244: Cultfluencer: The Dark Side of YouTube’s ‘Perfect’ Mom | Ruby Franke Devil in The Family
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Transcript
Speaker 1 Dude, this new bacon, egg, and chicken biscuit from AMPM. Total winner, winner chicken breakfast.
Speaker 2 Chicken breakfast? Come on, I think you mean chicken dinner, bro.
Speaker 3 Nah, brother.
Speaker 1 Crispy bacon, fluffy eggs, juicy chicken, and a buttery biscuit.
Speaker 2 That's the perfect breakfast.
Speaker 4 All right, let me try it. Hmm, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 Totally winner, winner chicken breakfast.
Speaker 2 I'm gonna have to keep this right here.
Speaker 5 Make sure every breakfast is a winner with the delicious new bacon, egg, and chicken biscuit from AMPM. AMPM, too much good stuff.
Speaker 6 What Ruby has done, it just crossed a line of abusive to just psychotic.
Speaker 8 Weird things started happening.
Speaker 9 Ruby said the children were demonically possessed.
Speaker 6 Our entire schedule revolved around YouTube. It felt more like a set than a house.
Speaker 10 Set her down on the flipping couch.
Speaker 11 Okay, move it.
Speaker 7 If I hear one more word, get out.
Speaker 7 I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door.
Speaker 12 He's got duct taped around each ankle. He's obviously covered in wounds.
Speaker 10 Hey, True Crime Besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serial Asleep.
Speaker 10
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialously.
It's me, Annie Elise, your true crime BFF, and I am here to break down another case for you.
Speaker 10 We are going into a super big deep dive today, so I just want you all to get ready.
Speaker 10 Whatever it is you're doing, whether you have got a long commute ahead of you, you're cleaning at home, you're running errands, whatever it is, I just want to give you a little warning.
Speaker 10 You're going to be with me for a minute. All right, Bessie, we are going to be with each other for a minute because we are going to go over everything in this case.
Speaker 10
Now, I've talked about this case before. It is the Ruby-Frankie Jody Hildebrand case.
They are the two. two people, alleged cult leaders.
Ruby was a huge, huge YouTube star. She was a family vlogger.
Speaker 10 She had millions of followers, made tons of money. They were, again, as I said, like cult leaders together, cult members, allegedly.
Speaker 10 And they were arrested and charged with horrific crimes against Ruby's children. Now, since all of this has come out, there have been quite a few updates along the way.
Speaker 10
Ruby's children have spoken out. One child wrote a book.
Her husband has spoken out because the question that was on everybody's mind is like, okay, where the hell was this guy this whole time?
Speaker 10 Why did he allow this to happen?
Speaker 10 Because spoiler alert, he ended up moving out of the home and kind of just like, in my opinion, like wrote his kids off in a sense to where he wasn't really concerned with what was happening to them behind closed doors, but I'll get into that later.
Speaker 10 And there have been more updates because now there's allegations stemming from one of Ruby's children's recent books, not recent, but only book, where she's alleging what we have long suspected, that Ruby and Jodi were in fact lovers together.
Speaker 10 And the reason that that piece of information is important in the context before I go into everything is because Jodi was somebody who was very adamant against same-sex relationships.
Speaker 10 And in one of my very early episodes about Jodi, I don't, I'm probably going to butcher this expression, but what's that expression? Like
Speaker 10
Doth protests too much or however it goes. I don't know how it goes.
Don't come for me later.
Speaker 10 But I kind of said that in my episode. I was like, why is she so against men? Why does she have this burning hatred towards men? Is it because she has some sort of passive aggressiveness?
Speaker 10 Because she is upset.
Speaker 10 Because a lot of the time she would like tell some of the men that she was counseling underneath her, what I believe is a cult, saying how they had addictions to adult material, how they weren't good men, how the wife should leave them.
Speaker 10 She always took the wife's side, which is fine if you want to always take the woman's side, whatever. But all of those things mixed together, I was like, something else is going on here.
Speaker 10 Like, why does she try to wedge her way in between all these couples and always paint the man as like some deviant?
Speaker 10 Come to find out with this new kind of revelation, and it hasn't been 100% confirmed, but when I read the passages to you, I mean, it is all but confirmed.
Speaker 10 There were things in the book written about how like they would have all these candles in the rooms together, how Ruby would emerge from the bedroom all like steamy and sweaty.
Speaker 10
And I mean, reading between the lines, it's what we all suspected, I think, for so long. And I think that it has now been validated.
So, that's just a little bit of the backstory.
Speaker 10 But the reason I say that is because there have been a lot of updates along the way, even though I have talked about this case before.
Speaker 10
So, my most recent update episode came out probably, I don't know, maybe six or eight weeks ago. And it was just a mini bonus episode.
It was right after the book was released.
Speaker 10 And I just wanted to give you guys the takeaways of what came out of that book. What were the big revelations? What did we learn?
Speaker 10 And a lot of people responded to that episode asking for the deep dive because they either had no idea what this case was all about or they didn't know the full context of the case and how deep it really went.
Speaker 10 All the way stemming back to the YouTube days, why Ruby was kind of almost canceled by the public because of the content she was putting on YouTube, where she would share not only the most intimate details about her life, her family's life, her children's life, but she would also share her methods of punishment, the husband's methods of punishment, how they would treat their children, not giving them food when they wanted food food or forgot their food when they went to school, ripping a door off the hinges, making a child sleep on a bean bag for months at a time.
Speaker 10 I mean, the list goes on and on.
Speaker 10 So as she was like just putting all of this content out there for the world to see, which I'm going to play for you, a lot of those clips, the public who was consuming this, who was following her, which she had millions of followers, remember, was kind of like, what is happening here?
Speaker 10
And it just over time continued to escalate, get worse and worse and worse until then they kind of just went off the radar. They stopped posting.
They stopped uploading.
Speaker 10 And that's something we talk about in a lot of cases regarding children in a little bit different of a sense.
Speaker 10 We always talk about when kids are going to school, okay, when they're in elementary school or middle school, whatever it is, and they start having a lot of absences and then a lot of unexcused absences.
Speaker 10 And there's no reason as to why they're not going to school, but then they slowly get removed from school. Then they're homeschooled.
Speaker 10
Then they stop showing up for homeschool classes or online courses. And then they're withdrawing from school.
Then the neighbors don't see them.
Speaker 10 It's almost like you can see this pattern and it's this blueprint, in my opinion, of abuse where you slowly start pulling the children out of not even the public eye, like it was for Ruby's case, but out of anyone's line of sight because you don't want to risk or jeopardize being found out, being exposed, somebody seeing a bruise, somebody asking a question, somebody noticing that the child doesn't quite have the light behind their eyes anymore.
Speaker 10 So you pull them away from any opportunity where you could be exposed. And that is what happened with Ruby.
Speaker 10
They stopped posting, they shut the channel down, even though people were already kind of canceling her in a loose way. And then it went almost dark.
That's also when the husband Kevin moved out.
Speaker 10 That's when Jodi moved in with Ruby. They were bouncing back and forth between Ruby's house, Jodi's house.
Speaker 10
Jodi at her like mega mansion had this underground banks-type cellar vault situation where she literally held these children captive. And I say that all alleged.
Do your own research.
Speaker 10 When you see what I show you, you're probably going to come to the same conclusion, but you know, I want to cover my ass here a little bit.
Speaker 10 So I'll show you and you come up to your own conclusion yourself. But anyway, sorry, this is such a long-winded intro.
Speaker 10 My whole point in saying all of that is that so many of you requested the deep dive for whatever reason or another.
Speaker 10 So today, what I want to do is I want to go through the entire case, start to finish, their rise to fame, what first happened, when people noticed things, why he moved out, the cult, the allegations, the arrests, the sentencing, the book, the lesbian allegations, all of it.
Speaker 10 Because you know, I'm a fan of having things in one solid place so you don't have to listen to 500 different episodes to piece it all together. So that's what I'm here to do.
Speaker 10 I'm here to pull it all together for you so that you can be fully caught up.
Speaker 10 And another big reason why I wanted to do this episode, in addition to the request for the deep dive, is because Hulu came out with a documentary that released on February 27th.
Speaker 10 And it was about Ruby Frankie and it was called The Devil in the Family. And I cover a lot of documentaries or docu series or dramatizations.
Speaker 10 And one of the common things we always talk about is how so much information is left out. And I think that that's for a couple reasons.
Speaker 10 I think one, it's very difficult to fit all of that information into a one-hour episode.
Speaker 10 I think two, a lot of these big networks are worried of litigation and they can't really come on the mic as casually as I can, saying allegedly this and my opinion that and tell you all of the things that they want to share with you, but can't because it's, you know, they want to protect themselves from litigation in a bigger sense because they're a big network.
Speaker 10
Not saying I'm welcoming litigation. I'm not.
That's why I keep saying allegedly, but you get what I'm saying?
Speaker 10
So a lot of the times when we cover cases like that, I do want to jump on here and say, here's the whole story. Here's all the details.
They just skimmed the surface.
Speaker 10
And that's true of the Hulu documentary as well. So that's why we're here today.
We also did that recently. I don't know if any of you guys have watched Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix.
Speaker 10 It's the Belle Gibson story. It's very much Anna Delvey in the sense that there was like a ton of scamming going on, but she actually was an influencer who was scamming the wellness community.
Speaker 10
She faked terminal brain cancer. She came out with like a cookbook, a book, an app, all of these things, and she was exposed as a fraud.
So my inter, I had never heard of her.
Speaker 10 I had seen a couple of her like off the wall batshit crazy 60 minutes interviews from Australia, but I had never heard of her.
Speaker 10
And so I watched Apple Cider Vinegar and I'm like, oh no, I need to do the deep dive. I still have so many questions.
I want to know so much more.
Speaker 10 But we're here to talk about Ruby Frankie and Jodi Hildebrand today and everything starting back in, I believe it was 2015, starting all the way back at the beginning and where we are now.
Speaker 10 So I apologize again for the long-winded intro. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 10 A Utah mother of six who became famous on YouTube for her tough love parenting advice has now been formally charged with felony child abuse.
Speaker 10 In 2015, Ruby Frankie and her husband Kevin Frankie decided to start a family vlog channel called Eight Passengers on YouTube. This was to showcase their life with six kids.
Speaker 10 Now, some of the children are adults now and of legal age, so I will use their names, but I'm going to use initials through the remainder of the episode for those who are minors still so that it can protect their identities and anonymity.
Speaker 10 So their six children are Sherry, Chad, A, J, R, and E.
Speaker 10 At that time, family vlogging channels were extremely popular on YouTube, and after only two years, the Frankie family channel, called Eight Passengers, skyrocketed to 1 million subscribers.
Speaker 10 The family's channel, run primarily by Ruby, focused on the everyday tasks of a stay-at-home mom, like cooking meals, getting kids ready for school, going on outings, vacations, and to church.
Speaker 10 The Eight Passengers channel became one of the growing number of LDS or Mormon family vlogs, which gave LDS stay-at-home moms a way to earn money while taking care of their children and running a household.
Speaker 10 Unlike some channels who kept their religion more private, the Frankies were always outspoken about their religious beliefs.
Speaker 10 In the early days of their channel, they attracted a loyal following of subscribers who found their content to be relatable and to be entertaining.
Speaker 10 And at their peak, they had a following of 2.5 million subscribers.
Speaker 10 Sponsors flocked to the Eight Passengers channel as well, as you can imagine, utilizing the demographic of moms to advertise all sorts of household products however after the infamous ad apocalypse on youtube videos featuring content for children were demonetized and sponsors like this became crucial to the financial success of family vlog channels now ruby has said herself that sponsorships during this time earned their channel millions of dollars after seeing the success that could be garnered by family vlogging, all of Ruby's siblings started their own successful YouTube channels as well.
Speaker 10
Now, most YouTubers experience some level of criticism. Let's be real, I know I have.
And oftentimes, viewers with genuine concerns do get labeled as haters or trolls.
Speaker 10 Now, since the beginning of the 8 Passengers channel, they have had their fair share of haters due to the type of content that Ruby and Kevin were choosing to post about their children.
Speaker 10 Ruby, who was the primary filmer and editor of the videos, included not only the fun, happy, and memorable milestones that you would think, but she also posted embarrassing moments, punishments, medical information, and details about the children's schooling.
Speaker 10 Many people thought that the Frankies were invading their children's privacy, and commenters often voiced their concerns that their whole lives being online could eventually negatively affect their mental health.
