Welcome and Guest Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast and a joint production, a collaboration with the amazing Jordan and McKay YouTube channel. We are here today to talk about kind of some breaking news, if you can call it that, a day or two after the story actually breaks.

John Dehlin [00:00:23] For those who don't know famous Utah Mormon YouTubers, the Frankie family have gotten themselves into trouble, along with a Mormon therapist named Jody Hildebrandt. But basically for those who have no idea what we're talking about, for the past several years there's been this super famous YouTube channel called Eight Passengers Starring.

John Dehlin [00:00:51] And I, I'm not a Follower of the 8Passengers YouTube channel. So that's why we have Jordan McKay. Here are Mormon Stories to be our experts for today. But apparently there's been the super famous YouTube channel called Eight Passengers Run by this big Mormon family with I think six kids and, and two parents, a dad that, that worked at BYU and they had like something like 2.5 million followers. And let's just say their exhibitionism and parenting techniques were called into question consistently over a number of years. And then recently their YouTube channel started to fade out and the mom, Ruby Frankie, started collaborating with this super problematic Mormon therapist named Jody Hildebrandt, who I had been made aware of several years ago, and I'll be talking about that as well.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] And together they started, you know, a Facebook group and a YouTube video channel and Instagram video, talking about parenting to a largely Mormon audience. And then lo and behold, just a few days ago, Ruby and Jody were arrested in St. George, around St. George, Utah, southern Utah, on abuse charges after one of their malnourished children was found begging for, if I, as I understand it, food and water with duct tape having been wrapped around their, their wrists and ankles. Super disturbing dark story and one that we're going to be talking about today within a Mormon lens because there's plenty of news stories out there to talk about this, this story in particular.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] But we on Mormon Stories, and I think Jordan McKay as well, do our best to try and analyze these types of stories from a Mormon lens. And so without any Further ado, Jordan McKay, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. It's great to have you both.

Jordan [00:02:55] It's great to be back and the glowing introduction that you gave us was great to hear.

John Dehlin [00:03:04] Well, how long ago were you, were you both on Mormon Stories podcast? Because you have your own Mormon Stories long form interview. Do you all remember how long ago that was?

Jordan [00:03:12] Oh, it was a year and a half ago. Yeah, it was like January that we filmed it Last year. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:21] And your channel's been going gangbusters. Do you want to give my viewers who aren't familiar with you and anyone else who's viewing or listening, do you want to give them a sense for what your channel is all about? Just kind of broadly?

Jordan [00:03:34] I'll let you take it away.

McKay [00:03:37] So we talk about a lot of things, but mainly what we've been doing recently, which is why John brought us on, is because we talk a lot about Mormon influencers. So your big, like big vlogging. Big vlogging families and then like big Instagram social media people like, you know, Jordan Page. Not enough Nelson's eight passengers prior to this. So we talk about them through, you know, an ex Mormon lens. And then we also cover other, like, pop culture Christians, I guess you could say, like Christians that have become more popular in the media recently from an ex Mormon lens. So that's primarily what we do.

John Dehlin [00:04:14] Excellent. Yeah. And Jordan, I think it was you who reached out to me and said, hey, let's do a collab. And I was really happy about that because there's no way with the week I just had, I'd be able to get up to speed in any way close to the expertise that you both have now. You both have created videos in the past. I want to make sure and plug that you both have created videos in the past, kind of longer form interviews specifically about, you know, Ruby and eight passengers. Is that correct?

Jordan [00:04:44] Yeah, we actually have had a lot of content where we had discussed this. I think we made a reaction video initially to something that we found really, like grossly inappropriate for really any family vlogger to do. Probably like two years ago at this point.

McKay [00:05:04] It's been two years.

Jordan [00:05:05] And then over. Over time we've. We've done other episodes reviewing some of the stuff that has come up with Connections coaching.

McKay [00:05:14] We actually did an episode where we applied the byte model to Connections.

Guest [00:05:19] Oh, wow.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] And Jody Hildebrandt.

McKay [00:05:20] Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:05:20] Yep.

Jordan [00:05:21] Yeah, there were a lot of red flags for sure. Yeah. In that situation.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] All right, well, we'll. We'll make sure that, you know, Maven and or Julia have some links in our show notes that point to some of those episodes. If you guys can send those to us because we want to make sure.

Jordan [00:05:37] Yeah, we have a whole.

John Dehlin [00:05:39] Yeah, a whole playlist. Like a playlist. Oh, good. You have like eight passengers Jody Hildebrandt playlist on YouTube. That's amazing.

McKay [00:05:46] We do.

