mandatory reporters to DCFS that's uh another podcast and we've done several on those but unfortunately the Mormon Church works really hard in States like Arizona and Idaho and Utah to make it so Mormon church Bishops are not mandatory reporters when abuse is uh discovered in an ecclesiastical setting um let's go to kind of the beginning of the end or the you know one of the last final steps before this all blows up which is uh Ruby quitting eight passengers have I played that clip nope not yet so go ahead and roll it let's go ahead and play it you wonder where I've been on my Vlogs you wonder why I left YouTube It's to save my kids no amount of money I and I'm telling you I was making
2:42:02 Millions and I left it because my kids were being hurt with entitlement they were being hurt with people's advice and they didn't have a mother up the front saying I don't care what the world's opinion is this is the truth and this is where I stand and fortunately I had a chance I had them in my home long enough to do it and I'm not going to lose them they're seeing truth they're accepting truth they're loving truth and so this is my passion is to invite you to stand in truth and put your opinions to the side for a minute because your kids are the target of distortion I mean Julie Hanks you've got the piano plan there you've got Jody wiping off the tears what's what's not to be moved by that video clip well it it's not true right um it's not true she has lost her children and her oldest daughter doesn't talk to her and now she's lost custody of four of her children so it just feels really manipulative at this point like that that she wanted to she left vlogging to save her children
2:43:15 when that's the opposite of what's actually happened yeah I mean save them from her basically right this is what was needed uh Jordan McKay your reactions to that this one was just like the final this has gone too far there's like the point of no return essentially because she was taking the channel offline essentially or stopping it it had still been up at this point when uh they had filmed that video but she was essentially morphing it into like we're all saying this is exploitative you're making money off your kids and maybe they benefit off of it but you were the one who puts the money in your pocket and you know at their expense and she's saying that she's quitting to save her kids but it's because her kids have become selfish and they've become spoiled because of all of the great things that they're able to afford now because they have so much extra money it was just so sickening to think that
2:44:24 she was so lost in the sauce she didn't even understand why what she was doing was wrong it was Jody's opportunity to tell her this is why it's bad and this is why or how we can make people trust us in what we say more because you're going to have an emotional talking point now about how what you were doing was Distortion and now you're living in truth because you decided to shut down your YouTube channel well in the usefulness of it like this information has now been weaponized because I'm a woman with almost 3 million subscribers making millions of dollars off my channel and I have given up everything for connections and so for an outsider to see something like that it's like oh my God this woman gave up millions of dollars it's huge and so there's no doubt that that was a huge Factor um one of the things you know because we're trying to focus on the Mormon angle on this particular episode
2:45:24 this is another instance that that I think theology has a place you know the the Mormon church is officially called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that Latter-Day Saints refers to kind of a millennialistic Christianity where Mormons are taught that we are in the end times that Jesus is right around the corner and uh for 200 plus years pretty much every generation uh believes that they're you know no pun intended Julie desert Hanks they're Saturday's Warriors right they've been saved for the last days it's Saturday night before Jesus comes on Sunday and and Jesus is coming any minute now that feels the prepper movement that feels uh you know not just within Mormonism but within broader Evangelical Christianity and and for me there's even reminiscence of kind of again the Lori valo Chad dabel stuff prepper stuff where you get this sense that Ruby is just like the the world is
2:46:28 closing it around us and righteousness is disappearing and wickedness is everywhere and I'm shutting down my YouTube channel because Satan's about to take control because Jesus is about to come you know is it fair to say that there's a millennialistic Christian teaching that is wreaking havoc on the mental health of many Mormon families Julie Hanks is that fair not fair yeah I think it's fair there's a lot of talk on on their Channel about um the world the world is grooming your children your the the world is influencing technology is bad kind of that um you know we need to be to isolate ourselves from the world so that's I think that's definitely influenced by by Mormon teachings yeah yeah Jordan McKay anything you want to add before we go to the August 30th it kind of the uh this was like the beginning of the end basically when we when we got to this point and even the you know the area that they're even filming in and some of these clips like
2:47:39 the last one that you guys just saw like this was actually filmed in Jody's basement in her home in Ivan's in Washington County in Utah and so there were like pieces that were slowly coming together kind of behind the scenes that everybody was kind of speculating and then we hit August 30th and everything falls apart all right well let's go to it so August 30th what happens August 30th my Instagram account breaks basically as I got about a million DMS about this case rightfully so because the main image that we got that John will put up is this Instagram story from Sherry Frankie which is Ruby's eldest daughter who does not speak to her anymore with the caption finally in the photo is of a police cruiser and a police officer with a decently sized gun standing in front of what would be Ruby's Springville home and so this got posted and then everybody went nuts because this obviously means something and then there was a Reddit post that came about that pointed more attention to this and essentially what ends up happening is law enforcement shows up at Ruby and