Speaker 10 There were even times when Ruby would use her children for the sponsorship portions of the videos, even going as far as making her children talk about using overnight diapers for wetting the bed after they were already in elementary school.
Speaker 10 Ruby and other channels have put intimate moments online for viewers as well, such as the girls' first time shaving their legs, bra shopping, going on dates, going to the doctor, and even being sick on the bathroom floor.
Speaker 10 However, it wasn't just the amount of content that was concerning the eight passengers' viewers.
Speaker 10 Over time, especially as some of the children were getting older, Ruby and Kevin began discussing their parenting styles and forms of punishments more and more.
Speaker 10 There are countless examples of punishments and consequences that Ruby and Kevin came up with for the children, but some of them became more disturbing than others.
Speaker 10 For example, One of the most viral videos of eight passengers was when Ruby received a text message from her then six-year-old daughter's kindergarten teacher.
Speaker 10 The teacher told Ruby that E had forgotten her lunch and asked if she could bring her lunch to the school. And this was Ruby's response.
Speaker 18 Just got a text message from teacher and she said that I 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
Speaker 18 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 a lunch.
Speaker 18 But I responded and just said
Speaker 18 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
Speaker 18 and hopefully Hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch.
Speaker 10 So some people of course believed that this wasn't even a natural consequence and was just plain cruel.
Speaker 10 An adult who forgets their lunch at home would have the option of then going and buying a lunch, going home to get a lunch, or asking someone to bring them a lunch if they wanted.
Speaker 10 A child with no money and who has no other option but to ask their parent or their teacher for help, which after all is what parents are for, then that's how she responds.
Speaker 10 However, this wasn't the only instance that Ruby used food as some sort of form of punishment.
Speaker 10 Viewers who consistently tuned into the 8 Passengers channel started to notice a pattern that Ruby and Kevin's oldest son Chad and the two youngest children became more or less labeled the problem children of the family.
Speaker 10 They seemed to always receive the harshest punishments, many of which went viral as well.
Speaker 10 In one of these videos, Ruby and Kevin sat down to talk with their viewers about a decision that they had made due to them being what they quote as selfish and not humble they told the children that for christmas instead of receiving gifts they would be receiving the gift of truth and love because
Speaker 20 knowing people these days i don't know if people gonna
Speaker 20
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 patterns of selfishness.
They have been showing
Speaker 20 through their choices their unwillingness to repent, their unwillingness to feel sorrow over some pretty egregious choices that they've made.
Speaker 20 So Kevin and I have decided that we are going to give the gift of truth to them this year for Christmas. We are...
Speaker 20 I'm going to give them the gift of boundaries and we're going to give them the gift of repentance.
Speaker 6 So
Speaker 20 we sat down with them
Speaker 20 and we told these two
Speaker 20 what our expectations were again.
Speaker 20 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
Speaker 20 our home, the siblings.
Speaker 18 And we just laid it out very clear.
Speaker 20 And we told them that
Speaker 20 this year they are not going to be visited by Santa.
Speaker 20 So they will, and we prepped them. We let them know that the
Speaker 20 Christmas morning, their four older siblings will be getting Christmas presents to open, and that they will have the gift of love from their dad and I
Speaker 20 because we want them to really have a visceral experience that hits them.
Speaker 16 So, up until now,
Speaker 20 I was really hoping that like keeping them home from school and wiping the floorboards would like really bring pain. Like,
Speaker 20 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.
Speaker 20
They're like, oh, yeah, we get to stay home from school and clean floorboards. This is kind of fun.
It's like, ah.
Speaker 20 So, you know, they've had these visceral experiences,
Speaker 20 you know, and
Speaker 20
they haven't affected them. It's because they're so numb.
And so the more numb your child is,
Speaker 20 the greater experience,
Speaker 18 the bigger the outcome.
Speaker 20 They need to wake them up.
Speaker 24 You're not going to push a boulder with just your hands.
Speaker 20 You need some real leverage.
Speaker 18 And the biggest leverage that a little child has is probably Santa Claus.
Speaker 16 And so.
Speaker 20
I expressed to them that I love your soul more than anything in this world. And I literally would do anything to invite you into repentance.
And I know parents say that.
Speaker 20 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 would pay any price monetarily.
Speaker 20 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.
Speaker 18 So that is our gift.
Speaker 10 At the time, both of these children were under 10 years old. And based on footage that Ruby posted of them, they just seemed like normal kids.
Speaker 10 There were videos like this where Ruby was seen harshly scolding R for simply leaving his socks outside and being made to do push-ups.
Speaker 21 You're gonna have to go find your shorts.
Speaker 18 Oh, did you see the socks you threw at the side of the garden? And you are not going anywhere unless you pick up your junk.
Speaker 26 You've got crap strung all around.
Speaker 18 No, so you see, now I'm using bad language.
Speaker 26 That's how bad of a mood I'm in.
Speaker 21 You get your socks picked up and don't you leave your stuff out anymore.
Speaker 11 Right over there.
Speaker 18 Run and go pick them up and then give me 10 push-ups.
Speaker 21 Put them in your pockets so you can take them down to the hamper and drop and give me 10.
Speaker 21
Put your hands straight out. They're in.
They're not supposed to be out. Shape your hands forward.
Speaker 18 There you go.
Speaker 26 One, two, down further. Bring your butt down.
Speaker 10 Even though just these few examples seem harsh enough, really the most extreme punishments were directed at Chad.
Speaker 10 In many videos, Chad's parents would embarrass him by reading his text messages out loud at the dinner table and making him discuss things that should have been kept private.
Speaker 10 However, it was during 2020 when Chad was sent away that people started becoming ever more concerned with Ruby and Kevin's parenting.
Speaker 10 During the time that he was away, Ruby never explained why Chad was gone, but it was discovered that they had sent him away to a controversial wilderness camp for troubled teenagers.
Speaker 18 Anasazi deserts.
Speaker 8 Yeah, the desert mountains of Arizona. So you're probably wondering, what did Chad do?
Speaker 8 Okay, let's, we're not even going to entertain that stuff, but it's, it's an accumulation of things over years,
Speaker 8 well before we ever started YouTubing or well before we ever got into social media.
Speaker 10 These types of camps have been heavily scrutinized in recent years after people came out with horror stories of mistreatment, abuse, and even torture.
Speaker 10 But even after Chad returned home, he was still forced to sleep on a beanbag in the middle of the living room. And he had his bed and his bedroom completely taken away for seven months.
Speaker 29 My bedroom was taken away for seven months, and then you give it back like a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 11 I don't think our viewers know that.
Speaker 26 You've been sleeping on a beanbag since I've been in a bag.
Speaker 11 I've been sleeping on a beanbag since October and they gave my room back like two weeks ago.
Speaker 31 And the things that we show and share, and the things that many of you are criticizing and calling a b
Speaker 31 are actually things that mental health professionals have counseled us to do.
Speaker 32 We got accused of child abuse when we sent Chad to Anasazi. Guess what? The first thing that they did was
Speaker 32 take a bed away.
Speaker 10 All of these examples and more caused there to be several reports by concerned viewers to DCFS and even a petition with nearly 18,000 signatures calling for an investigation into Kevin and Ruby for the alleged harm toward their children.
Speaker 10 However, at the time, all the reports were claimed to have been unfounded.
Speaker 10 It seemed like there was an even bigger spotlight on the Frankies and on their parenting, and their videos started becoming more and more sporadic.
Speaker 10 They went from posting every day to every other day, and then just stopped being on a regular schedule altogether.
Speaker 10 After this, Ruby attempted to start a clothing company called Ruby Do, but it ended up being largely unsuccessful.
Speaker 10 By 2022, there were no new videos being posted to the 8 Passengers channel, but Ruby wasn't gone from the internet or YouTube completely.
Speaker 10 After her unsuccessful clothing line, Ruby began attending life coach and therapy sessions with a company called Connections.
Speaker 10 And then she eventually started making appearances on the business's YouTube channel called Connections Classroom with the founder, Jodi Hildebrandt.
Speaker 10 Jodi was briefly mentioned in the video where Chad discussed his wilderness camp punishment and the loss of his bed privileges. And he referred to her as his therapist.
Speaker 8 A phone call yesterday with my therapist and she taught me about truth and distortion.
Speaker 18 Mom probably talks about Jodi all the time, but I've mentioned Jodi a few times. She has a podcast called Connections with an X.
Speaker 10 So why was Ruby developing a relationship with a woman who previously had her son as a client?
Speaker 10 Well, it turns out that Jodi wasn't only Chad's therapist at one point, but that Ruby and Kevin sought help from her as well when they were having problems in their marriage.
Speaker 10 54-year-old Jodi Hildebrandt is a quote-unquote therapist who, like the Frankie family, is from Utah and is a member of the LDS church.
Speaker 10 She was married for a short time in the 90s and had two children before she divorced, and she has been single ever since.
Speaker 10 In 2009, Jodi was placed on a list of recommended therapists for people in the LDS church to seek help for various issues like marriage counseling and addiction counseling.
Speaker 10 Specifically, the LDS church views
Speaker 10 and viewing
Speaker 10 no matter how often as an addiction that needs repentance and therapy.
Speaker 10 However, several clients who received services from Jodi claimed that she would relay their personal business discussed during therapy with church officials.
Speaker 10 One of these allegations was actually proven, and her license ended up being put on probation for 18 months.
Speaker 10 So, after the eight passengers YouTube channel videos started fizzling out, Ruby became a life coach and listed as a certified mental fitness trainer for Jodi's Connections company.
Speaker 10 It seemed like Ruby and Jodi were very like-minded individuals because when she began appearing in videos on the channel, a lot of the messages were very reminiscent of how she already was in the past, just much more extreme.
Speaker 10 The website jodihildebrandt.com thoroughly explains what connections is and what it strives to do for its clients.
Speaker 10 It says that the core teachings of connections is that for a person to achieve a true connection with another human being, they must not be in distortion.
Speaker 10 Distortion is something that Jodi came up with, referring to people being addicted to something like work, shopping, games, sleep, social media, driving, receiving compliments, exercise, eating, drugs, alcohol, sex,
Speaker 10 hobbies, or even their spouse, really anything.
Speaker 10 Distortion can also be living in shame and denial, knowing that you are not enough, being codependent in your relationships, living in lust, being overly sexually attracted to your spouse, and controlling and manipulating others.
Speaker 10 Literally, you could find the definition to fit almost any single situation, which my guess and my suspicion is that was her goal, because then you could tap into a client who is experiencing anything.
Speaker 10 Jodi explains that everyone is in distortion to some degree, but that she can help you to overcome distortion and live in truth.
Speaker 10 Jodi teaches that there are three core principles which must be developed in order to truly connect with anyone and to avoid distortion.
Speaker 10 She says that boundaries need to be set to distance yourself from people in distortion so you are not drawn in with them.
Speaker 10 The three core principles of connections are impeccable honesty, rigorous personal responsibility, and humility.
Speaker 10 She encourages clients to refer family members to join the program so that they can also experience true connection.
Speaker 10 Jodi teaches that the truth and the three principles are the only way to true happiness in relationships.
Speaker 10 Members of the group develop a bond by sharing vulnerable experiences with each other and validating each other's experiences.
Speaker 10 As they continue these patterns, they distance themselves from their families.
Speaker 10 Family and friends are confused about this new term distortion and a whole slew of other new terminology taught by Jodi as the only and absolute way to connect.
Speaker 10 They are then encouraged to attend classes so they too can learn how to not be in distortion.
Speaker 10 If their friends or family ask questions or raise concerns about the teachings, the student often immediately makes a phone call to their connections support group to avoid being drawn in to that distortion themselves.
Speaker 10 If the family and friends don't learn these new skills for connection, they will be cut off in the relationship for being in distortion.
Speaker 10 In addition to the connections 101 classes, members attend group or weekly meetings with Jodi and other students to discuss in a more intimate setting how they were in distortion the previous week.
Speaker 10 The revenue from these group and connections classes that Jodi has made was conservatively estimated to exceed $30,000 a month.
Speaker 10 Now, the other concerning component is that Jodi heavily weaves in her teachings and her truths with the teachings of the LDS church, Koff, Koff, Lori Ballow, like how Christians capitalize pronouns referring to God.
Speaker 10 In connections, truth is capitalized as if to signify that her truth is the same or just as important as God Himself.
Speaker 10 So the connections truths in regards to relationship also carried over into parenthood as well. And Ruby has even even blatantly stated that she loves these truths more than her own children.
Speaker 10 And she doesn't love her children unconditionally, which, let's just say, I think most of us could already tell.