Live Audience Welcome and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:05:47] Okay, really quickly, I want to welcome our viewing audience. Wow. We've already got like 1400 live stream viewers. That's probably normal for you guys, but it's a special story on Mormon stories that breaks a thousand live stream viewers. So welcome to all our livestream viewers. We, we're live streaming both through Facebook and YouTube. I'm just going to ask right off, please go subscribe to Jordan McKay YouTube channel and if you haven't subscribed to Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel, please subscribe there or on Facebook because subscriptions really help promote the channel, grow the channel, and it's an important way. We always appreciate super chat donations on YouTube and also we're Simal streaming to Jordan McKay's YouTube channel, so, so we welcome all those viewers as well. And yeah, any other, any other housekeeping before we jump in? Jordan McKay?

Jordan [00:06:44] No, yeah, we appreciate the subscriptions and everything. Last time you plugged us, we got these mics, so.

John Dehlin [00:06:50] Oh, nice.

Jordan [00:06:51] Yeah, we were able to put it right back into.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] And can people donate directly to Jordan McKay like through a Venmo or PayPal or anything?

Jordan [00:07:00] We, we have that. We also have Patreon and you could become a member of the channel. They're, they're all kind of like the subscription based. We have members and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:07:10] So, so you go to what, Jordan McKay at Jordan McKay on YouTube. Is that the way to direct people?

Jordan [00:07:16] Yep, Yep. All right, every dot com. Jordan McKay. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:07:21] Say that again.

Jordan [00:07:22] Patreon dot com.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] Got it, got it. So, all right, everybody go do that right now. Support these creators. They're important. All right, so just so people know what we're going to be doing today, I asked Jordan McKay because I, I, you know, I've consistently asked, been asked over the years to cover eight passengers and other Mormon social media influencers. And I just haven't had the time or the expertise to do it as much as I would want. And I've had many people say, you got to expose Jody Hildebrandt. And frankly, I haven't had former participants in Jody Hildebrandt's programs who've been willing to go on, go on the public record to talk about their experiences, largely because Jody Hildebrandt, in my understanding, deals a lot with sexual shame, pornography and masturbation issues.

John Dehlin [00:08:12] And who wants to go on, you know, the Internet and talk about, you know, the, the, the shame in Mormonism and Christianity and in our broader culture that, that is surrounding porn and masturbation. But anyway, today what I want to do is for all those viewers out there in the world who want to know kind of the overview of, of who the Eight passengers are, who the Frankie family is and who Jody Hildebrandt is and what led to this fiasco. We're going to be covering that with video clips and again, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to be doing an analysis of how Mormon is this story.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] But because anytime there's a murder within the Mormons, Chad Dabel and Lori Vallow, all these dentists that keep murdering their wives within Mormon context, it's always fair to ask is this a Mormon story where somehow the Mormon Church is causing people or contributing to people doing bad things, or are these just stories of people doing bad things that just happen to be Mormon? And, and I think between the three of us, we might have some good things to say about, you know, to what extent Mormon theology, Mormon doctrine, Mormon culture, Mormon practice might be contributing to all these freaking weird stories that keep coming out of Utah and Idaho.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] We may have Dr. Julie Hanks come on later towards the end of the show to provide her perspective as well. She's a super well known and well respected therapist here in Utah and she happens to be believing and active in the Mormon Church, but is also super progressive. So we hope Julie is able to join us later.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] Anything else y' all want to do by way of introduction? Oh, oh, and I should say later this week I've called people to send me their Jody Hildebrandt connection stories. I've already gotten 10 or 20 stories, but we are going to be showcasing stories of people that have had really unethical or horrific experiences with Jody Hildebrandt and the Connections program, which in and of itself is important. But I think there's a very much a larger problem within Mormon culture that is not just constricted to Jody Hildebrandt or Connections that needs to be addressed. So look for another Mormon Stories episode this week on Jody Hildebrandt and Connections.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] And please email me@mormonstoriesgmail.com if you want to share your Jody Hildebrandt connection story. And we're probably, we hope to have at least two, I'll just say, I don't know, survivors from Jody Hildebrandt and Connections who are going to come on Mormon Stories and tell their stories. But if you are willing and able to, to tell your Jody Hildebrandt connection story on Mormon stories, email us@mormonstoriesmail.com and we'll have you on as well. I think the FBI and the police are looking for stories to help build the case. Anything Jordan McKay you guys want to say before we jump into the slide presentation.

Jodi Hildebrandt and Connections Background

McKay [00:11:24] Yeah. I'm so glad you're covering Jody because she's. I mean, connections as a whole is awful. We have our little connections book that one of our fans actually sent us, so we're a little too familiar with connections at this point. But I'm so glad she's finally getting coverage because the things that she's done are just awful. Like, everyone I've ever spoken to who's worked with her has had like a horrifying experience. And yes, to answer your point there, it appears that they're compiling evidence. Ruby's oldest daughter, who does not speak with her anymore, has asked people to send her things, like any evidence that they have, clips they've compiled, like a whole Google document. Like. So that's what we know about kind of what they're doing so far.

John Dehlin [00:12:08] And we'll do our best to include that in the show notes as well. Julian, Julia and or Maven can can annotate that. Anything else you all want to say about kind of intentions or hopes for today's episode?