2:48:44 Kevin's home that is located in Springville and according to the reports of the people that were there at the time Kevin and Ruby were both there they were separated they were talked to there was suspicion throughout a lot of these events that you'll see everybody's like where the heck is Kevin because Kevin's largely been absent and no one knows where the heck he is throughout all of these things and over the last year or so and someone's asking who's Kevin Kevin is Ruby's husband yes former BYU former BYU professor yeah keep keep going estranged husband at this yeah I mean separated at this point but not not legally not divorced so as far as we know the reports were that both of them were walked in different directions in handcuffs so everybody assumed that Kevin was arrested I'm thinking now that he was probably just detained because he was not arrested because we find out a few days later when he releases a statement from his um BYU
2:49:40 educated lawyer Mormon lawyer that he is seeking to like the word they used was like fatherly involvement of his four children which the kind of rumor now that's coming about this is does Kevin not have custody of the children because if we're talking from a social work angle you know number one priority when we're taking into custody like when kids are having to come in to stay custody usual typical priority is a kinship placement which is with a family member or another parent if it's appropriate and so in this situation another parent that's not abusive would be ideal and custody would generally divert to that person but if Kevin doesn't have custody of the children then that creates a whole new question as to where the heck has Kevin been and why doesn't he have custody of his kids so he's largely a missing puzzle piece and all of this because no one really knows what's going on with him and then
2:50:35 he suddenly falls off the map and then gets a lawyer so really we don't know anything about Kevin at this point and so that's the beginning of these events John if you flip to the next one it comes to the rest of that really really quickly I just want to play a couple quick uh show a couple uh quick comments um and this one's going back a tiny bit so many viewers and I apologize for jumping back but I just want to hit it while we're hitting it so many viewers when they saw the video clip of Ruby crying and saying she's shutting down eight passengers they mentioned Jody putting her hand on Ruby's knee for an extended period of time on the one hand let's not um pathologize or stigmatize um any sort of signs of consolation or affection between any gender um but on the other hand there were just so many comments commenting about that I know we're jumping back but does anyone have anything to say about that or should we just just say we're not going to comment on that Jody is very touchy
2:51:40 yeah there are Africa there are so many photos of her and Ruby where they're they're really close and a lot of people like to poke fun and say oh maybe their their lovers or whatever because she is extremely homophobic and there's a lot of a trend of people who are very very homophobic being um actually gay which is also harmful to the community to perpetuate that as like a driving narrative but it is and you know it it comes back to we don't want to speculate on somebody's you know sexual orientation yeah so yeah we don't know but I do understand what they're saying because Jody is very touchy and kind of affectionate with Ruby yeah there's another comment in the knee rubbing massaging by a business partner therapist is that appropriate you know those are all fair questions they have a very close personal relationship outside of their professional relationship it seems and I think you can just leave it
2:52:36 at that another comment that's really chilling honey Rebellion notes that Chad dabel the you know the guy who's in prison for likely being involved in murdering his own wife and the the killing of of Lori valo's two children uh Chad dabel is from Springville which is also where where Ruby Frankie and this is for those who don't know where Springville is it's about 30 minutes south I think of Salt Lake City and just a little bit south of Provo Utah which is where BYU is located in and if you know if um if the Dad what's his name if he worked for BYU it would make sense for him to live in either Provo or aurum or Spanish Fork or Springville but isn't it isn't it kind of dark that this is also happening in Springville and is it would it be too easy to make make a lot of that or Julie Hanks in your view is this sort of prepper end times almost neo-conservativism that seems to be sweeping Utah
2:53:47 is it is it a surprise to you the two national disturbing news stories are both coming out of Utah County and specifically Springville is that a surprise to you kind of yeah let two two huge stories it's kind of a surprise from the same small because it's a small small City yeah I think it's it's Eerie yeah that nasty Shallow Lake has to be yeah but there's just in all seriousness there's a real sense of suppression of strict Orthodox culture that Utah County along with Rexburg Idaho are are just known for and famous for is that fair to say Julie Hanks yeah unfortunately I think it's I think it's true yeah another person asks Patty gee asks why wasn't Kevin aware of what was going on didn't he see the kids condition I just want to say that my opinion is that what Jody what Jody Hildebrand seemed to traffic in was in Parental alienation of the father of the dad because ultimately she was the kind of matriarchal Authority in her self-improvement mental health cult and it just always seemed that men were
2:55:15 on the outs men were shamed men were stigmatized and ultimately men in too many cases that I've heard were run out of the family largely because more often than not and I I hate to be so candid they were the masturbating member of the couple of the dyad and so you know all the support groups and the in the couple sessions were aimed at the masturbating male where where they end up either sleeping on the on the mattress in the office or ultimately kicked out of the house is that unfair that maybe that maybe Kevin uh suffered a similar fate under Jody's Direction I wouldn't doubt it I don't think it excuses Kevin for many of his involvement here because I think it to some degree he was involved in this and neglectful of the children but I completely agree because if you think about it as kind of Twisted because the reason you know Ruby and Kevin participated in Jody's classes because they were having problems yeah and so