Speaker 18 I love principles more than my child.
Speaker 19 Yikes! That's a really, and that is the truth.
Speaker 10 It is the truth. It's just so disturbing to hear someone literally say those words and talk about these made-up truths as as if they are God.
Speaker 10 Ruby and Jodi would discuss all sorts of topics, but I think the ones pertaining to children and parenting disturbed people the most.
Speaker 10 If an adult wants to do culty stuff, believe whatever they want, do a bunch of nonsense, that is fine.
Speaker 10
But it's when children have ideas and toxic behavior forced on them that it becomes a bigger issue. They don't have a choice.
They aren't able to just leave.
Speaker 7 Hi, we are live in Mapleton, Utah, at
Speaker 7 a home of somebody who is learning how to be a mental fitness trainer. And we have Ruby here.
Speaker 7 And
Speaker 7 Ruby is a part of the original 10 women that are being trained to become mental fitness trainers. So, Ruby, you want to tell us about what a mental fitness trainer is?
Speaker 19 Yes, so we are getting mentally fit.
Speaker 19 The same way your body would get physically fit by running and lifting weights and working with a personal trainer, we are getting ready to be your mental fitness trainer.
Speaker 10 We're getting truth really easy to teach.
Speaker 19 We're making it very simple, boiling it down to principles.
Speaker 19 That's how you're going to understand truth is really knowing principles, being able to put words to it and help you, and you're going to feel so much better.
Speaker 7
Absolutely. So, I'm just going to span over here.
We've got,
Speaker 10 oops, I can't see.
Speaker 24 There we go.
Speaker 7 and Sherry. How are you feeling about what you're getting ready to go out and do? Teaching truth to the world.
Speaker 26 Excited.
Speaker 11 So excited. Excited.
Speaker 11 Yeah.
Speaker 7 Coming to a town near you.
Speaker 7 And here's Kim and Jess.
Speaker 7 Hello. Becky, Liz, Michelle.
Speaker 7 And then we got Johnny over there.
Speaker 34 Johnny.
Speaker 11 And
Speaker 34 Johnny. And Johnny.
Speaker 11 And there's Pam.
Speaker 34 Did you get Pam? Nope, Pam's over here.
Speaker 14 Hello.
Speaker 7 Johnny is
Speaker 7 our male person who comes in and does the role play for the male so we can practice.
Speaker 7 So
Speaker 7
he's quite talented to do the role plays with us. So we appreciate Johnny.
Johnny's a man of truth as well, and he's also a mental fitness trainer. So so glad that you're with us.
Speaker 7 And any of you who are interested in becoming a mental fitness trainer, we are going to open that up to train other people.
Speaker 7 So give us a call or email us at supportedconnectionsclassroom.com and maybe you can come to the next retreat for the, come work out with us.
Speaker 38 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake.
Speaker 42 Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.
Speaker 43 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.
Speaker 47 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.
Speaker 49 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.
Speaker 52 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.
Speaker 13 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.
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Speaker 38 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake.
Speaker 41 Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.
Speaker 43 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.
Speaker 47 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.
Speaker 51 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.
Speaker 52 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.
Speaker 13 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.
Speaker 54 Tired of spills and stains on your sofa? Wash away your worries with Anibay. Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.
Speaker 54 That's right, sofas start at just $699.
Speaker 54 Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabric.
Speaker 54 Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing. The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.
Speaker 54
Shop washable sofas.com for early Black Friday savings up to 60% off site-wide. Backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
If you're not absolutely in love, send it back back for a full refund.
Speaker 54
No return shipping or restocking fees. Every penny back.
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Speaker 10 This is Connections According to Jodi.
Speaker 7 So let me tell you a little bit about what I've been doing. For the last 20 years, I've been trying to figure out how to help my clientele.
Speaker 7 I've been working with tens of thousands of people for 20 years, and I've been asking God about how to help heal them
Speaker 10 from this array of mental and emotional illness.
Speaker 7 Okay.
Speaker 7 And so I have been on this journey trying to understand how to use principles that are God's in helping people heal.
Speaker 10 So that was a clip from the Eternal Core Conference in April of 2020. In this, Jodi describes how she got to this belief system.
Speaker 10 Jodi grew up as the sixth of seven children, and she described her parents as emotionally shut down, and that she didn't realize that as a child, but she does now, saying, and I quote, they were emotionally completely not available for me or for any of the other children.
Speaker 10 And so chaos went on in our house a lot, and none of us were really allowed to emote, other than to get angry. So she learned how to be really nice, kind, helpful, gracious.
Speaker 7 Sure enough, I ended up with an eating disorder, right? I started trying to control everything because I had no outlet to emote my emotions.
Speaker 7 I had nobody there to validate me and say, yeah, that makes sense that when your brother, you know, puts you into a pretzel, that that would hurt and that you would want to tell him, stop.
Speaker 7 You don't like that. I wasn't allowed to do that.
Speaker 54 Here's the key.
Speaker 7 This is the key. Responsibility.
Speaker 7 Responsibility. I am responsible for three things.
Speaker 7 I've learned this over, like I said, over the last decade plus. I am responsible for my own perception, which means my thoughts.
Speaker 7 And then when I perceive, I then feel emotions.
Speaker 7 And when I feel emotions, it's because of my perceptions.
Speaker 7 And when I perceive and then feel emotions, then I then choose to behave.
Speaker 7 And so I'm responsible for that whole process in everything.
Speaker 7
Even when I'm depressed. So when I talk to people, they'll say, say, yeah, yeah, that's nice and good, but I have depression.
And I'm like, okay, wait, stop. You missed what I just said to you.
Speaker 7 And then they'll say to me, are you suggesting that I'm responsible for my depression? And I'll say, yes, you are.
Speaker 7 That's one thing. If you don't know me, I'm really blunt.
Speaker 7
Really direct. Some people hate that.
Some people love that. It's like, tell me more.
Speaker 10 The other principles to live with include characters of truth, humbleness, honesty, responsibility, and vulnerability. Or else you are disconnected and you manifest control, aggression, and anxiety.
Speaker 10 She goes on to say that she's learned that the only thing she can control are her thoughts, feelings, and behavioral choices, and that she cannot control anything else.
Speaker 10 And then she uses an example where she talks about a parent-child relationship. Oh, I wish I could control them.
Speaker 7 I wish I could get them to do what I want to do, and you just can't.
Speaker 7 But when you try, you then disconnect from them because you go into a controlling posture. You go into a dynamic instead of a relationship with them.
Speaker 7 So people will say, well, well, if I love this person, then how do I get them to? And I'm like, can you hear how you're going down control lane? You can't get them to.
Speaker 7 Your job is to speak the truth to them about their responsibility, which is they're responsible for their own perceptions, their own feelings, and their own behavioral choices. So no more of this.
Speaker 7
You made me do this. Because of you, I feel.
If you wouldn't have done that, then I'm then I wouldn't have done this. All of that is called distortion,
Speaker 7 which means distorting the truth.
Speaker 10 So by controlling others, that is distortion or distortion of truth. And then she says that each and every one of us is responsible for learning these principles for ourselves.
Speaker 10 And then if you have charge over anyone else, such as children, grandchildren, clients, etc., you have a responsibility to teach them these principles too, so that they too can be released from distortion.
Speaker 10 Okay, now this next part is actually particularly interesting because of how Jodi says that God told her about distortion.
Speaker 7 I was teaching about shame and I went to God and I said, people can't understand the word shame. Do you have another word? Can you give me another word? And I heard one day, distorting the truth.
Speaker 7 And I was like, oh,
Speaker 6 brilliant!
Speaker 10 Distortion.
Speaker 7 Every single one of us goes into distortion.
Speaker 10 On August 30th, 2023, a man called 911 after a little boy showed up at his doorstep, hungry and thirsty. The little boy who identified himself as R said that he came from Jody.
Speaker 10 Nothing else for this man and his wife to realize that R needed help and he needed it fast. So that's when they called 911.
Speaker 12 I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help.
Speaker 12 And he's uh said he just came from a neighbor's house and we know there's been problems at this neighbor's house. He's emaciated, he's got tape around his legs, he's hungry, and he's thirsty.
Speaker 55 He asked us to call the police.
Speaker 12 So he's very afraid.
Speaker 56 Okay, and
Speaker 56 are the neighbors out of their home, or is anybody looking for them that you can see?
Speaker 12
No, we are homes are far enough away. I'm not sure.
How did you get out of the house?
Speaker 12 He said he just left through the porch at the neighbor's house.
Speaker 12 Her name is Jodi Hildebrand
Speaker 12 and she lives two doors up the street.
Speaker 56 Adam Cayenne was far apart.
Speaker 12 Yeah, Adam Cayenne, the houses are far apart, so he walked just under a block to get to our house.
Speaker 12 He rang my doorbell and asked me to call the police.
Speaker 10 Now as the police were coming into the neighborhood, they were stopped by Jodi in her car, who said that she was out looking for a boy.
Speaker 10 So the police told her that they were out looking for a boy as well, that same boy. And Jodi was basically like, oh, okay, I'll wait at my house.
Speaker 10 Then, once they got to Jodi's neighbor's house and actually laid eyes on R, it was beyond clear that he needed help and he needed it quickly.
Speaker 10 They began cutting the duct tape off of his legs and they moved him into the ambulance.
Speaker 10 The smell of flesh was all that the officers could smell, and the wounds far beyond what most had ever seen was all that they could see.
Speaker 10 When an officer asked R how he got those wounds, R told him that they were caused by ropes that Jodi and his mom Ruby had put on him.
Speaker 10 He also told the officer that they would put cayenne pepper and honey on those wounds as a dressing.
Speaker 10 And guys, some of the pictures that were taken of the children's injuries when they were at the hospital are so, so graphic that everybody's been blurring them out, even mainstream media, even 2020, everybody, because they are truly horrific.
Speaker 10 So, I'm gonna describe them, but I'm not gonna show them because I don't think they need to be out there personally.
Speaker 10 You can see where the restraints were on the ankles, and you can see the skin on the legs are completely chapped. It's raw, you can start to see muscle below it.
Speaker 10 It is like it has literally disintegrated the skin. You can see the shoulder blades sticking out of R completely, as though he is so malnourished and underweight.
Speaker 10 It looks like literal wings coming out of his back. That's how much they are protruding.
Speaker 10 And then there is a wrist wound where to me, it almost looks like a burn, even though I know it's not maybe partially a rope burn, but it's like a slit, a thick, not even a slit, a slit's the wrong word, guys, a gash on his wrist.
Speaker 10 And it's so deep that you can see muscle, you can see tissue, you can see fat. And it is like, gosh, I want to say it's like an inch wide, something like it is
Speaker 10
so horrific when I saw it for the first time. I'm not exaggerating, guys.
I did start gagging. It is so awful.
Speaker 10 And this is what this boy had all over his body when he was brave enough to run away from Jodi's house. He is honestly a freaking hero in my eyes.
Speaker 10 So, as R was taken to the hospital, the focus now was shifting to finding the other two sisters, which R said were still in the house.
Speaker 10 Now, you know, I'm not really sure what Jodi thought was going to happen in this moment, but boy was she acting surprised and like nothing was going on when the police arrived.
Speaker 14 Police officers, open up!
Speaker 14 Jody,
Speaker 11 why did you step out? I have five turns.
Speaker 29 That's great. Step out of the house.
Speaker 11
No, I'm not going to step out of the house. Step out of the house.
Step out of the house. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We're just going to stop.
Speaker 11 Ben, how do you come to my house?
Speaker 7 They can run into my house.
Speaker 26 Just have a seat right there. Do you have a search warrant? I have a seat right there.
Speaker 26 I have a seat right there.
Speaker 30 I'll explain everything after...
Speaker 26 Have a seat right there.
Speaker 7 Do you have a search warrant, sir?
Speaker 57 We're searching the house.
Speaker 7 I can tell you what's in the house.
Speaker 30 Okay.
Speaker 30 Just have a seat right there for me.
Speaker 10 Do you have a search warrant?
Speaker 30 We'll explain it after this.
Speaker 54 You can't just come into my house without a search warrant.
Speaker 30 We'll explain everything after this, ma'am.
Speaker 30 Okay.
Speaker 30 Well, that's one of the reasons why we're here. So we'll explain after everything's done, after we clear the house and make sure everything's fine.
Speaker 7 But why are you coming into my house without a situation?
Speaker 30 So we'll explain it after this.
Speaker 35 But that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 7 You come into my house and do what you want, and then you tell me you don't have a warrant?
Speaker 11 We'll explain why we did.