Jordan [00:12:21] I personally, a while back, probably about a year, um, I remember we were looking around on the, the subreddit where a lot of people post about eight passengers, usually in a critical manner. And they had a clip where they said this sounds like they're talking about Jordan and McKay and they shared a little anecdote on their little show or what, whatever you want to call it, that sound an awful lot like a video that we had uploaded about them. And so kind of in a joking manner, it was like, oh, we have personal beef with these people now because they've tried to call us out or, or whatever. But in all honesty, everything that we've seen and heard of both of these people, it has just really formed a. Almost a vendetta against them because they just go through life and take advantage of people and especially kids and, and

McKay [00:13:25] ruin families, separate marriages.

Jordan [00:13:28] To see Jody getting the attention that she so desperately craved for so long in the way that she didn't want it. It's just, it feels good to finally get that. The fruition of that.

John Dehlin [00:13:42] Yeah, we'll get to it. But my, my concern with Jody Hildebrandt and connections is that they pedal. They. They monetize religious and Mormon shame. And my understanding is they contribute to the destruction of marriages and families. Very vulnerable people, including teenagers, because I've had teenagers email me that Jody was their therapist. And for those who don't want the Mormon Church to be associated, so many people have emailed me and said that it was the Mormon Church bishops in the Mormon Church that referred them to Jody Hildebrandt. So Jody was absolutely on the LDS Family Services list and was formally, many, many, many Mormons in Utah were formally referred to both Jody Hildebrandt and connections.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Really quickly. Thanks to Diana, Sorry, Dana Rain for the super chat. Thanks to Galila Sinatra. She, she says Jordan and McKay are on it. I agree love is a four letter word. Thank you for that super chat as well as Raleigh Rue.

John Dehlin [00:14:49] You know, I appreciate your patience as I call out the people who support us, but we can't do this stuff without your support. All right, without any further ado, Jordan McKay, do you all want to set up this PowerPoint slide presentation with video clips that you all have so thoughtfully put together?

Guest [00:15:05] Sure.

McKay [00:15:07] So what we compiled, we tried to compile as succinctly as possible with like the main highlights that, I mean, there's so much. So I tried to encapsulate everything that we feel like is the most significant and important. And of course there will be things that we've, we leave out that are horrible that they've also done. So. No, this isn't fully comprehensive by any means, but the way that I kind of, the way that McKay and I kind of put this together was giving you insight, as if you, like if you have no idea who eight passengers is, because I saw many of you in the comments who didn't.

McKay [00:15:39] And so I put this together with you in mind. Like, you know nothing about eight passengers. You don't know anything about the family, their history. And so I've compiled who they are, how they started their channel, what it originally looked like, and then when everything started to go downhill. So it's, it's comprehensive, but I will not touch on everything. So just know that that's why we have other videos and things to cover that.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] Absolutely. All right, let's jump into the first slide. Who are eight passengers?

Eight Passengers Channel Origins and Growth

McKay [00:16:07] So I went ahead and blocked out some of the kids spaces. That's something that McKay and I try to do on our channel to try to afford as much privacy to these kids who have not had any privacy at all. So the four younger children are still minors, and then the two older ones that you see here are both now adults, which is why I included them. But then you have Ruby and Kevin in the middle and they're standing in front of a temple. I don't know which one this was,

Jordan [00:16:31] but I'm not familiar with it.

McKay [00:16:32] Yeah, so that's our, that's where we're going to start.

John Dehlin [00:16:35] And that's obviously like Mormon Temple. Like for those who want to know if this is a Mormon story, we're going to talk about so much of their, their brand was, was steeped in, in Mormonism. True.

Jordan [00:16:48] Absolutely. And we'll touch on that a little bit in a couple other slides.

John Dehlin [00:16:52] Okay, so just tell me when to jump to the next slide.

McKay [00:16:56] You can go to the next one.

John Dehlin [00:16:57] Okay, here we go.

McKay [00:16:59] So our players here, our first two, obviously going to be the most important. Well, I think of the three, I guess. So we've got Ruby, we've got Kevin. This is another picture where they're standing in front of a church building.

Jordan [00:17:12] That was from their Instagram, isn't it?

McKay [00:17:13] That's what. Yeah, this was from their Instagram. This was a few years ago, so not the most recent. But we've got Ruby, who's 41, she's been a stay at home mom, which has been a big kind of part of their platform as well. And we have Kevin on the right who is 44 and he's currently. Well, formerly, formerly it sounds like engineering professor at byu. So there was speculation onto whether Kevin was still teaching at all. We are not 100% sure. Things are starting to come out that he might not be. BYU deleted his staff profile.

Jordan [00:17:48] Well, they made a, they made a statement and said that he was not employed at the, at the university since the spring.

McKay [00:17:56] Since the spring.