2:56:18 for Jody to kind of like you know weasel herself in here and then knowing that they were already in a vulnerable vulnerable position because they were struggling and then knowing that information and then being able to drive like a further wedge between them like it sounds like I mean it it sounds like she knew what she was doing to me all right well let's go to the main August 30th slide and just tell us the dark you know findings so this is the very summarized version but basically here's what we know from August 30th so Ruby's 12 year old son sneaks out of Jody's window in her Ivan's home she lives in Washington County in a very very large home um her 12 year old son runs to a neighbor's home and they answer the door and he starts asking for food and water he's extremely emaciated looks malnourished he had duct tape wrapped around his wrists and around his ankles and he had like open wounds and lacerations that we later learned needed
2:57:19 like immediate medical attention and they were able later to verify that the lacerations came from being tied up with a rope so this is like the first piece of this is this poor child was somehow able to crawl out a window and get to the neighbor's house outside of outside of Judy outside of Jody's home and Ruby was not there at the time and so the neighbor of course calls the police and they come Ruby's still not there it's just Jody and they go into Jody's house please go into Jody's house they find the other child which is Ruby's youngest who's nine years old who was also extremely emaciated also had open wounds and signs of physical abuse and when the police scanner audio came out we found where they found her youngest daughter was they termed it as a Panic Room that was under the garage and the door was closed with the safe and so it was a safe door and so basically whoever was in there was locked on the inside no windows so that's where they found Ruby's nine-year-old daughter because
2:58:24 her son and led the police officers to her in there and this poor kid is so horribly traumatized and obviously I'm sure Ruby and Jody were villainizing any person in a position of authority who could help them because her youngest daughter refused medical care for approximately four hours it was four hours before officers and EMS that were there at the time could actually convince her to get medical attention for the wounds that she had and they were both taken to the hospital and both had were extremely emaciated and malnourished and so they were receiving medical treatment obviously there's designated treatment for the level of malnourished that they were but that's kind of where all of this was brought about and we we learned later that Ruby was coming from Springville back to Ivins and so there's some there's some speculation about the timeline about what's happening where and who knows for sure but we also found out from the audio the police scanner
2:59:23 audio that Ruby attempted to go to the hospital Ruby did go to the hospital where they had her two kids so the theory is that Jody called Ruby and said they've taken the kids to the hospital and Jody or Ruby started racing home from Springfield to get to Ivins and instead went to the hospital where the kids were and the hospital contacted law enforcement and law enforcement said don't let her in and so Ruby was not able to get to them and then Ruby went back to the house and then upon some police conversation looking in both of their cars talking um they were both promptly arrested for aggravated child abuse that was intentional and it was two counts at the time can I can I bring up something my understanding uh was that the safe room was from another case that they were talking about on the police scanners at the same time so that's what I read on Reddit but so that may be um that may be part of another case and
3:00:27 not this one which I would love that because it would make me feel better about that piece of information a lot of the commenters are saying the same thing that that was from another conversation that was discussed at the same time overlapping calls I hope it's true because that just makes it even more sinister yeah and I mean that's the and if they were tied up I mean if we even just roll with that logic like there wouldn't be much of a need for them to try to escape because they couldn't yeah you know the whole situation is just absolutely atrocious and both of them are arrested and taken to the same jail um and where they've been this whole they've been since August 30th and then slowly over the last few days there's been you know information that's kind of slowly disseminated over time um and then John if you roll to the second one I listed what the children are really quickly I just thought I'd
3:01:24 play here's here's a visual representation I believe that's that's a video of Jody's house is that right yeah and it's interesting enough the the promotional material that Jordan included at the start when we were introducing Jody is in front of her house at one point yeah I've seen this neighborhood I I'm pretty sure in St George and uh and I I think it's worth mentioning that Southern Utah you know we talked a little bit about Utah County I think southern Utah might even be a little bit more just sort of uh I don't know just guns and and end times and uh bunkers I just I think in kind of a bit of a more rural nature there's something about southern Utah that you know that is uh important here and I don't exactly want to overstate it but there's something there um all right so uh now let's go ahead and go to the next slide which is arrested and charged let me switch back to this tab okay go ahead
3:02:32 so on the night that they were arrested August 30th the information came from the Washington County Sheriff website and we were able to confirm that it was at the time two counts of aggravated child abuse with the stipulation that it was knowingly or intentionally if you're familiar with Utah criminal code that matters because that changes kind of the punishment for these kinds of Acts it's not just aggravated child abuse it's stipulated whether it was like medical neglect whether it was Reckless or whether it was intentional or knowingly and of course intentional and knowingly committing aggravated child abuse is going to hold larger weight punishment wise which makes it a second degree felony so at the time of that arrest both Ruby and Jody were charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse either I think it was yesterday additional information came out I read the probable cause statement that they added four more counts to Jody and Ruby of additional counts of child abuse