Speaker 48 But don't you have to have a warrant?
Speaker 30 Not at this moment, we don't.
Speaker 30 We're here on exigent circumstances, and I will explain it after this.
Speaker 10 So, Jodi told the police that Ruby was on her way back from Springville, which was where she actually lived and happened to be four hours away.
Speaker 10 She said that there was only one other child in the house. So she stood outside, on the phone with her attorney, while the police searched her house thoroughly.
Speaker 10 And it seemed like she was more concerned about her attorney missing his flight and also some Airbnb guests being freaked out than she was about what was actually happening.
Speaker 11 Is there anybody else in the house?
Speaker 29 Yes. Two kids?
Speaker 7 There's a little girl.
Speaker 30 Just one?
Speaker 7 She's right over here.
Speaker 30 Okay.
Speaker 57 How old is she?
Speaker 7 She'll be 10 next week.
Speaker 11 Okay.
Speaker 30 And she's on this side?
Speaker 7 I have Airbnb guests over there. Probably scared me to death.
Speaker 14 Okay.
Speaker 7 Adam, I know you have a flight to catch, so
Speaker 58 they're just. Well, so they're they're in your home because he lied to them about
Speaker 22 now.
Speaker 7 I've got a police officer standing right here.
Speaker 7 Okay.
Speaker 25 So, I don't want you to miss your flight, so.
Speaker 58
Well, I'm not going to miss my flight. I'm okay for a minute.
Okay.
Speaker 58 Have they found her yet? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7 They think there's somebody else in the house. There's not.
Speaker 10 And yes, you heard that right, guys.
Speaker 10 Apparently, there were Airbnb guests staying inside this home while all of this was going on, while R and E were being held and tortured while guests were staying in the home. I mean, it is bizarre.
Speaker 10 She also appeared to be crying during some of the search. According to R, he had two sisters in the house, but the police were only able to find one child.
Speaker 10 She was hiding inside a closet in the bathroom. Now, initially, it seemed like they thought that the child was a boy.
Speaker 10 But after talking to R while he was at the hospital, they learned that he actually had a little sister whose name was E, and her head had been shaved.
Speaker 10 That's why there was a mistake where they thought that it was a little boy at first. And R had told the police that he hadn't seen her in over a month.
Speaker 10 Now when they approached E, E was super scared and she would not come out of this closet.
Speaker 10
While she was in the closet, different medics and officers tried their best to support her and let her know that she was safe. They were officers.
They were there to help.
Speaker 10 She requested pizza, so they brought her a personal-sized pizza and also a drink. She ate all of that, and she was still hungry.
Speaker 10 So then they ordered a large pizza and she went on to eat two slices of that.
Speaker 10 They continued trying to get E to come out of the closet so that she could go to the hospital to be looked at, to be treated, to see what was going on.
Speaker 10 But she told them she was worried that Jodi didn't want her to go to the hospital. And she also said that she was scared that they would give her vaccines and that, quote, vaccines kill you.
Speaker 10 But finally, nearly after six hours after that 911 call had been made, they were finally able to convince E to go to the hospital.
Speaker 10 During the time that they were trying to convince E to go to the hospital, Ruby had shown up at the house and they placed her in handcuffs.
Speaker 10 Now, what's so weird about this is she didn't seem phased at all about what was happening with her children. She seemed more like she was annoyed and irritated more than anything.
Speaker 10
So, eventually, both Ruby and Jodi were taken into the police station for further questioning. During that, Jodi tried to manipulate the police.
I'm a psychologist.
Speaker 7 I've watched people flip things all the time.
Speaker 26 So, I get it.
Speaker 7 I sit on your side.
Speaker 11 I get it.
Speaker 11 So,
Speaker 7 you guys seem nice people.
Speaker 11
Yeah. I'm I'm not saying anything.
I'm not trying to be difficult.
Speaker 10 This is really,
Speaker 26 if you knew all the pieces, I think you'd have a lot of empathy.
Speaker 10 I'd like to just tell you, but I don't know who you are.
Speaker 11 I don't know if you're going to flip my words. I don't know.
Speaker 7 And I'm an honest person as well, so we get along great. And he just said, do not say anything.
Speaker 10
And Ruby, well, she completely refused to speak at all, which yes, technically it is her right. But she literally didn't even answer if she had children or not.
She just went mute, would not speak.
Speaker 11 Was this your water?
Speaker 62 I'm gonna. It's yours if you want it.
Speaker 11 We'll say that I'll let her.
Speaker 60 We also have snacks if you need anything to eat.
Speaker 60 So, I know I introduced myself to you earlier, but my name is Detective Bates, and this is Sergeant Tongler.
Speaker 60 We're just here to talk to you about kind of a few things involving your kids.
Speaker 60 So, first, are you do you live down here or?
Speaker 11 do you live up north?
Speaker 60 Do you want to talk to me about where you live or how many kids you have?
Speaker 60 So we just spoke with your husband and he said you guys have six kids.
Speaker 11 Are those all together?
Speaker 60 Are those all your kids?
Speaker 11 I can wait all day, so it's up to you if you want to talk to us about what's going on.
Speaker 60 Would you feel more comfortable talking to one of us?
Speaker 57 Maybe you want me to step out for a while.
Speaker 60 Or if you feel more comfortable talking to him, I can step out.
Speaker 48 I'll wait till I have a lawyer.
Speaker 11 Okay.
Speaker 60 Do you want to answer that?
Speaker 10 Are you don't want to talk to us about anything?
Speaker 57 So, yeah,
Speaker 57 this is just your chance to tell us. We're just trying to get your side of the story.
Speaker 57 So, it's your chance to do that.
Speaker 11 But it's up to you
Speaker 57 for a shared talk.
Speaker 57 And I mean, I'm not asking any criminal questions. If you don't want to talk to us, just let us know and
Speaker 11 we'll be done.
Speaker 62 I've already told you.
Speaker 62 You want a lawyer? Okay.
Speaker 62 Yes.
Speaker 11 Easy enough. Thank you.
Speaker 10 Once the news of the arrest spread, a lot of people were wondering how exactly we got here.
Speaker 10 Lastly, how did this overly strict but seemingly somewhat normal mom, who despite her controversial parenting decisions, never really had any indicators that she would physically torture her kids?
Speaker 10 So, how did she allow this to happen? And how the heck did we get here? Also, how in the world did these women think that they could ever get away with this?
Speaker 10 Did Ruby's husband Kevin buy into this as well?
Speaker 10 And speaking of Kevin, you might be wondering where the hell he was when all of of this was happening, and also what his reaction was after Ruby and Jodi's arrests. Well, he was interviewed.
Speaker 10 Listen to this.
Speaker 62 So, are they all living with you, or?
Speaker 63 No, I haven't seen them for over a year.
Speaker 11 Any of them?
Speaker 55 No.
Speaker 23 None of them.
Speaker 22 For a year?
Speaker 63 Over a year.
Speaker 27 I've been in a separation.
Speaker 11 From
Speaker 27 my wife and family.
Speaker 25 What's your wife's name?
Speaker 11 Ruby. Ruby.
Speaker 27 When was the last time you you saw Ruby?
Speaker 63 The last time I saw her
Speaker 62 was
Speaker 11 the 18th
Speaker 27 of
Speaker 27 this month.
Speaker 28 We met to
Speaker 27 she requested me to sign
Speaker 63 over vehicles or the titles to the vehicles, the vehicle that she drives were all in my name.
Speaker 61 When's the last time you physically saw Brother?
Speaker 11 the day
Speaker 63 that I moved out, July 24th of 2022?
Speaker 64 24th of 2022?
Speaker 27 Or July 25th.
Speaker 63 When we separated, we were going on 22 years.
Speaker 58 Yes.
Speaker 11 And during your marriage, how was How was disciplining your kids?
Speaker 25 How would you discipline your kids?
Speaker 25 um
Speaker 63 yeah I'm not going to answer that question okay that's fine
Speaker 62 have you been since separated or since they lived here in the city of Ivans
Speaker 25 have you communicated with your wife regarding like discipline with your kids or their care or their physical well-being no
Speaker 59 so is she doing this on her own just telling you how your kids are?
Speaker 11 She's not telling me anything about the kids.
Speaker 61 Who's this female Jodi that your wife looks with?
Speaker 61 Do you know a female named Jodi?
Speaker 27 She is a
Speaker 63 therapist and a wife coach, I know.
Speaker 27 And she's...
Speaker 61 Do you respect her?
Speaker 27 Do I respect her?
Speaker 28 I think she's a very honest, truthful person.
Speaker 25 Yes.
Speaker 61 You place value on Jodi?
Speaker 11 I don't know what that means.
Speaker 61 Do you value what she says and
Speaker 25 how she treats?
Speaker 59 Is your wife a client of hers? Is your wife a partner of hers?
Speaker 64 Is your wife a roommate with her?
Speaker 25 Your kids are living in her house is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 63 I'm not aware of that, but
Speaker 63 I know that they've been in business for the last year filming who's they? Ruby and Jodi. They filmed.
Speaker 61 They filmed Jodi, you think?
Speaker 27 They film podcasts and so every week a podcast goes up and I listen to it.
Speaker 64 So I don't recall the exact time but sometime before 11 o'clock today we received a phone call from 911 on our dispatch
Speaker 11 that
Speaker 64 a 12 to 13 year old boy was knocking on doors in a neighborhood asking for food and water, that he was severely emaciated, that he had
Speaker 59 skinny, scrawny, malnutritioned, not enough food, not enough water to sustain life.
Speaker 63 So he had
Speaker 25 duct tape on his extremities, on his hands, on his ankles, and those were covering rope burns that were used to tie him down.
Speaker 61 Take a second and think about what I've just said.
Speaker 61 That's the condition of your son.
Speaker 61 Given that information, your son was taken to the hospital.
Speaker 59 A warrant has been applied and granted by the Department of Child and Family Services to remove
Speaker 25 from your wife's care.
Speaker 25 So no one right now is going to have access to these two children based on their physical condition.
Speaker 27 Do you understand that?
Speaker 63 I understand.
Speaker 61 Do you, would you condone that behavior?
Speaker 63 Would I condone that behavior?
Speaker 59 That's my job.
Speaker 61 My job is to find out your knowledge of the treatment of these
Speaker 58 children.
Speaker 55 No.
Speaker 63 Again, I don't know the details or I don't know,
Speaker 63 but as you describe that, that sounds
Speaker 64 horrible, horrible, horrible, disgusting.
Speaker 61 No human being should be treated like that.
Speaker 11 Yeah, okay. That's my thoughts.
Speaker 63 But again, we might be different on that.
Speaker 64 We're going to sit here for a second, okay?
Speaker 63 We're going to go out and talk.
Speaker 25 I'm not saying
Speaker 61 you're still not free to kill.
Speaker 59 Are you under arrest?
Speaker 61 Absolutely not.
Speaker 59 And we just have lots of questions that we need to figure out lots
Speaker 25 okay okay because your children are under medical care right now
Speaker 61 and what does that mean and it means that you don't have access to my understanding is that they are what is that they're in the custody of dcfs and they will be for the next
Speaker 59 there's a medical hold on them right now so for at least the next 72 hours
Speaker 61 based on our understanding
Speaker 11 at least the next 72 hours during observation during watch dcs is going to provide you that information and they can better answer your questions along those lines what's going to happen with my wife i love my wife
Speaker 61 i don't know i'm being an honest with you i don't know
Speaker 11 haven't had any of you i don't know
Speaker 61 possibly
Speaker 64 I think given the circumstances, that's highly appropriate, but again,
Speaker 59 I don't know your wife.
Speaker 61 I was hoping to gain some insight from you, but
Speaker 63 I don't necessarily know that that's something you wanted to
Speaker 63 travel down with me, so.
Speaker 23 And not without legal representation.
Speaker 63 Yeah, all right, I get it.
Speaker 58 But I love my wife. I trust my wife.
Speaker 63 And so, I mean, this feels like getting run over by a steam truck while you're sharing with me today.
Speaker 11 Yeah,
Speaker 25 I can tell you're caught off guard.
Speaker 11 I thought I was just coming here to pick up my kids.
Speaker 63 And for what, I don't know what or why, but
Speaker 63 and I was finally taking it back with me.
Speaker 11 Like I want to
Speaker 11
you realize that I have a picture of my family on my wall. And I look at it every day.
And I work. I work every day
Speaker 11 so I can
Speaker 11
back to my family and sit with my family. And everything you're sharing to me just sounds like a made-up story.
Like, I
Speaker 62 have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 58 Like.