Jordan [00:17:57] So I'm not really sure if he taught at all last year when him and Ruby seemingly split up. We haven't really heard anything on that.

McKay [00:18:06] But we'll come back to that.

Jordan [00:18:07] But we'll come back to it.

McKay [00:18:09] So it was a pretty big part of their channel for a while. They talked about the fact that he taught at BYU a lot and they were very heavy on like BYU was very much a part of like the family culture, like it is for a lot of Mormons. You know, they had the BYU decor in the house and that's where their oldest daughter is going to school now. So that's a kind of big part of this also. So next thing with Ruby that I think is important to give context. Her parents are Mormon. Kevin's parents are Mormon. They are through and through Mormons. Ruby's parents are actually currently on a mission and in Serbia. They left last year, right?

Jordan [00:18:49] Yeah, around this time last year.

McKay [00:18:50] Around this time last year. So they've been gone a year and they are die hard Mormons also. It runs through and through with Ruby's

John Dehlin [00:19:00] family and for the, for the never Mormons. That are tuning in. We often, outsiders often sort of associate Mormon missionary work with, you know, you know, 18 to 21 year old boys running around in white shirts and ties. But there's this whole massive culture of what we call senior missionaries, which is as soon as you're retired and wealthy, the church will call you and will pressure you or teach you to serve a full time mission as a senior couple. And so you'll sometimes you get to pick where you go, but you'll travel to a foreign country, live there sometimes for years, sometimes at the expense of your duties as a parent or as a grandparent. And, and you'll serve the church as kind of free labor. And that's what I guess Ruby's parents are doing.

McKay [00:19:49] Yep, yeah, absolutely. And it was a, it was a big deal. They, it was a plot point for a lot of the family's content at the time. Which is my next point that I was going to bring up, which is Ruby's whole family vlogs on YouTube. So all of the siblings but one have their own channel on YouTube and have very incredibly high subscriber counts.

Jordan [00:20:13] And so go to the next slide.

McKay [00:20:16] Okay, I put a slide up with all of them in here.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Yeah, there we go. Here we are.

Jordan [00:20:22] Okay, there we are.

McKay [00:20:24] So the older Ruby's parents are on the left and they have almost 200, 000 subscribers. And then we've got all of the siblings. So we've got Ruby on the way left which she has 2.3 million subscribers. Had we have to the right her brother Bo, who at one point was vlogging but does not anymore. And they are suspiciously, they actually follow some like progressive Mormon accounts. So there's like some speculation that they might not be as die hard as some of the rest of the family.

McKay [00:21:00] So then we have Bonnie in the middle who has 1.3 million subscribers. And then we have Julie, 221. And then we have Ellie who has 1.6. So yeah, it's entire family vlogs and they are considered like kind of the megaverse of YouTube vloggers because there is not many other families that I'm aware of that have like each of the family members have as many views. And so the Griffiths, which is Ruby's maiden name, the Griffiths have kind of started this weird phenomenon where they all vlog together and then they do like joint vlogging at like each other's houses. And then you know, Ruby's parents will do like dinners and they'll do videos about that. So it's A very interesting dynamic. But what this also means is that all of them are also very wealthy.

Jordan [00:21:55] Lots of subs, lots of views. It is really an interesting situation because I think the only other families that I know of, I don't remember their names, but the crazy pieces and crazy middles, I don't know if they're as active as they used to be like a year or so ago, but nobody has had success in the YouTube sphere like the. The Griffiths family.

McKay [00:22:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:21] And what is that? You may have already said this, but you've got the grandparents with 199,000 subs. Did you talk about that or what are they doing?

Jordan [00:22:29] So it's like, are they even able to upload on their mission?

McKay [00:22:33] I didn't look into that. Not that I've seen. They do very like cute grandparent stuff like her mom will do like cooking and recipe videos and then they do like family dinner videos and I mean it's like very cute and wholesome. But they also don't have minors in the home. Right. So their content is a little less like concerning to most people because they're not broadcasting children unless their grandchildren come over. But yeah, it's very interesting.

John Dehlin [00:23:01] Wow. So even, even grandma and grandpa are kind of in. In on the deal. And I'll just say I watched. Just today I watched a video with Ruby when she had dropped out of. And we'll get to this. But when she had dropped out of eight passengers and started with Jody, she starts crying at how she gave up millions of dollars. Those were her words. To give up eight passengers and start connections. So. So by. By Ruby's own mouth, she's made millions off of her YouTube channel.

Jordan [00:23:30] Yeah. Which. Where it's kind of a thing that we're torn on because obviously we don't.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] Yeah, yeah. I hope Jordan McKay make millions.

Jordan [00:23:42] We don't think that it's ethical or right that people use their kids as content in order to get views and make money. But she doesn't recognize what. Where the wrong thing was in that video. Specifically she was more talking about the focus on materialism and she thought she was loving her kids by taking it away by giving them material things. And then that was actually not love and distortion, which is concepts that we'll get into later.