3:03:29 um and that information is online and you can find it and read it but basically it's for these these two children but it's more descriptive what was actually happening for the two of them and it kind of described the nature of the wounding and the malnourishments and they the account like the counts are very intense like these criminal charges are very intense because aggravated child abuse holds basically this kind of stipulation that death could be imminent imminent emotional and psychological harm that is like lifetime worth damaging like we're talking about very very severe cases of abuse here and additionally it was notated in the probable cause affidavit that Jody was in direct care of both of these two children at the time and so there was Ruby was not there and so now there's a lot of speculation around how much time was Ruby taking or how much time was Jody taking care of these children versus Ruby and so the reason that Ruby was also able to be charged was an actual YouTube video that they pulled as
3:04:31 evidence that was recorded two days prior um to when they were arrested that proved that Ruby was in the house which was how they Justified that Ruby was aware of the abuse because she had been there and so the two of them have identical charges with some different stipulations around you know their involvement and so including awareness because Jody was able to be charged with direct like physical abuse because the intentional piece was that she had evidence of treating one of the child's wounds in her bathroom and that was how they were able to apply the intentional charge because she was aware of it and didn't do anything about it and so that's kind of this piece of it and then they were both also denied bail so neither of them can get out at this point and then their first I think their trial date is September 8th for the both of them um I was recently told that the prosecution of the state prosecution petitioned to use the same judge for
3:05:37 both cases they currently both have two different judges on each of their cases in the state is petitioning that they combine them both which according to my lawyer friend will likely be denied by the defense because it will be easier to blame each other if their cases are distinctly separate like we saw with Lori and Chad dabel and then as a consequence of all of this all four of the minor children are currently in DCFS custody and it was Gerardo my you know one of my uh one of my collaborators here at Mormon stories in the open storage Foundation he noted to me how extreme it is for bail not to be offered and he told me that even Lori Lori valo was offered the option of bail but she just couldn't come up with the money for it but but his point was even Lord even Lori valo was offered bail so what do we make of how extreme and rare it is that people aren't offered the option of bail do either of you have a thought on that I think one uh crucial difference
3:06:42 between Lori and these two was they were in different states so I I'm not really sure how it varies between was it in Idaho that she was apprehended or yeah yeah it might be a little bit different because of that but also she has money so I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you let her go out on bail and she runs yeah I mean that that house somebody put it in the chat I think his estimates were around 3.5 million dollars yeah yeah so I'll just share yes Heather Rose wrote 3.1 million dollar house um which is just shows how much money Julie you seem like you want to add something I have a family member who lived in that same development yeah and they're not cheap houses yeah and I mean we're not shaming people who make money but but when you're making a lot of money off of really unethical on a single info yeah um yeah divorced oh yeah she was making an incredible amount of money to be able to afford that well if you're charging two thousand dollars a month for therapy yeah yeah
3:07:53 um the other the other thing I I mentioned Southern Utah and I don't want to hate on Southern Utah there's many great people there obviously and you know that's bigotry to assume anything about anyone just because of some group they're a part of I I will also just want to say you know Candace writes absolutely true John I live in southern Utah much more of a fundamentalist type of Mormonism here I mean it's not going to be a surprise to anyone that literally the flds church the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints led by Warren Jeffs is in southern Utah slash you know Colorado Arizona that area is known for literal fundamentalism and I also you guys may or may not be expecting this but uh but just recently we had another national news story Southern Utah man kills wife five children and mother-in-law before shooting himself and that was an Enoch which is Iron County which you know I don't know my
3:08:52 Utah geography as well as well as I should but that's not super far isn't that near Cedar City which is which is kind of near St George am I right I don't remember maybe yeah it is it's near Cedar City so uh there's something going on in southern Utah that that is is a factor in all this um as well uh okay um I guess should we go on to the to the one of the last slides let me just interject with one please um okay particularly troubling parallel that I had drawn because I totally forgotten about it but if we think back to what we were talking about earlier with the oldest son Chad and him having cruel and unusual punishments with his beds being taken away and having to sleep on a bean bag and ultimately being sent off to a um a trouble a Wilderness Camp um the nail in the coffin on that whole situation and him receiving these punishments was him duct taping that same child to a poll or a basketball