Speaker 63 It's just, it sounds like a horror movie.
Speaker 10 After being interviewed, Kevin was never charged, but still the question, of course, remained, was he going to sympathize with Ruby or was he going to stick by his children?
Speaker 38 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake.
Speaker 42 Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.
Speaker 43 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.
Speaker 47 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.
Speaker 49 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.
Speaker 52 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.
Speaker 13 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.
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Speaker 38 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake.
Speaker 42 Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.
Speaker 43 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.
Speaker 47 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just just a few days.
Speaker 49 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.
Speaker 53 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.
Speaker 13 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.
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Speaker 9 So we went down to Jordi's house in May of 2021. That was the first time I had ever been there.
Speaker 9 And it blew my mind as you I'm sure you have walked in there and gone
Speaker 9 how does a therapist live like this like
Speaker 9 it doesn't do any sense to me
Speaker 9 but we were there and she opened up and talked about you know her struggles and and what was going on and
Speaker 9 I gotta say, like, I'm a smart guy. I'm an engineer.
Speaker 9 I've designed and helped build some really big stuff. I've been a college professor.
Speaker 9 I can't explain some of the stuff that happened while we were there.
Speaker 9 Like
Speaker 9 crashes
Speaker 9 in the basement while we were talking upstairs.
Speaker 9 and plates like in the kitchen just flying off by themselves like full speed smashing on the wall and falling to the floor like by themselves.
Speaker 9 I can't explain it, but I saw it with my own eyes and I don't have any
Speaker 9 way to explain it other than there's some crazy shit going on.
Speaker 9 Ruby was convinced that we could intervene and help Jody.
Speaker 9
I didn't want a thing to do with it. I tried to get the bishop involved and say, hey, go to like the priesthood and the church and all that stuff.
Just
Speaker 9 go to your support network. But
Speaker 9
Ruby continued to be like, no, we can help. She doesn't want the.
Could you imagine what would happen to her reputation of this got out?
Speaker 9 Let's help her.
Speaker 9 So
Speaker 9 we went down like a couple more times between May and August, but it reached the point where in August,
Speaker 9 her bishop at the time, a guy who's down there in Cayenta named Scott Galbraith, he's not her bishop anymore, but I mean he was going over there like
Speaker 9 every night and he'd be there for like four hours.
Speaker 9 And just and he'd be like, yeah, I'm fighting evil spirits. I'm casting demons out.
Speaker 9 There's crazy stuff going on.
Speaker 9 And finally he got to the the point where he's like, I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 9 There needs to be some sort of resolution.
Speaker 9 It was at that point that they said,
Speaker 9 why don't you take her up to your house?
Speaker 9 And I was like, oh, hell no.
Speaker 9 I don't want this in my house.
Speaker 9
I was beaten over the head with it. Like, that's really insensitive.
You know, she's done so much to help our family. And
Speaker 9 you're being selfish and she has needs and come on, like, it won't be for long. And so I relented and I was like, okay,
Speaker 9
actually, you know, this could kind of be fun. Let's just make it fun.
And we'll, like, she needs a vacation, so we'll just go take drives up the canyon and stuff like that.
Speaker 9 And it turned into just a crazy house. The moment she showed up in my house, just the weirdest crap started happening.
Speaker 9 Lights turning on and off said sounds of people walking and walls and like sounds like footprints going up walls and across the ceiling and like
Speaker 9 stuff floating around and it was just
Speaker 9 it was weird and I hated it
Speaker 9 and I became the resident exorcist.
Speaker 9
That was the title I came up with myself. I thought it it was kind of funny.
But it was my job to go and give her blessings whenever she started to
Speaker 9 go into a trance and go into possession.
Speaker 9 Which started to be a lot.
Speaker 9 And Ruby would go up and check on her.
Speaker 9 It started like
Speaker 9 every four hours at night, and then it moved every two hours at night, then it moved every hour at night. And then at some point, Ruby said, you know what, I'm just going to start sleeping in there.
Speaker 9 And
Speaker 9 if I need you, I'll come down and get you.
Speaker 9 That's kind of weird, but okay.
Speaker 9 And
Speaker 9 that was that.
Speaker 9 They started sleeping in the same bed. And
Speaker 9 then she started having like trances and stuff.
Speaker 9 I would say probably September, where she believed that she was going to heaven and seeing God and Jesus and talking with them
Speaker 9 and she would get together with Pam Botcher.
Speaker 9 Ruby, Pam, and Jodi would get together and do these interventions.
Speaker 9 That's what they called them.
Speaker 9 And so they'd just go up and lock themselves in a room for four or five hours and then they'd come out and they'd all just be on cloud nine and then Ruby would share with me like she had this amazing vision
Speaker 9 and I wrote it and recorded it all down.
Speaker 9 And we have a work to do from God
Speaker 9 and you're part of it and the bishop's part of it. And we're all part of bringing all this stuff to the world.
Speaker 9 So it was
Speaker 9 And it continued like that until I
Speaker 9 wanted to move on with life.
Speaker 9 And I would call it dragging my heels. So that was around October.
Speaker 9 And
Speaker 9 Jodi flipped out because during one intervention, Chad was in the backyard with a bunch of friends.
Speaker 9 And it was my job to keep all the kids contained in the basement watching movies or playing video games.
Speaker 9
I took the dog on a walk and I thought they were done, but they weren't done. And Chad had all his high school friends over in the backyard.
She already flipped out.
Speaker 9
She was ready to come back to Ivan's on her own that night. And Ruby and Pam talked her into staying.
But that was the first night where
Speaker 9 Ruby said, I want a separation from you.
Speaker 9 And it was an in-home separation. And so it was
Speaker 9 hard.
Speaker 9 Basically, there were all these rules now placed on me. Like,
Speaker 9 I could leave when I wanted, but I couldn't come back until Ruby gave me permission. I couldn't come into the kitchen to eat until Ruby gave me permission.
Speaker 9 And the upstairs where Jodi roamed was completely off limits. I couldn't go upstairs anymore in my own house.
Speaker 9 And there would be...
Speaker 9 Ruby would dictate all of the terms of how our interactions would be, when we would talk,
Speaker 9
and that was hard. And it was during that time that I really became, I would say, dependent upon Ruby.
Like, if she said a kind word to me, like
Speaker 9 my whole day was made, right. And
Speaker 9 so that separation continued all the way up until
Speaker 9 the holidays, maybe, maybe the last week of December, first week of January.
Speaker 9 And then Ruby ended that separation.
Speaker 9 Jody went home
Speaker 9 the second week of January.
Speaker 9 But by that time, like Ruby, Pam, and Jodi were completely
Speaker 9 determined to do this work that they felt God had for them.
Speaker 9
I thought it was crazy. Like, I thought it was just batshit crazy.
Like, Ruby, you have a reputation. You have a multi-million dollar business.
You have a brand. And you are just giving it away.
Speaker 9 She wanted to legally, like, work with Jodi's attorney to basically give Jodi
Speaker 9 eight passengers
Speaker 9 and
Speaker 9 become an employee of Connections.
Speaker 9 So basically, the contract was Ruby gives Jodi everything
Speaker 9 and Ruby gets nothing in return.
Speaker 9 Our manager,
Speaker 9
our YouTube manager at the time was like, red flags, red flags. Like, I don't know how to tell you she is scamming you.
Ruby fired him.
Speaker 9 And I was like, I believe our manager, I think he's right. And Ruby started threatening me with another separation.
Speaker 9 And just like, this isn't about money, this is about doing God's work.
Speaker 9 So we continued in that dynamic for the next six or seven months until she went on a trip with Jodi and Pam down to Arizona.
Speaker 9 And I think they like, when I read her journal, she went into Mexico or something and bought drugs or something, like prescription drugs for the emergency kits.
Speaker 9 When she came back from that trip, before she even brought the bags into the house, she pulled me in and said,
Speaker 9
I want to talk with you. And that's when she asked me to leave.
And that was July 20th,
Speaker 9 2022.
Speaker 10 But the few people in their lives who didn't support Ruby from the get-go were her oldest daughter, Sherry, and Ruby sisters.
Speaker 10 In fact, Sherry had been trying to get her siblings taken away well before R ever escaped. And Sherry was the reason people had even started to find out that something was going down.
Speaker 10 So she had made an Instagram story that said, quote, finally. And in that, there was a picture that showed a police officer holding a gun on the sidewalk outside of their Springville home.
Speaker 10
And then over the next couple of days, she kept posting. In the first post, she said, quote, Today has been a big day.
Me and my family are so glad justice is being served.
Speaker 10 We've been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and we're so glad they finally decided to step up.
Speaker 10 Now, it was obvious that Kevin was not happy about Sherry speaking out and that the two of them had a very strained relationship.
Speaker 10 And two days after Ruby's arrest, Kevin was actually trying to get his own daughter, Sherry, arrested for burglary.
Speaker 10 Sherry had gone to their family house and she had taken his, Ruby's, and Chad's passports, MacBook computers, journals, and she ended up giving everything over to the police, who then gave it back to Kevin.
Speaker 10 But when he picked up the stuff from the police, he made it clear that he wanted his own daughter arrested for burglary, which just further seemed to show his support towards Ruby and not the children.
Speaker 10
She was trying to show evidence. She was trying to help her siblings.
He was trying to keep it hush-hush.
Speaker 10 And what I think is really interesting about this, too, is in one of the first conversations that Kevin and Ruby had after Ruby was arrested, One of the things that she asks Kevin is, do you think the police are going to try to talk to Sherry?
Speaker 10 As if they they knew that Sherry would blow the lid off of this whole thing.
Speaker 10 Within a few days of the arrests, there was a shelter hearing in juvenile court regarding Ruby and Kevin's four minor children. It was a hearing to determine who the children should be placed with.
Speaker 10 And according to witnesses and reporters, during this hearing, Ruby made some extremely, extremely disturbing allegations against her son, R.
Speaker 10 Ruby accused him of inappropriately touching other children, including E, and even said that he encouraged her to touch other children as well.
Speaker 10 She said that he disguised this behavior as a, quote, patting game, and said that he confessed to touching 20 different people, including neighbors and various family members.
Speaker 10 She also claimed that he is addicted to
Speaker 10 and that he has been viewing it since the age of three.
Speaker 10 So when this allegation came out, of course, a lot of people started wondering, you know, if this alleged touching has been going on for years and for so long and there are so many victims, why didn't she, as the parent, get her child help help or report it, you know, instead of having her friend tie the kids up in the basement and starve them and abuse them?
Speaker 10 Also, many people have pointed out that if a child is looking at explicit content from the age of three, then that is a parent issue, not a child issue.
Speaker 10 No three-year-old knows how to search at those topics, and if they happened upon them by accident at three years old, they wouldn't even have any idea what was going on.
Speaker 10 Now, other people have wondered why a three-year-old would even be left alone with with any type of device long enough to be able to intentionally view that kind of content.
Speaker 10 It doesn't make any sense, especially when you consider that Ruby pretty much stuck a camera in her children's faces from the moment they woke up to the moment they went to sleep.
Speaker 10 So when was R supposedly able to do all of this?
Speaker 10 Others have also pointed out that Kevin and Ruby had cameras like nest surveillance cameras all over their house for security and to also capture candid moments to then use on their channel.
Speaker 10 So surely, if he was compulsively looking at all of this from the age of three, they would have known.
Speaker 10 Not to mention her other children have had their doors, bedrooms, beds, and entire lives taken away for much less. Or was this yet another thing that Jodi, quote, helped R realize?
Speaker 10 Then, in November of 2023, Kevin filed for divorce.
Speaker 10 Initially, Kevin's attorney Randy Kester said that Kevin refuses to sling mud and point fingers, this after the accusations that were made that he could have saved his children.
Speaker 10 His attorney spoke out on multiple news outlets to give Kevin's side of the story.
Speaker 65 That's the first question that I asked Kevin. And I know that everyone has that question about why was he not there? Why was he
Speaker 65 not involving himself in his kids' lives during that period of time?
Speaker 65 But it's become abundantly clear that both he and his entire family were being manipulated by someone who's a so-called professional in mental health and in
Speaker 65 therapy and counseling, Jody Hildebrand.
Speaker 65 They came under her penumbra. She basically took over their lives.
Speaker 65 And ironically, this is how twisted the advice was that she was giving them was that Kevin needed to be out of the home, away from his children and away from his wife, separated from them.
Speaker 65
in order to save their family and save their marriage. And Kevin's a man who was desperate to save his marriage and his family.