McKay [00:24:12] And we included that video. So yeah, we'll definitely get back to that. So that's the Griffiths. And then I wanted to make another no on Kevin. Kevin's family is also Mormon, but he also went on a mission. He went to a Spanish speaking country. If I Recall, but I don't remember which one. And his family is.

McKay [00:24:29] Has had a weird like relationship with their YouTube. Like they're not very involved and they're not in the vlogging sphere. And there was a while there that Ruby was talking very vaguely but critically about her in laws. So it made me kind of think that there potentially wasn't a healthy relationship between that side of the family.

McKay [00:24:49] But yeah, that's the, that's the point I'll make about Kevin for now. But we listed out. You can go to the next one with the sponsor ad. So a passenger started all the way back in 2015 and so they've been around for a hot minute and they will talk about the content that they put out. But they grew like crazy. 100,000 subs in one year is pretty unheard of, especially for a family.

Family Vlogging, Mormon Culture, and Monetization

McKay [00:25:19] Like that's pretty crazy. And then by the end of their second year on YouTube, they had a million subscribers. So between even just that time, they were making pretty decent money just off that alone. And then as of 2023, before the channel mysteriously disappeared, they had 2.3 million subscribers. And so they posted very consistently.

McKay [00:25:40] They posted all kinds of family content that we'll talk about in a minute. But the main thing that we'll get to later that Ruby talked about as well is money comes from the ad revenue. So if you're familiar with YouTube, they put ads on their videos. That's how they get that revenue from the actual videos. And then Ruby was sponsorship crazy.

Jordan [00:26:00] Oh yeah.

McKay [00:26:01] Her whole Instagram was laid with sponsorships and ads and that's how they got a lot of their things. And then they were also given a bunch of free things. And she's reported all of these things. They were given freebies, vacations, cars, clothing, electronics, furniture, like anything that you can imagine. These guys were given because they had such a large following. And then they had a really big Instagram account as well that anybody who advertised on their channel was getting really good value, especially if their target market was families and middle aged women.

McKay [00:26:39] And so advertisers and companies really took advantage of that because of how much attention she was garnering on these platforms and because of how high her views are. If you're not familiar with kind of the sponsorship angle, the higher your views, the more money you get for sponsorships. And so she's up there with like the most popular YouTubers for having like high, high, high paying sponsorships. And so just like John said earlier, there's she was raking in millions a year at least.

Jordan [00:27:08] Yeah, See, and you think about it from a brand perspective. If a brand wants to run an ad on Cable or on YouTube or what have you, a video ad, then they have to get somebody to write a script and somebody to shoot it, and they have to pay for all the equipment and they have to have actors who are likely union actors and all of this stuff, or a YouTuber, they can say, hey, we'll give you a thousand dollars for a 30 minute video spot. They do everything for you and they sell your product to their target audience, which is probably already coinciding with your target audience. So.

McKay [00:27:46] And her kids were often involved in these sponsorships, just like they were in all the videos. Like, this is her. This is her daughter Sheri, who's now an adult. But these were the kinds of ads you would see all over her Instagram that the kids were involved in as well.

John Dehlin [00:27:59] Got it.

McKay [00:28:00] So, yeah, you can go to the

John Dehlin [00:28:01] next one really quickly. Gerardo's reminding me that a lot of the people joining are probably, you know, some of them are your audience, some of them are mine, and then some of them, I'm guessing the YouTube algorithm is just pushing people here. And while I, I was excited to have y' all introduce your podcast, maybe I should introduce mine again. I'm. I'm Dr. John Dehlin.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] I have a PhD in psychology, and I run this podcast, Mormon Stories. And you know, we've been going since 2005. We're one of the longest running podcasts in the history of ever. And we focus on Mormonism and specifically allowing Mormons to tell their story in long form, but also members of other high demand religions. And then we cover Mormon culture and current events as well. But half of our audience has never been Mormon. So there is this kind of global interest in high demand religions and or Mormonism. And that's what Mormon Stories Podcast is about. So if you're joining us for the first time as you're subscribing to Jordan McKay, also consider subscribing to Mormon Stories. We love to have you as an audience. All right, so let's go to the next slide as we talk more about Mormonism.

McKay [00:29:13] You want to take this one?

Jordan [00:29:14] Yeah, this I. Funny enough, the one of the brand accounts that Connections Use used was Ruby Frankie's old Instagram. So all of these I just pulled straight off of Instagram if you want to throw them up right there. But they were. These were just ones that I thought were really representative of like Mormon values to throw up there.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] There's for Those who are. For those who are listening only because we have a big listening audience. Describe the three photos that you're see that people will see up there.

Jordan [00:29:48] Yeah, we have Ruby in front of the Provo Utah Temple. And then we have the eight of them knelt in prayer around a little family ottoman.

John Dehlin [00:29:58] It's called family prayer in Mormonism.