3:10:06 Hoopa or something of that nature as a prank and then it comes out in this situation just this week that this same child was had duct tape around their hands and their their beat and Ruby willingly knowingly let that happen by some random person so it's just so incredibly sad to think that and that's why I hold that Jody was the kindling for this fire and the it just made it 10 times worse hmm we have one comment from uh Hillary Pearl that says the boy was apparently in such bad shape uh wounds and malnourished that the responding officer got emotional and let EMS step in and took a few minutes um and you know these are these are cops you know they see a lot of bad stuff is kind of the point yeah yeah I believe it was the reporting party who got emotional so the neighbor not the cop okay what I read okay all right thanks for uh fact checking us Julie um that's good but uh but clearly a very very sad and disturbing
3:11:34 uh abuse of children [Music] um awful and then should we talk about uh I guess Ruby's siblings speaking up yes so this is kind of fraught with controversy as well because there's one of the sisters Bonnie holding um made a video about this and then promptly deleted it what like a few hours later yeah it was in the same day because she was getting such critical comments because the thing I think that is the issue here is there's so much information that those of us on the outside don't know and the other problem in this situation is that even if the siblings like Ruby's sisters were aware of what was going on based on these statements it sound like they knew it sounded like they knew things were bad and they claim that they've tried to do things but people on the outside are upset that they didn't try to do more but in a situation like this like a person who's not directly involved other than making reports and providing information other than doing that your hands are kind of tied and so I don't
3:12:43 know necessarily that the sisters didn't take any action I think that they were probably Limited and what they were able to do and so these two these are the statements that were made so the three siblings the three sisters um created this one saying that for the last three years we have kept quiet on the subject of our sister Ruby frankry for the sake of her children behind the public scene we have done everything we could to try and make sure the kids were safe we wouldn't feel right about moving forward with regular content without addressing the most recent events once we do we will not be commenting on it further Ruby was arrested which needed to happen Jody was arrested which needed to happen the kids are now safe which is the number one priority so these are her sisters and I mean to publicly acknowledge and make a dang Instagram post about the fact that like yeah my sister needs to be arrested
3:13:31 like that's yeah that's a lot and then her daughter this is from her oldest daughter's Instagram account saying from this was posted on August 30th today's been a big day me and my family are so glad Justice is being served we've been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this and I'm so glad they finally decided to step up kids are safe but there's a long road ahead please keep them in your prayers and also respect their privacy and that was from her oldest daughter who dropped contact with Ruby before like way before all of this was happening and so these were the two statements that was given by the family there haven't been any others that I've I've seen thus far but it's it's sort of harrowing that even her daughter is like we've told CPS this we've talked to people about this and nobody's done anything until it got this bad and that's Sherry Frankie right yep I mean I'm torn I'm torn I'm grateful you
3:14:25 know part of how this story got so public so fast is because of the reporting of the siblings and I guess anytime you speak up publicly involving family especially with a large platform there's there's a degree of courage and of difficulty and complexity that is accompanied to that and kudos to them for reporting this to CPS and police in times past but I also have the thought you we showed at the beginning of this episode how many millions of followers collectively all these siblings have and when I hear that when I read that statement that they kept quiet for the sake of the children I guess it does I guess it does demand the question like what if they had used their massive platforms to speak out for the children could they have helped the children sooner and maybe that's unfair is that a fair question to ask or is that an unfair question to ask do you have a thought okay do you want to go first I'm okay Julie's ready then I'm I'm fine no go ahead McKay then Julie I think this is where kind of the intersection with the
3:15:40 internet comes because you have to understand kind of the hive mind of the internet and how things work because these people they have such a large following and they're posting content constantly and when they they come out and they say for the past three years we've silently watched this and for the viewers it's just been business as usual for three years and maybe some things were mentioned or noticed here and there but you couldn't tell that there was supposedly such anguish that was going on behind the scenes so when they come out and they say things like this it for the the people who are critical and and whatnot they're like you were putting all this out there you could have done something and seemingly you didn't so they kind of should have expected there to be some backlash in regard to that because it seems like regardless of whatever the circumstances that we don't know are from the outside view it looks like they weren't doing anything yeah I often like to say that silence
3:16:47 and is the enabler and silence is the killer we've covered our Mormon stories in the past the extent to which when abuse and even sexual abuse erupts in a Mormon congregation a Mormon award uh and Julie Hanks you could disagree with me if you want but so often the cultural instinct is to hide it to silence the victims to silence the family members to sweep it under the rug and to say we're going to handle this internally we don't speak publicly we don't air our dirty laundry in public there's even been General Authority talks over the pulpit in general conference denouncing quote the Airing of dirty laundry um so I do think it's fair to say if we're going to talk about the Mormon angle there is a Mormon angle to circling the wagons keeping things quiet uh keeping things silent and and not to speak out publicly um and then I'll just share uh you know a couple little comments Heather writes if Lori valo's family and friends would