He loved his wife. He loved his children,
Speaker 65 but took this
Speaker 65 corny advice of
Speaker 65 this therapist and was absent from the home for 12 or 13 months until all these horrific allegations came forward.
Speaker 66 What about before then, though? I mean, there are a lot of allegations.
Speaker 65 With regard to previous allegations that were referred to DCFS.
Speaker 66 If he's done nothing wrong, why is the state still keeping control of the kids, right? I mean, if he did nothing wrong in any other case, the other parent would be able to take care of the kids.
Speaker 65 It's an absolutely fair question, but because of the absence, his absence, and because of the manipulation by Jodi Hildebrand upon these children, who she pretty much had under her exclusive control between she and Ruby,
Speaker 65 there has become a rift. These children have become brainwashed and and
Speaker 65 actually
Speaker 65 at this point
Speaker 65 are being held by the state in an effort to finalize and get some expert professional help
Speaker 65 to
Speaker 65 help them overcome this brainwashing that they have.
Speaker 10 In mid-December, Ruby pled guilty. As a part of her plea deal, she would be required to plead guilty to four of the six counts of child abuse.
Speaker 10 She also would be required to testify against Jodi and spend 1 to 15 years in prison for each of those four counts.
Speaker 10 A little over a week after she did plead guilty, Jodi ended up taking the exact same plea deal as well. So what exactly did they plead guilty to?
Speaker 10 So according to court documents, RF was forced to do physical tasks for hours and days at a time. This included wall sits, carrying boxes full of books up and downstairs, and working outside.
Speaker 10 Eventually, RF was forced to do outside labor without shoes and in the summer heat. He was to stand in the direct sunlight for several days.
Speaker 10 He was forced to remain outside at all hours of the day and night for extended periods of time. These actions resulted in repeated and serious sunburns with blisters and sloughing skin.
Speaker 10 RF was denied water for several of the days that he was required to remain in the summer heat, too, and then he was punished when he secretly, quote, secretly consumed water.
Speaker 10 He was denied sufficient food, and when given food, he was given very plain meals such as rice and chicken, while others in the house ate regular and more flavorful meals.
Speaker 10 He was isolated from other people and denied all forms of entertainment, including books, notebooks, and electronics. And it gets
Speaker 10 worse.
Speaker 10 After he attempted to run away the first time in July, his hands and feet were regularly bound. The bindings included being tied to his mother Ruby and also to weights.
Speaker 10 Now, many times, the bindings included using two sets of handcuffs, one on his wrists and one on his ankles.
Speaker 10 At times, he would be lying on his stomach, and ropes were used to tie the two sets of handcuffs together so that his arms and lower legs were lifted off the ground, which, from my understanding, means that he was essentially hogtied with handcuffs.
Speaker 10 It is absolutely barbaric and disgusting. The bindings also caused injuries to his wrists and his ankles where the handcuffs had cut through the skin and actually damaged the muscle tissue.
Speaker 10 These injuries were treated with homeopathic remedies and then covered with duct tape. Then the bindings were placed on top of the duct tape.
Speaker 10 Specific instances of of absence that was committed by Ruby herself against her son included kicking him while she was wearing boots, holding his head underwater, and cutting off oxygen by placing her hands over his mouth and nose.
Speaker 10 The absence began in May and it escalated throughout the summer months. Additionally, Ruby and Jodi regularly sought to indoctrinate R.F.
Speaker 10 and convinced him that he was evil and possessed, and also that he needed to willingly be obedient to avoid punishments. And they tried to convince him that the punishments were necessary to repent.
Speaker 10 He was also told that everything that was being done to him were acts of love. I mean, sick, sick, sick.
Speaker 10 Now, for her younger child, who is going by the initials in this document, EF,
Speaker 10 in addition to also being bound and tied, she was subjected to the same treatment as her brother with the tasks, the water, being outside, and not getting any food.
Speaker 10 She was also repeatedly told that she was evil and possessed, and that the punishments were necessary for her to be obedient and to repent.
Speaker 10 And these things were being done to her all in order to help her, again, according to Ruby and Jodi.
Speaker 10 EF was convinced, too, that she was evil and that she needed to go through these things in order for her to repent. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 10 She was forced to work outside in the heat barefoot, and she was also forced to run barefoot on dirt roads for extended periods of time.
Speaker 10 Her feet were repeatedly injured and she was repeatedly sunburned. When examined on August 30th, when the arrests first happened, these wounds were apparent by scabs, blisters, and sloughing skin.
Speaker 10
It is so cruel, so disgusting. And guilty or not, whether she's accepting responsibility or not, it is inexcusable.
It is absolutely barbaric.
Speaker 10 So when the police searched Jodi's house, they collected a shit ton of evidence. First off, they took photos of everything in the house.
Speaker 10
And when you see the photos of the house, it is very, very eerie. The house barely looks lived in.
It's almost like 80% of the house was just completely empty.
Speaker 10 Now it is a 9,000 square foot home, so it's a lot of space to fill, but still, it also makes sense now when you think of the Airbnb guests who were staying there at the same time that these kids were literally being held captive.
Speaker 10
It was a lot of space. They could have been on an entirely different side of the house.
Now, some of these photos throughout the house also showed a few different wound stations.
Speaker 10 Now, what I mean by this is there were like little makeshift setups where there were these huge bowls full of cayenne pepper, honey, this like mixture that they had made, gauze, saran wrap, and band-aids.
Speaker 10 There were ropes, shackles, and duct tape all around the house, which were obviously used to tie tie the kids up.
Speaker 10 There were also pictures of the weights that were used to tie the kids down, and many of the ropes and the shackles were found in what looks to be a panic room.
Speaker 10 It's an underground, concrete, garage-type basement area. And the door to gain access to it is this huge lock that almost looks like a large safe, kind of almost like a bank safe.
Speaker 10
Like it's this huge safe door that is literally the size of a normal door. It's crazy.
And inside there, there was a small mattress, a toilet, a microwave, and a sink.
Speaker 10 Then probably worst of all was the discovery of Ruby's journal entries.
Speaker 10 Now, I went through the journal entries, it was over 60 pages, guys, and I'm not even sure she was being truthful in there about everything that she was accusing the kids of doing, because she does accuse them of doing a lot in these entries, but she admitted to some pretty insane things throughout it.
Speaker 10 A lot of the journal was redacted for the protection of the children, but what is available and what was distributed was enough to make anybody nauseous.
Speaker 10 And I'm going to take you through just a couple of the journal entries that stuck out to me.
Speaker 10 On July 1st, she wrote, quote, R is to stay outside, sleep outside, only come in to go to the bathroom and shower. On July 9th, the day before R's birthday, she wrote, quote, R turns 12 tomorrow.
Speaker 10 I never envisioned him being 12 and still pooping and peeing himself. Satanic choices lead one to becoming destitute, even in the most affluential homes.
Speaker 10 Which, uh, no Ruby, usually if a child is pooping and peeing himself, it is caused by, I don't know, maybe something you're doing, like starvation, like abuse, like all of these other things.
Speaker 10 So then the next day she writes about R not knowing that it's his birthday, and then she calls him a compulsive liar, and she says, quote, I would never have expected the cold, dead heart that R has.
Speaker 10 Then she talks about how E is better behaved with Jodi and says that she gave her a pixie haircut and adds in, quote, all her long hair is gone, no more distracting with hair.
Speaker 10 On that same day, she admits in her journal that she told R to stand in the sun with his sun hat and that he said no, so she pushed him into the sun.
Speaker 10
When he came out of the sun, she pushed him back in with a cactus poker. She said, quote, when I poke his back to get in the sun, R doesn't even flinch.
I poke him in the neck.
Speaker 10 He is in a trance and doesn't appear to feel anything. Jodi taps him on the cheeks to wake him up.
Speaker 10 She talks about how her and Jodi both pushed him into the pool and then alluded to him having the devil inside of him and she performed some sort of weird-ass ritual on him.
Speaker 10 She put her hand over his mouth and his nose and told him, quote, the devil lies and says I am hurting you, abusing you. But R, what am I really doing?
Speaker 10 R responded and said, you are putting oxygen on me to help me breathe. She mentioned multiple times how he would steal food and also water.
Speaker 10 Ruby also said that R mentioned that he wanted to go to jail and that he worshipped the devil.
Speaker 10 I thought it was interesting that she followed it up with, quote, R doesn't actually know what jail means. He has no comprehension of what throwing your life away means, quote.
Speaker 10 Which, I mean, isn't that exactly what Ruby did? It's a little ironic, right?
Speaker 10
So she would talk to R as if he had a demon inside of him, saying things like, quote, Give your demon friend a message for me. I will not rest.
I will not stop. I will not leave.
Speaker 10
I will fight him until the day you die. She would also tease him about how she slept in a very soft bed while he slept on the hard ground.
Mother of the year, right, guys?
Speaker 10 Now, at one point, E thought that she was going to get to eat, but then Ruby told her that she would not eat for a third day because she had, quote, hardened her heart.
Speaker 10 Ruby wrote that E flipped out and laid on the floor all day saying things like, my mom starves me and calls it fasting, and my mom won't lift two fingers and bring me food because all she does is lay on the bed and eat brownies.
Speaker 10 And because she did that, Ruby said that she cut more hair off of E and then, quote, doused her in the dog wash.
Speaker 10 When E said that she wanted to run away, Jodi told her that she had no idea what was waiting for her if she did.
Speaker 10 Then she talks about how her and Jodi, or G Joe, as she calls her throughout the journal, were planning on moving to the desert where the kids could, quote, work.
Speaker 10 She said that before moving, she would let E come and sit in the pantry and she would have R sit on the patio in the shade.
Speaker 10 Then, right when they would think that they got what they wanted and they would start to relax, she would write, quote, pop, we will drop them like hot potatoes out in the desert.
Speaker 10 She also wrote about the day that she completely shaved E's head. E had been walking up and down the stairs with boxes and at one point she slipped.
Speaker 10 Ruby thought that she had fake slipped, so she put her in the dog wash. She shaved her head and then she made her go back back to carrying the boxes.
Speaker 10 When E complained that it was hot outside, Ruby told her that hell would be much hotter, so either get used to it or start changing.
Speaker 10 She also wrote about how one night when she experienced a quote miracle, she wrote, quote, last night God gave me a miracle that I absolutely will never forget. I went to bed around 12, 10 a.m.
Speaker 10 E on the floor next to my bed, and R on the patio outside of my sliding glass window. Oh man, just writing this, I am shaking.
Speaker 10 If Pam hadn't volunteered to take A to American Fork for her ACT test, then I would not have been here. And my life, Jodie's, and my family's would be forever different.
Speaker 10 She goes on to say how she woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that R had run away.
Speaker 10 She says she woke Jodi up and they went out to go find him, jumping in their cars and quote, racing the sun, racing the devil to find him. And finally, they did find him.
Speaker 10 This illustrates that he had tried to run away multiple times before finally being successful, which, I just have to say, that requires an insane amount of bravery.
Speaker 10
Then in her journal, she says, quote, the sun started lighting the road just an hour and a half later. The devil wants me in prison.
My children dead.
Speaker 10 Now, guys, if this is not a dead ringer for Lori Vallo, I don't know what is. And truthfully, I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again.
Speaker 10 It is my belief that had R not escaped, had E not been rescued, there is no doubt in my mind that these children would not have survived.
Speaker 10 There really is no doubt in my mind, and I don't think that they would maybe have ever even been found because of the vast amount of desert out there.
Speaker 10 I don't know, but it sends a chill down my spine when I think about it. Thank God, thank God he escaped.
Speaker 10 Now, after he escaped that one night, Ruby began tying ropes to him at night so that he couldn't leave.
Speaker 10 Another form of punishment that they used was taking the kids to the local cemetery to pull weeds and pick up trash.
Speaker 10 Ruby wrote that they would make them go barefoot to increase the discomfort and to also decrease the chance of them running away.
Speaker 10 She admitted that it was full of huge sagebrush, pokies, thorns, and even broken glass.
Speaker 10 And at one point, the owner of the cemetery came and told Ruby that she was trespassing and had to get off of her land.
Speaker 10 So then Ruby took the kids and she and Jodi explained that the woman was in distortion.
Speaker 10 Because of course, as soon as somebody's not agreeing with what you want to do, they're obviously in distortion, right? Now, at one point, R was crying because his feet were so swollen from standing.
Speaker 10 Ruby told him, quote, when your soul is dying, no one cares about your feet.
Speaker 10 A couple of days later, when R, quote, wasn't manipulating and told Ruby that he wanted to change, Ruby told him, no, that's not true. You didn't manipulate because you weren't uncomfortable.