Jordan [00:30:00] And then a picture of the two youngest kids in masks during COVID sitting reverently in the chapel in their chapel seats.

John Dehlin [00:30:10] Yeah. Again, big part of their brand is Mormonism.

Jordan [00:30:13] Yeah. So, and not only just those things in Instagram, but it was also like really prevalent in a lot of their. Their videos where they would casually mention things that are normal, everyday things to Mormons that maybe a lot of people who weren't exposed to Mormonism ever throughout their life would start kind of investigating Mormonism off of that thing. So in that sense, I think that these Mormon family vlogs and channels and things like that are like a really big grassroots missionary tool that the Mormon Church probably is ecstatic about because it exposes such a large swath of people to, to the religion.

McKay [00:31:02] And to be fair, like, you know, we've. We've looked at many Mormon influencers over the years, and it's some Mormons, I would say most of them in the beginning were very discreet about Mormonism. When they were starting off, like, it was kind of rumor mill. Like, people would find out like, oh, they're Mormon. And they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't know that they would come to

Jordan [00:31:27] us and they would be like, hey, are these people Mormon?

Guest 2 [00:31:29] Yes.

McKay [00:31:30] And so a lot of them didn't make it like, super obvious. And I think there was, because there was obvious hesitation there that there's some stigma around Mormonism. And so a lot of them didn't really talk about it. And then Ruby came on the scene and I mean, it's, yeah, the whole cornerstone of like half of what she does. And so she was kind of unique in that sense. And I think a lot of Mormons were drawn to her in the very beginning because she was very, like, out and proud about the fact that she was Mormon. And even though she would get like, haters and things, like, she took a lot of pride in the fact that Mormonism was basically part of their brand.

John Dehlin [00:32:08] Yeah. Really quickly, we were really grateful for the comments that are coming in. Laura writes from the uk. Thank you for the work you all three do. I am not a Mormon myself, but I can see and hear the value you have, even to us outsiders. Love to you all. Thank you so much, Laura, for that. We have another I love when we crowdsource information, the Froggy 912. The T. Froggy 912 says, I can confirm Kevin taught at BYU in the fall of 2022. I found his courses another. Another crowdsource. Veronica Hetherington writes, the grandparents do upload from their mission.

McKay [00:32:52] That's so interesting.

John Dehlin [00:32:53] So that's. Is that fascinating?

Jordan [00:32:55] Yeah, we've only been focused on the Frankies for a long time, so we

McKay [00:32:59] don't see much from them.

Jordan [00:33:00] Yeah, we don't really dig into that as much.

John Dehlin [00:33:03] And then, and then Alexis Smith writes a good point. She writes, I thought photos weren't allowed in Mormon chapels. So that's an interesting dynamic that maybe you guys have talked about that growing up Mormon, you didn't take photos in Mormon chapels. But with social media influencers, I wonder if the church is even bothered because for the, from the Mormon Church's perspective, maybe that's good pr. And then really, really quickly, I gotta share this one. K. McNally writes, Please have Jordan explain her own professional and education for, for the audience. She's super credible on the subject matter. Yeah, I think that's important. You're doing important work there, Jordan, in terms of your education. We talked just briefly about that.

McKay [00:33:44] Yeah, so I actually graduated in May with my msw, my master's in social work. And so I have been. Over the last two years, I have been in the social work profession doing various things in, primarily in Utah. We only moved back to Colorado a few months ago. So all of my work even still is currently in Utah. So I work as an associate therapist at a private practice. And so I primarily see adults. I primarily see couples right now. And so my work kind of aligns with Jody quite nicely because I am a couples therapist currently. And so a lot of the things that Jody has like recommended and stated, like, I see those same concerns coming to me from my clients and I see a lot of the harm that has come from like a lot of these porn programs and a lot of these, you know, just the purity culture that stands within Mormonism.

McKay [00:34:40] And so this is, this is absolutely my realm. Like social work is my realm. I'm currently an associate therapist. So I deal with this stuff day in and day out.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] That's so great. I, you know, I believe that the ethical training that you receive, you know, whether it's in a master's level therapy program or a PhD level, I think the ethical training is probably the most important training you get. And it's just so it's, you know, it is great advice to seek out a licensed therapist when you need therapy. And that should always be the go to, especially if there's severe problems, mental illness, severe family problems, severe parenting or behavioral problems with kids. And it's always just important to know that just because your therapist is licensed doesn't mean they practice in an ethical way. And it appears as though Jody Hildebrandt is a perfect example of that. So I'm so thrilled to see Jordan that you're getting that formal training that's so important.

McKay [00:35:35] Yeah, that's. And I mean, I agree social work is, I mean, ethics was what I learned about for two whole years. So yeah, yeah, it's intersected nicely with what we do.

Sampling Eight Passengers Vlog Content

John Dehlin [00:35:45] All right, so let's. Should we jump to the next slide which is just kind of giving a sampling of their vlog content?