3:17:50 have stepped up sooner her kids would be alive no such thing as stepping up too early and then there's a an alternative point of view from Liz Krauss which is if they spoke out sooner uh Ruby may have become more extreme even sooner so I mean it's it's complicated Julie I see you nodding what would you add well it sounds like the family did make reports and they were doing things even though it wasn't coming out publicly but coming out publicly when you are talking about kids in an abusive situation it could have made the abuse a lot worse for the kids right and so I I think I give them a lot of Grace it's a really difficult situation and if they were trying to go through proper channels and try to get child protective services and the police involved like it sounds like they were I mean that that's probably or that could have been safer for the kids to not blast it all over the internet and you know that could
3:18:54 have put the kids in more in more harm well at a minimum I hope uh governor uh what's his name Cox what's the governor Spencer Cox Governor Spencer Cox in the Utah State Legislature learn about this story and do whatever they can do with DCFS to try and make it so instances like this aren't ignored in the future the last slide we have is from Rolling Stone magazine and it's and it's titled Ruby Frank's neighbors called the cops several times out of concern for the children's Source says Jordan McKay do you all want to say anything about that final slide yeah the main reason that I included this was it's just another instance of it sounds like people were trying to intervene and it didn't seem like you know it was reaching the wrong ears or something was off because this neighbor it sounds like it's Jody's neighbor and Ivins and had called the police multiple times and nothing it sounds like nothing came of it and the
3:19:53 reason that she called a lot of the time was because the children appeared to be left at home um for extended periods of time without an adult present and if we're talking about her two youngest children that were involved in this they're 9 and 12. and so yes can they probably be on their own for a small amount of time safely yes probably but for extended periods of time that's not necessarily appropriate and then they said that the article the neighbor said in early 2020 it started getting weird people were concerned because Ruby completely stopped her YouTube stuff and then it kind of turned dark she taped up paper over all of the windows would disappear for weeks at a time and would leave those little kids just alone in the house so I mean there's something just to me really eerie and culty about like taping up the windows like Jody's the like the neighbors around Jody are not that close to her
3:20:47 like they're close but not close enough that you'd be able to see in the windows so the fact that like Ruby is taping up the window so no one can see inside like it's just Insidious yeah Julie you have anything to add to that just the whole thing is so heart-wrenching I no I don't have anything else to say other than those poor kids yeah yeah all right well this has been in my view I mean we've got still 5 000 people joining what I want to do as we end is give each person a chance to kind of summarize any final thoughts and particularly speak to the Mormon angle of this and if there's anything for the Mormon church to learn for the Mormon people to learn for us to glean from this because we're not anti-mormon on Mormon stories podcast we don't hate Mormons we we respect a lot of good that the that the church does we we love people in and out of the church and we just we don't want polarizing language we just want people in the church to be healthier and people who
3:21:56 leave the church to be healthier that's certainly my view and I'm I'm pretty confident in saying that that Julie Hanks and Jordan McKay share those views so while Julie and Jordan McKay kind of gather their final thoughts I'm going to share something that I was forwarded um which is a tick tock video by a woman who goes by Abby M Benson on Tick Tock and she's never been Mormon she comes out of the Evangelical Christian tradition and uh this is a video clip that basically is just making the point that theology matters and while um we're not specifically talking about Mormon theology I think in here she's talking about bible-based Christian theology but I think it it can apply to any theology including uh secular theology so to speak secular tenants that that can be harmful um but I'm just gonna roll the clip and this will be kind of my closing thoughts as it relates to the Mormon slash Christian angle of of uh how we might think about um you know a more constructive
3:23:11 religious theology that might then help prevent things like this from happening in the future let me talk about eight passengers okay I'm having so many thoughts right now and I think that all the discourse that I have seen online is missing a huge part of this puzzle and that is the theological intentional and institutional nature of this okay so after watching the eight passengers um like all the drama that's happening and the arrest that happened yesterday and also taking into account the Shiny Happy People documentary about Duggars and also just thinking about my own personal experience being raised in a really strict um Southern Baptist Church here's what I want to get at the connection between strict and cruel and rigid and unrelenting parenting and religious communities it is not an accident it is very intentional okay and it stems from control and it stems from theology because if you walk in
3:24:08 to any church on a Sunday morning well not any church you walk into 90 of churches on a Sunday morning here's what you're going to get told about God the Father you're gonna walk in you might hear the Lord's prayer Our Father Who Art in Heaven so you're getting used to that God father language where you're seeing you're seeing God as a parent okay and then you're being told the following about God God does not love you unconditionally God does not love your sin God wants you to change in order to be loved forever if you do not change you will be sent to an eternal hell where you will burn and live forever in constant torture to be in my love and light you have to repress all parts of your humanity and flesh because you were born broken and sinful and disgusting that is our example of fatherhood in the church because that is the way God the father has been expressed so how do you think those parents that hear this sermon are going to show up as fathers if God the father is cruel and