Speaker 10 Now, reading this journal was absolutely insane because Ruby was just such a freaking hypocrite as she yelled at her kids for manipulating her, but then manipulated them.
Speaker 10 Anything R and E did was never good enough. And Jodi and Ruby would just continue to convince the kids that they sold their souls to the devil.
Speaker 10 Ruby even wrote about putting on a pair of boots and going into the room that he was locked in at one point and kicking him, saying, You want me to help you? No. You want me to feed you? No.
Speaker 10 You want me to shower and provide for you? No.
Speaker 10 She wrote about how he would respond to the different discipline measures of cold water, cactus poking, and whipping him with towels.
Speaker 10 And then after that, she moved to whipping E and R both with a belt.
Speaker 10 There was also another detail that Ruby talked about throughout a lot of her journal entries that literally sends chills down my spine even thinking of it.
Speaker 10 Ruby talks about her and Jodi's plan to buy land in Arizona. In one entry, she says, Jodi and Jay are going on a trip to look at property in Arizona.
Speaker 10 I have some cash in the bank, so if the property is right, we can move on financing immediately. We decided that the escalation of the kids is not manageable here and now.
Speaker 10
R is now sitting, angry and defiant. E is lying on the floor.
We will bring them in. R and I will clean up out in the desert as he has pooped himself.
Speaker 10 Then in another entry, Ruby talked about the land again and said, kids need a good kick from a horse and a cactus to run into.
Speaker 10 Can you imagine saying this about your children, about any children? It is so awful.
Speaker 10 Now, in one of Ruby's jail calls with Kevin, she said that she had cash for the kids' schooling, not so that she could go buy land in Arizona that she could use to torture the children on.
Speaker 10 Towards the end of the journal entries, right before her arrest, she mentioned that A and Jodi were in Tucson looking at a property with 500 acres.
Speaker 10 Then she wrote that Jay, who had been staying back in their Springville home, seemingly by herself, went to go visit Jodi for a week.
Speaker 10 When Ruby took her back to Springville, she said that her, Jay, A, and Pam packed up 20 boxes from the house and put them into a storage unit, and that A then gave two weeks' notice at her work.
Speaker 10 Now, guys, this was just a couple days before R fled and before the arrest happened.
Speaker 10 So I couldn't help but think about how if R hadn't escaped that day, they likely would have moved to Arizona, maybe even on 500 acres.
Speaker 10 And like I said earlier, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have had another Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell situation on our hands.
Speaker 10 The journal entries were essentially just one sick confession after another.
Speaker 10 Then I started thinking about Kevin freaking out about the journals that Sherry took, because remember he freaked out and wanted to charge her with burglary when she took all of that stuff from the house?
Speaker 10 What was in those journals? Was it more confessions? Did they show a timeline of things beginning to escalate over time?
Speaker 10 Was he worried that if the police read them, then he would be implicated and be in trouble as well?
Speaker 10 I mean, and again, in that moment, your first instinct as a parent should be your children's well-being.
Speaker 10
So you shouldn't be trying to charge your daughter with burglary for trying to help her siblings. You should be the one trying to help your own children, my man.
Like, give me a break.
Speaker 10 Which kind of just cements my other point because, in one of Kevin's very first interviews, when he was first told that his kids had been rescued and that they had wounds that were aligned with,
Speaker 10 before even asking how the children were, he asked about Ruby.
Speaker 10 He was more concerned with his wife after hearing literally point blank that his one son had run away, that he was asking for help, that he was malnourished, that he was emaciated, all of these things.
Speaker 10 And his concern was Ruby, which it really makes you ask the question: how much did Kevin really know was going on?
Speaker 10 Because that definitely doesn't seem in line with the statement of a parent who is in shock and hearing those allegations for the first time.
Speaker 10 So, Jody and Ruby were sentenced to their four counts of aggravated child abuse in February of 2024.
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Speaker 22 I would like to make a statement without any intent to change my stipulated sentence.
Speaker 22 For the past four years, I've chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion.
Speaker 22 My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone who challenged me.
Speaker 22 I was led to believe that this world was an an evil place filled with cops who control, hospitals that injure, government agencies that brainwash, church leaders who lie and lust,
Speaker 22 husbands who refuse to protect, and children who need.
Speaker 22 My choice to believe and behave this paranoia culminated into criminal activity for which I stand before you today ready to take accountability.
Speaker 22 Jodi de Brant was never my business partner, nor was I ever employed by her. I have never received wages from her or connections.
Speaker 22 Jodi was employed as my son's counselor in 2019, and in 2020, I paid her
Speaker 22 to me to demonstrate my remorse and regret without blame. I take full accountability for my choices, and it is my preference that I serve a prison sentence.
Speaker 22 Thank you to the officers in Santa Clara and the Island City Police. Nick Hallman, Brian Palufo, Sar Pikjovit,
Speaker 22 Mike Pondoyo in Tobler, John Ward, Dee Lewis, and Chief Flowers.
Speaker 22 You were the angels who came and saved my children. I especially want to thank Detective Jay Bate.
Speaker 22 She plucked me out of a situation I didn't know how to to get out of.
Speaker 22 And the moment she handcuffed me was the moment I gained my freedom.
Speaker 22 You were not the controlling ones. I was.
Speaker 22
Thank you to the medical staff at Intermountain Hospital. Your skill, tenderness, and professionalism helped to heal my children.
Jodie and I inflicted the injuries,
Speaker 22 not the hospital.
Speaker 22 Thank you to DCFS, the Children's Justice Center, Judge Basil, and other key adults. You've gathered my children under your wing and offered them love, compassion, encouragement.
Speaker 22 You were not the ones who were doing the brainwashing.
Speaker 22 Thank you to my Bishop Tom Hawks and my state president Jim Nelson
Speaker 22 for reminding me of the Lord's love for the lost.
Speaker 22 So much pain and suffering would have been avoided had I followed and heeded your counsel. I was the one who was deceived, not you.
Speaker 22 Thank you to the Washington County Prosecutor's Office, Ryan Schaum, the legal assistants and discovery clerks.
Speaker 22
Eric Clark, you exemplified to me how justice and mercy are meant to coexist. My charges are just.
They offer safety to my family, accountability to the public,
Speaker 22 and they did show mercy to me.
Speaker 22 Thank you to my attorney Lamar Wynward and his staff. I would not be where I am today without them.
Speaker 22 Thank you to Randy Kester for your limitless energy in healing my family.
Speaker 22 My dear friends, Pam and William, I'm so sorry for letting you down.
Speaker 22 Because of your association with me, your innocence was called into question.
Speaker 22 My mother-in-law, father-in-law, Kevin's family, my cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and neighbors, you all saw the warning signs long before I did, and you did what you could.
Speaker 22 You wanted to help, but I pushed you away.
Speaker 22 My mother and father,
Speaker 22
I have been utterly wretched to you. You have offered me unconditional love.
And for that, I have offered you unconditional contempt.
Speaker 22 My siblings and their spouses, because of my decision to roll around in a pig style, I have dragged your families through the mud in public.
Speaker 22 Yet, when I desired to return as a prodigal sister, unlike the prodigal's brother in the Bible, you synced up with my parents and ran out to greet me.
Speaker 22 Your capacity to love is unprecedented.
Speaker 22 Kevin,
Speaker 22 my husband of more than 23 years,
Speaker 22 you were the love of my life.
Speaker 22 So sorry to leave to you to finish what we both started together.
Speaker 22 The ending of our marriage is a tragedy.
Speaker 22 It will wrap around my heart,
Speaker 22 and I wrap all I will be able to undo
Speaker 22 to my babies,
Speaker 22 my six little chicks,
Speaker 22 you were part of me.
Speaker 22 I was the mama duck who was consistently literally me to safety.
Speaker 22 I can see now
Speaker 22 over the past four years, I was in a deep undercurrent that led us to danger.
Speaker 22 I went
Speaker 22 led you to darkness knowingly.
Speaker 22 I was so disoriented.
Speaker 22 Been in the great darkness light, and light was wrong.
Speaker 22 I would do anything in this world for you.
Speaker 22 My willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly.
Speaker 22 I took from her all that was soft and safe and good.
Speaker 22 I took for her mother.
Speaker 22 How terrifying this must have been for you.
Speaker 22 Oh, I will stop crying.
Speaker 22 You are hurting your tender souls.
Speaker 22 You are so precious to me. I'm sorry.
Speaker 23 My choice
Speaker 22 to live in fear of the world has created a great vulnerability and a blind spot for me
Speaker 22 where I have broken hearts and I've caused people to suffer and I have betrayed sacred trust.
Speaker 22 Watching my community respond to my charges
Speaker 22 with justice and mercy and grace and love is all in all evidence to me how long I've been.
Speaker 22 This world is full of really good people.
Speaker 22 And finally,
Speaker 22 I'm sorry for twisting God's word and distorting his doctrines. I am humbled and willing to serve
Speaker 22 a prison sentence as long as it takes to continue unraveling all of the disinformation I have believed and bought, swallowed, and acted out.
Speaker 22 I'm committed to continuing my learning until all of my toxic layers are shed and I am ready to re-enter as a contributing member of our beautiful society. Thank you, Judge Walton.
Speaker 67 I sincerely love these children.
Speaker 67 I desire for them to heal physically and emotionally.
Speaker 67 One of the reasons I did not go to trial is that I did not want them to emotionally relive the experience which would have been detrimental to them.
Speaker 67 My hope and prayer is that they will heal and move forward to have beautiful lives.
Speaker 67 I am willing to submit to what the state feels would be an appropriate amount of time served to make restribution.
Speaker 10 Now, if you thought that Ruby and Jodi being sentenced would have kept their names and faces out of the mainstream media for good, you are incredibly wrong because one of the more positive reasons that they have still been in the media is all due to Ruby's oldest daughter, Sherry, and her releasing a book.
Speaker 10 And I mentioned it at the top of this episode, but this book was like a complete tell-all.
Speaker 10 And I've actually done a summary of the book itself, as mentioned, which I gotta say, she seriously blew this out of the water. And if you're into reading, you should definitely check it out.
Speaker 10 Or at the very least, go check out that episode. I'll link it in the show notes.
Speaker 10 So without completely rehashing it all, I will say that the book was filled to the brim with pretty insane details and also a behind the scenes look into what was going on in the Frankie household during that time.
Speaker 10
But one of the more significant things that Sherry alluded to was Ruby and Jodi being lovers. And like I said, I think everyone already assumed that.
I mean, to be fair.
Speaker 10 But the fact that she basically confirmed it was pretty insane.
Speaker 10 Now, Sherry has also been very, very busy because on top of writing her book, she has has also been extremely active in political spaces. And I cannot commend her hard work enough.
Speaker 10 Last October, she even testified in front of Utah lawmakers, arguing that there is no such thing as ethical family vlogging, and that her and her siblings' trauma and lives are a perfect example of that, a perfect illustration of that.
Speaker 6 I don't come today as the daughter of a felon, nor as a victim of an abnormally abusive mother. I come today as a victim of family vlogging.
Speaker 6 My goal is not to present any idea of a solution to this problem, but to shed light on the ethical and monetary issues that come from being a child influencer.
Speaker 6 When children become stars in their family's online content, they become child influencers. It is more than just filming your family life and putting it online.
Speaker 6 It is a full-time job with employees, business credit cards, managers, and marketing strategies.
Speaker 6 The difference between family vlogging and a normal business, however, is that all the children are employees.
Speaker 6 Children from before they are born to the day they turn 18 have become the stars of family businesses on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
Speaker 6 Utah is specifically a hotspot for family content due to the LDS culture around family and the goal to share the church with the world.
Speaker 6 We also have large families, which makes family content more lucrative. Specifically, many parents film their regular family life as an online video blog called a vlog.
Speaker 6 But I want to be clear that there is never, ever, a good reason for posting your children online for money or fame. There is no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger.
Speaker 6 At first, family vlogging is an alluring business that can bring high revenue. For my family, it became the primary source of income, as is often the case with most full-time family vloggers.
Speaker 6 Many child influencers are paid for their work, as I was, and this money has helped me in my adult life. However, this payment was usually a bribe.
Speaker 6 For example, we'd be rewarded $100 or a shopping trip if we filmed a particularly embarrassing moment or an exciting event in our lives.
Speaker 6 Or other times, simply going on vacation was expected to be payment enough because most kids don't get to go on regular and expensive trips, never mind the fact that the child's labor is actually what paid for the vacation or trip.