Jordan [00:35:51] Yes, normally I, I would have normally blur, not blurred all their faces out, but I did not have time. We do have a life, surprisingly and only during this time is our little toddler, who I am a full time dad for gone is he gone with family. So.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Well, these are public videos, so it's not like we're doing private videos.

Jordan [00:36:16] Normally. I'm just saying normally I would, but I was, I didn't have time enough to do.

McKay [00:36:20] So this was a nice sneak peek into kind of where it all began and what they were posting.

Jordan [00:36:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] All right, so this is giving a sampling of their early content, right?

Jordan [00:36:29] Yep. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:36:30] Okay.

Guest [00:36:30] Okay.

Guest 2 [00:36:31] I think your dress is on backwards.

Guest [00:36:33] It's my own hair, but I didn't like it.

Guest 2 [00:36:36] I can't let her get away with. We just got that hedgehog and so is that like a normal reaction for a pet to have a seizure because of, of another pet welcomed into the home?

John Dehlin [00:36:56] So for those who weren't able to see that, just kind of summarize what what we just saw.

Jordan [00:37:01] So it is just kind of a snippet out of what you would see from almost any family vlog channel. The. The content focuses on the parents and the kids and their everyday life. A lot of times they would go on vacations or do some sort of activity or.

McKay [00:37:20] There is nothing like exciting about family vlogging. Like they're literally just doing their day to day life and I mean, taking the dog to the vet. I mean, I personally don't want to watch somebody take their dog to the vet, but apparently a lot of people do because she has 2.3 million subscribers, but nothing extraordinary.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] Yeah, it's like making the bed or a kid complaining that they don't want to eat something for breakfast. And it goes viral. Right. Some, some one and a half or two year old pouting about not liking broccoli. Right. And it.

Jordan [00:37:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:52] Gets 10 million views. Right?

Jordan [00:37:54] Yeah. And that's kind of where the cracks start to form with this content because you think about when you brought your fiance to your parents house and you started looking through these embarrassed. She want. Your mom wants to pull out all these embarrassing photos of you as a kid and just the feeling of that and then multiply it by a million views of people that you will probably never ever in your lived experience run into for anybody to stumble upon. So there's that kind of stuff and then the mundane stuff usually is just filler content. But every now and then you'll have a car accident or, or a kid will have an injury or something like that and you have to.

John Dehlin [00:38:43] Or someone gets cancer or some sort of serious disease.

Guest [00:38:46] Right.

Jordan [00:38:46] Suddenly you're getting an astronomical amount of clicks because somebody's in a position.

McKay [00:38:56] They monetize the heck out of medical events and emergencies and all of the family vloggers do that. But Ruby especially like you can't. A child gets injured and the first thing Ruby's gonna do is pull out the camera.

Jordan [00:39:09] Yeah.

McKay [00:39:09] It has nothing to do with actually helping the kid.

Jordan [00:39:12] And that content that is like one of the more concerning things is in basically any of these channels you go and you sort by the most popular in the first 10, there will be at least one medical situation that a kid got injured and then they're in the hospital with a camera in their face and they're basically having to do a job while they're getting medical treatment.

John Dehlin [00:39:35] Yeah, I was, I was watching a clip today. Maybe you're going to show it where like Ruby's complaining that one of her kids has blurry vision. Are we going to show that one?

McKay [00:39:44] Yes, I have that one.

John Dehlin [00:39:45] Okay. Okay. Well, I'll just, I'll just. That's a cliffhanger. That's a cliffhanger. So really quickly, let me share a couple comments because they're, they're kind of fun. One person writes, Jamie writes, watching kids go to the dentist. No thanks. Another, another, Valerie Stevens writes, I don't understand why people are bored enough to want to sit and watch that stuff. And then S.L. conley writes 2.3 million stalkers, which is a really succinct way to kind of describe that, but I mean, clearly it has a huge demand. But the other thing that's just kind of worth noting is there's a Mormon element to this. It's like, why are there so many of these family vloggers that, that just happen to be Mormon? I would. Can't we say with absolute certainty that Mormons, Utah Mormons and Arizona Mormons are disproportionately represented in the YouTube vlogger universe? Is that fair to say or am I stretching there 100%?

Jordan [00:40:48] Yeah. And I, I think because Mormon bloggers initially, they're human, huge ones. Who's the one flat fashion blogger?

McKay [00:40:59] Rachel Parcel.

Jordan [00:41:00] Rachel. Yeah. And then the genesis of kind of the vlog movement on YouTube, one of the big names was Shaytards, Shay Carl and his family. They're all Mormon and they're also kind of. They were not as upfront with it as Ruby was.

McKay [00:41:17] It was a whole scandal when it all fell apart. But yeah, like disproportionately Mormon. Utah, Arizona.