3:25:05 unrelenting and mean and jealous and doesn't give us unconditional love how do you think the parents are going to act and and like what I'm trying to get at is that this is not an accident the church uses that language to control parents use that language to control like are we seeing the connection here because think about how differently parents over here would treat their children they were told each Sunday God loves you exactly who you are how you are you do not have to change an inch God loves you exactly how you are and even if you don't do exactly what you think God wants you to do hell is it real oh like we if we want to change this part of society we have to interrogate this part of society it is not an accident that this happened [Music] so uh shout out to Abby and Benson and so I'm going to do a defensive Mormonism and then a critique and the defenses there are literally hundreds of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Mormon parents that are not super strict that
3:26:13 are not controlling that are loving that don't torture or punish their kids that that uh teach their kids that they're worthy and that they're whole that aren't cruel um and that that teach unconditional love so in no way is it my view that in any way Ruby or Jody represent even even the 10th percentile of of Mormon families that would be super unfair and um unrepresentative so many Mormon parents and families I know are loving and kind and good people but I will say that there is always a strain in any religious tradition including Mormonism but also Islam and Judaism and Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism that does emphasize strictness their interpretations of scripture and theology that emphasize strictness and control and hell and Punishment and torture and Brokenness and unworthiness and Purity culture and cruelty and jealousy and conditional love and I just want to say that we all uh secular and religious
3:27:29 need to be vigilant that our language is about love and kindness and unconditional love and worthiness and wholeness and compassion and this applies to secular people as well as as it applies to religious people and I hope that we can all all all of us not just the Mormons not just the religious all of us parents secular and religious take a lesson of kindness and compassion um and humility um and unconditional love as a lesson from uh this tragic story Julie Hanks we'll have you go next yeah I think um that we always need to put relationships as more important than principles or what we believe is right that the human part of us is always more important and that's that's the opposite of what they were teaching it's like principles are more important than people and I say that that is never the case and there are strains of that in orthodox Mormon teachings but I I disagree with that and I think it's always people over the principles
3:28:51 and over being right or um Conformity and so just take care of your relationships and and love each other beautiful thank you Dr Julie Hanks you can check Julie Hanks out at Dr juliehanks.com uh you can also um check out Wasatch family therapy and then Julie you're on Instagram and all the places Facebook all the places that are good right Julie yeah all right well thanks for joining us today Julie you made this program way way better than it would have been and it was already great thanks thanks Julie thank you all right Jordan McKay y'all are the y'all are the reason this episode happened and y'all really are the experts in the heart and soul of this whole episode and you do such great work on your YouTube channel Jordan McKay let's give you both kind of the final word here take turns I'll let you go first you're letting me go first yeah okay I always do I mean there's there's so many things here to I think to take away from this I think you know one of the biggest things
3:29:55 is scrutinize people that you see online like be critical of the things that you take in and the things that you watch like don't take everything at face value be mindful of what you're seeing because this is the perfect example of you know the perfect let's say Mormon family vlogger with like the amazing kids and the perfect husband and the perfect relationship and then a business partner and being successful and then this is what's going on behind the scenes like you truly you truly never know in the the danger of people like this having influence and having a platform and the dangerous message that this sends about mental health um and how just because you have a license does not mean that you operate ethically and think heavens for people like Julie who can stand within the church still and speak to people and understand people and empathize with people even if they don't fall within the you know typical box that is Mormonism like we need those people and
3:31:01 those people need to be vocal so people know they're not alone but it's I mean it I just don't even know how to proceed from something like this like just be mindful of what you watch be mindful of who you listen to and I just every piece of me hopes that this sweet little boy that got out of that house has all the resources and a lifetime of therapy that he will need because this is the and I think this is the same thing that I kind of took away from Lori and Chad too is the sinister's thing about this is these people are are your neighbors like they're your friends they're your co-workers like everyone is capable of doing horrible horrible things and nobody starts out doing that typically I think Ruby and Jody represent taking something like a religion to an extreme and sort of moving down the slippery slope of religious extremism extremism and taking like facets of Mormonism that they liked and then rebranding it into something absolutely insane and then using that to justify abusive children