Speaker 6 There is no law in place to guarantee that child influencers get any money from their work. If a family account does not become an LLC, parents are taxed heavily for paying their children.
Speaker 6 But parents also receive tax write-offs for the regular clothes that they wear, the money, the gas money used to drive places, and even the houses they live in.
Speaker 6 Anything that is filmed can be written off. And even after registering their business as an LLC, there is no guarantee that children will get paid.
Speaker 6 Any payment that does happen is under the table with no paper trail. And how do we determine how much a child should make from appearing in family content?
Speaker 6 What price is worth giving up your childhood? But despite any monetary payment children may receive, don't let this excuse the 24-7 labor that these children are subjected to.
Speaker 6 As a child, I was fully aware that I was an employee. The business was successful when I was happy or when I shared my hardships with the world.
Speaker 6 Some of our most popular videos were when my eyebrow was accidentally waxed off and the whole world saw a crying teenager when I just wanted to mourn in private.
Speaker 6 Or the time I was violently ill and got the leading role in the video that day. My friends became scarce because dates were filmed and none of my friends wanted to be on camera.
Speaker 6 The camera never stops and there is no such thing as a break from filming.
Speaker 6 At the time I tell you I had a choice in what was filmed, but I've come to learn that every child influencer, in a way, suffers from Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker 6 Most child influencers would probably tell you they have full control over what is posted, but the reality is that their parents bribe and shame them into posting their most vulnerable moments.
Speaker 6 In fact, many child influencers may tell you that they enjoy their work because of the monetary perks they receive or the fun experiences that they can have.
Speaker 6 After all, what child would say no to a fun vacation or shopping spree if all they needed to do was film an embarrassing moment?
Speaker 6 But as children, we do not understand the consequences of filming our lives and posting it for the world to see. We cannot give consent to our parents to post our lives.
Speaker 6 In any other context, it is understood that children cannot give consent, but for some reason, people think family vlogging is different.
Speaker 10 Now, the fact that it is 2025 and there are still no regulations really with family vlogging absolutely baffles me because we see that there are regulations with child actors in Hollywood, right?
Speaker 10 I mean, you have to put a percentage percentage of their pay, if not all of their pay, away in a separate account so that you can't just access those funds as a parent and that it goes to them.
Speaker 10 Yet family vlogging is kind of like the Wild West because there literally can be a child who still is in your stomach that you are exploiting by vlogging about it, sharing your experience, making money off of that child before they're even born.
Speaker 10 And that child
Speaker 10
hasn't consented. They don't know that they're being broadcast to millions of people.
They're not getting paid or compensated in any way for that.
Speaker 10 Not to mention the safety aspect of this, because a lot of these family vlogging channels have children who are in elementary school, middle school, even high school, and they are such public figures that they are recognized everywhere they go.
Speaker 10 And that, of course, is extremely dangerous when you take into consideration the parasocial relationships and how these people on the internet think that they know you, that they know your child.
Speaker 10 and some in some very dangerous situations become fixated on them. The child didn't consent to that.
Speaker 10 The child, you know, had no say in that, especially when they started doing this at such a young age and then feel almost obligated as though it's their responsibility to continue doing that so that their family can put food on the table.
Speaker 10 It's absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 68 I hope you have a lousy day at school.
Speaker 68
Don't be nice to anybody. Stay flat.
Let people squish you.
Speaker 55 Bye.
Speaker 68 What are you crying at?
Speaker 69 What's your problem?
Speaker 10 And a perfect example and illustration of that is Ruby's children. They had no say of when the cameras were on or off.
Speaker 10 They had no say of if their most intimate, private details were going to be shared, their text messages shared, them starting their periods for the first time.
Speaker 10 All of these very personal, private, and pivotal moments in their lives just shared with the public. And they had no say in that.
Speaker 10 So I have to just say, Sherry's work is just absolutely commendable, incredible, and so brave and so like right on the money. Like that is what needs to happen.
Speaker 10 There needs to be regulations put in place. She's really doing the work to make sure that no other kids have to suffer the way that she and her siblings did.
Speaker 25 Sherry's crying.
Speaker 20 The good news is I did it on purpose.
Speaker 25 But you obviously have no taste because this is terrible.
Speaker 70 Has your mother ever ruined your life?
Speaker 14 Whatever. Do you want me to do it round it? Nope.
Speaker 70 She was turned on by her pet and now she feels like she's been turned on by her own own mother and her feelings are legitimate and she has every right to be mad.
Speaker 70 I should have deliberated a little bit more with Sherry and told her, hey, this is what I'm thinking of doing a little differently. What do you think? Instead, I just...
Speaker 70 assumed she would like it and I did it without consenting with her. So I owe her the biggest apology.
Speaker 10 Now something else that Sherry touched on in her book was her relationship with her dad Kevin.
Speaker 10 And I think that a lot of people when it comes to Kevin are back and forth with him, understandably, because he was an active participant in the not even the early days, but in the majority of while all this first started coming to a head.
Speaker 10 And then he just kind of like backpedaled out of it, right? And allowed Ruby to have free reign. And to this day, he still has not been charged with anything.
Speaker 10 And like I said, people either agree with that or they don't.
Speaker 69 There's no present for me.
Speaker 60 There's presents for mom.
Speaker 69 It's Mother's Day.
Speaker 69 Well, I don't like it.
Speaker 69 Well, we love mom. Let's go.
Speaker 10 Now, Sherry briefly mentioned toward the end of her book that she was rebuilding her relationship with Kevin and that he was actively fighting for custody of her younger siblings who are still in the custody of the state, which I'll get into more of that shortly here.
Speaker 10 But that leads us into what exactly Kevin has been up to himself, because it's a huge question that everybody wants to know.
Speaker 10 Now, even though after that initial arrest, it seemed almost like Kevin was still kind of brainwashed and under the spell of the connections cult type way. You could argue that.
Speaker 10 Some people don't believe it. But even though it seemed like that to some, it seems like since then, he has been able to undo a lot of that.
Speaker 10 But something I will say is when the arrest first went down, he was still all in on Ruby, all in on all of that, because I believe it was Sherry.
Speaker 10 And don't quote me on this, but I believe it was Sherry. It was Sherry.
Speaker 10 She went back to the house to get the hard drives, the passports, all of these things, because she didn't want anybody covering things up. She didn't want people hiding evidence.
Speaker 10 And he got so upset about that that he tried to have her arrested and charged for, it wasn't burglary or breaking and entering, maybe it was just burglary, but something to that effect where she was only doing that to try to save and protect her siblings.
Speaker 10 Yet he was siding with Ruby that he was actually going after his own daughter. So, like I said, she has said that they are trying to rebuild their relationship.
Speaker 10 And I don't know if that's because he was still actively brainwashed at that moment and now has slowly like began to unravel all of that. I have my own opinions, but it is something worth noting.
Speaker 10 And Sherry has forgiven him. She is actively working on rebuilding that relationship, which I cannot imagine is an easy thing to do.
Speaker 18 What I lose sleep over is when kids start self-sabotaging their own efforts.
Speaker 16 That's the kind of stuff that really concerns me.
Speaker 8 Just to stick it to their teachers or to stick it to their parents or family.
Speaker 18 And the only person they're really hurting is themselves.
Speaker 8 Yeah, that's the kind of behavior that we're hoping this program can help Chad correct.
Speaker 18 And so we're not thinking that anyone's going to be like fixed or corrected, but like reveal it to him.
Speaker 18 Yeah, that's a good way to say it.
Speaker 8
Yeah, because no one can fix anybody. A person has to choose if they're going to make changes in their lives.
And so
Speaker 8 I think this experience will reveal Chad and everyone else who's out there to themselves and they can learn to better themselves or just stay in the mud.
Speaker 10 Yeah, like I mentioned a bit ago, Kevin has been part of an ongoing court battle, and this whole court process has been kept out of the public, which I have to say is probably a good thing.
Speaker 10 I'm just hoping that one day these poor kids can live a seemingly normal life, and that Kevin has truly healed, and that he's ready to, you know, be a dad and take on the trauma and the PTSD that those kids no doubt have.
Speaker 10 And speaking of the kids, we have received a small update about how they're doing and their condition. And I've got to say, I am very happy with this update because it goes to their overall health.
Speaker 10 Since they're all still minors, roughly between ages 11 and 17, I'm not going to say their names and a lot of the information has been kept private.
Speaker 10 However, the lead prosecutor over the case updated last year that R and E are doing a lot better, stating, quote, I think people should know that the kids have put on weight.
Speaker 10
They're interacting, happy, and healthy. It's not like they're great, but they are light years better.
And thank heavens for that.
Speaker 10 I don't even know how long it will take to undo all of that trauma that they have been through, but the fact that they are what he is saying, light years ahead, that is just... absolutely amazing.
Speaker 10 And I don't think there's anything better that any of us could hope for. Now, in late January of 2025, Jodi was back in court, this time because somebody filed a lawsuit against her.
Speaker 10 And this lawsuit comes from a former client of Jodi's named Michael Tillman.
Speaker 10 Michael is suing both Jodi and Ruby, actually, for racketeering and fraud because of their whole business with connections, cult connections.
Speaker 10 And the whole lawsuit is claiming that despite being behind bars, Jodi and Ruby, connections is still thriving.
Speaker 10 Not only are they continuing to do business with existing members, but they're actually actively recruiting new members, as alarming as that is.
Speaker 10 And more than that, this lawsuit also alleges that they believe that current existing members, regardless how long they've been within connections, are physically harming children, just like Ruby and Jodi had done as well.
Speaker 10
Basically, saying the activity and the core issues here, it's still going on. They're not stopping.
Jodi still believes all of this.
Speaker 10 She's still actively recruiting people and they're continuing to push this just insane message that this is the way you should parent and that this is the way you should treat your children, punish your children.
Speaker 10
It's just, if that still is going on, and if people have not seen the light yet about connections, heaven help you. I don't know what else to tell you.
So, if all of that is true, this could be huge.
Speaker 18 Hello and welcome to Connections. We're so glad you're with us.
Speaker 18 When I first started getting to know you, she's like, anger is my favorite emotion. I'm like,
Speaker 23 I don't know who I'm dealing with here.
Speaker 10 Now, Michael's involvement with Jodi, Ruby, and Connections all began in 2015 because he and his wife had started going to Jodi for marriage counseling.
Speaker 10 And he essentially says that Jodi and her, you know, wacko teachings created this huge rift in his marriage, which ultimately resulted in their divorce and a very nasty custody battle of their daughter.
Speaker 10 And that's kind of Jodi's MO, right?
Speaker 10 I talked about it a little bit at the beginning of this episode, but she liked to fracture marriages and relationships and always paint the man as the bad guy and work her way in, like weasel her way in.
Speaker 10 And that is what Michael is alleging here. That's exactly what she did, apparently.
Speaker 10 Now, what I will say is, Michael's ex-wife and representatives for both Jodi and Ruby have declined to comment on this.
Speaker 10 But I, for one, am extremely curious to see where this lawsuit goes and what other information we may learn from it.
Speaker 10 And I especially want to know if Connections is still active, because I feel like that is such a huge concern for public safety, for children's safety. So I hope it's shut down.
Speaker 10 If it's not, or I hope somebody does shut it down, because clearly it has a track record of being reckless and very dangerous. Now, I know that this was a big episode, okay?
Speaker 10
And I appreciate you for sticking with me. But again, I just felt like there was so much to cover.
And I'm sure we'll be back here in another six months with more updates, maybe another deep dive.
Speaker 10 I'm not sure. But I wanted to at least give you all of the information on this case, especially if you're new to the case or maybe you just watched the documentary and you wanted to learn more.
Speaker 10
I just really wanted it to be in one spot. So I hope you found it helpful.
Other than that, guys, thank you so much for tuning in today.
Speaker 10 I will be back on the mic with you on Thursday with headline highlights, where we talk everything every Thursday about what's breaking in the true crime world, new cases, old cases, existing cases, everything true crime related every Thursday.
Speaker 10 So thank you guys so much for being here.
Speaker 10 If you want to make sure you don't miss any future episodes or bonus episodes that we drop, take a quick second, whatever podcast app you're listening on, just follow the show.
Speaker 10
It's totally free, but that way it'll be like in your podcast queue on your phone so that you don't miss these. All right, thank you guys again.
And until the next one, please do not join any cults.
Speaker 10
Do not kill people. Be a good person and stay the heck away from connections.
Honestly, that's like the best advice I could give. All right, guys, thanks so much, and I will talk with you soon.
Bye.
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