3:32:13 like there's there's no links to the which these women wouldn't have gone I think to send a message to these children and so I'm incredibly grateful that that poor kid got out of that house because it truly makes me wonder that if that hadn't happened if this would have been a much different conversation a few months down the line I guess thank you Jordan the grand takeaway that I've had from this is that it it I've never been more disappointed in being right my entire life in a lot of these episodes where we were talking into about these things and discussing the harmful tactics that they were employing and teaching to other people I can't remember a time when we were we weren't like this is dangerous somebody could get hurt and by that point we're probably going to be too late and unfortunately it ended up being that way but it goes to show like they say don't meet your Heroes you have to criticize and call out
3:33:17 everything even if you look up to that kind of person and we as a society don't benefit from letting from letting these kinds of things Fall by the wayside and just upholding those Traditions um that our forefathers had before us and keeping them as societal Norms we have to deconstruct a lot of those kinds of ideas because it's not that we're getting some sort of like uptick in child abuse and things of that nature those things were always there we just live in the information age where at a moment's notice we're gonna get a notification on our iPhone that the same thing happened again so the cracks have been shown because of the internet and our access to to information at all times we just we have to work together to be able to eradicate this kind of really deep systematic um trouble that we have had for such a long time beautiful well said Jordan well said McKay um yeah thank you so much for for making
3:34:31 for all you do and for making today possible I'm gonna again ask all of you right now please like this episode please share it please go to Jordan McKay on YouTube and subscribe please subscribe to Mormon stories podcast uh and and share and like this episode and comment because it really does help the algorithms and helps get the word out and we're all about um education uh at the end of the day um Jordan McKay any uh anything you guys want to quickly share about your program uh what you're doing next uh how people can support you um a big thanks John for having us on we were glad we were able to to collaborate on this um we're continuing with our typical content if you don't know much about eight passengers we have a whole playlist of videos that you can access if you want to get more in the know and then we have plenty of other videos about other Mormon vloggers and other popular religious influencers as well and you know subscribing to our YouTube channel and watching is a is a huge
3:35:31 support and then you can also follow us on Instagram at Jordan McKay yeah and then we also have a patreon where you can become a channel member also patreon.com Jordan McKay yeah we're not always so uh so Melancholy this is a kind of an exceptional situation um we do make a lot of jokes on our Channel we're a lot more crass this just wasn't the time unfortunately you guys swear yeah if I don't edit it yeah they'll say no yeah well serious thank you both so much for all you do and for making this happen and I'm just really impressed with your channel you guys are doing great things so thanks Jordan McKay thank you thank you yeah and uh I just want to thank everyone for uh the donations the super chats today those are helpful the main way you can support Mormon stories podcast if you want to see this type of content continue is uh to go to mormonstories.org click on the Donate button become a monthly donor
3:36:37 uh and then we'll use that money to cover expenses and staff and uh resources and all the things we do to try to make this content possible again support Jordan McKay support Julie Hanks and and uh her amazing work um as well thanks to everyone who commented today those comments are useful uh so many kind things are being said in the comments we love seeing you all here in the Super Chat and we hope you'll join us again soon and uh yeah um be good to each other and be kind to each other remember that we're going to be doing another episode coming up um on uh Mormon stories podcast specifically about survivors or victims of Jody Hildebrandt and of connections if you want to appear on Mormon stories podcast about your experiences with Jody Hildebrand email me at Mormon stories gmail.com if you have stories about Jody Hildebrandt or connections and you want to maintain your anonymity you can email those stories at mormonstorage gmail.com
3:37:39 and we'll try and get them on I also want to make a quick plug for the Mormon Mental Health Association uh I told you about Natasha Helfer and about um you know her important work she is one of the founders of the Mormon Mental Health Association and basically with the Mormon Mental Health Association is is a network of therapists that have been vetted and basically uh what you can do is you can find a provider all throughout the United States um and it's a provider who instead of uh who is competent culturally competent in the treatment of Mormons uh treating a people who are in a high demand religion um is a is an expertise and so you want people who have the cultural competence of working with this population like Julie Hanks and her therapists at Wasatch Mental Health and so if you go to this map with the Mormon Mental Health Association you can find you can go to Utah and click on it and then you can drill down and find
3:38:49 therapists who uh you know have been vetted and who um have an allegiance to their ethical code over anything else including religious beliefs um and uh you know religious affiliation so they're uh so it's a great organization it's Mormon mental health assoc.org please check it out please support it uh they do great work um and yeah I just want to make sure and plug that and uh uh yeah check out for more content like this in the weeks and months ahead um we'll be covering uh you know Mormon culture and Mormon current events as they happen I'm John delin for Mormon stories podcast thanks again for tuning in today um be good to each other be kind to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast Jordan McKay podcast and I think Dr Julie Hanks has her own podcast take care everybody uh we'll see you soon
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