Jordan [00:41:24] So they saw, hey, the Shaytards can do it. Let then I've got a big family. I could totally get this kind of attention on us and start making money off of it because they shaytards made an incredible amount of money up front. Multi million dollar deals with a, a conglomerate that they had formed with people like Philip DeFranco and other big names on YouTube.

John Dehlin [00:41:53] Just recently I had Janae, Janae Thompson on Mormon Stories podcast and she and her husband Grant had a super famous YouTube channel. Still do. I mean Grant's passed away, but it's, but it's called the King of Random tkor.

Jordan [00:42:12] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:13] And we just recently had Janae Thompson on to talk about her and her husband building up this massive multi million subscriber YouTube channel. And then he passed away in like a sky. Sky. Not skydiving, but like one of those para, paragliding kind of accidents. But I could, we could name 10 or 20 super famous. What's that?

Jordan [00:42:35] Mark Rober. There's.

John Dehlin [00:42:37] Yeah, yeah. Mark Rober is at least was raised Mormon.

Jordan [00:42:41] He went to byu.

John Dehlin [00:42:43] Yeah, yeah. And then I would say some of the other reasons why so many Mormons are successful family vloggers is they have large families. They care about their families. I think so many Mormons serve missions and they spend a lot of time together. The Mormon church is very family oriented. And then if you have a stay at home mom and she learns how to use her camera and how to upload stuff, she can be the original, you know, photographer and you know, vlogger until they get wealthy enough to kind of hire their own camera people and editors. But don't you think kind of the stay at home mom dynamic and the large families and the focus on the family, it's not uniquely Mormon, but those Mormon elements, don't you think they tend to make, you know, help Mormons be disproportionately represented? What do you guys think?

Guest 2 [00:43:42] Yes.

McKay [00:43:43] 100. The only other one that I would add is they're usually wealthy. And so there's, I think, an appeal.

John Dehlin [00:43:48] Do they start out. Do they start out as wealthy or do they become wealthy?

McKay [00:43:51] Some of them start out like, okay, and Kevin were rich prior to.

Guest 2 [00:43:56] To YouTube.

John Dehlin [00:43:56] Okay.

Jordan [00:43:57] Not nearly as rich as they ended up.

McKay [00:43:58] Not now, but yeah.

Guest [00:44:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:00] Okay. Got it. Okay. All right, well, should we go to the next. Next slide? Is this another example of their vlog content?

Jordan [00:44:08] Yeah, this is just a little more.

John Dehlin [00:44:10] Okay.

Jordan [00:44:10] So people get a feel.

John Dehlin [00:44:11] Okay, here we go.

McKay [00:44:24] Getting all over me. Oh, bro. Was Chad good? I think I need a.

Guest [00:44:37] I need

McKay [00:44:37] to go to the bathroom.

John Dehlin [00:44:43] So that's like kids in the van in the minivan, doing crafts, blowing bubbles.

Jordan [00:44:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:50] Complaining to mom and dad with. With mom making sort of like 100 mile death stare muggings to the camera, right?

Jordan [00:45:00] Yeah. And someone. One of the comments that you had highlighted earlier was like, this is so boring. Who would ever watch this? And it's so weird. And. And for people that. There's a lot of people who are like that. Who are like, who. How is this appealing to so many people? But you have to take into account that there are moms out there who maybe feel like they're the only one whose kids are just bonkers all the time and it's relatable to them. There are kids on YouTube who are like, oh, my gosh, they have a big family just like mine. Or there are also people that maybe didn't have a family dynamic at all or in the traditional Mormonism, that one is surprising.

McKay [00:45:40] The amount of people that we've had that have reached out to us that said, you know, like, I grew up with abusive parents or things were traumatic in my household. And so I watched these family channels as a way of, like, you know, looking at and seeing the things that I didn't have is almost like a comfort.

Jordan [00:45:55] Yeah. Kind of like a cope. So in a lot of these senses, I don't blame people for wanting to consume this kind of content, because when you're just looking at something that appeals to you, you're not thinking in the back of your head. These kids are putting out for this, like putting on. On a show for all of us. And their parents are making money off of it. And they are not required to pay these kids anything. There's nothing set in place. There's no unions for kids of family vloggers or anything like that.

McKay [00:46:28] Child labor laws need not apply in these situations. These kids are filmed constantly.

Jordan [00:46:33] So that's exactly why I wanted to include that because it, it's relatable for a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:46:39] Yeah. And we, we recently did an episode, and I'm sure you guys covered it too, on the Duggar family and you know, based on the Shiny Happy People documentary. And that was one of the. What is his name? Jim Bob? Like, what was that guy's name? The, like the way that the parents made millions and the kids walked away with. With nothing other than like an overexposed family with a wrecked reputation. And it was just so clearly exploitative. That's kind of the dark side. It's just a lack of informed consent. Because an 8 year old or a 3 year old literally, ethically can't give informed consent.

Jordan [00:47:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:19] Their parents are constantly shoving cameras in their faces and stopping every. Supposed to be authentic, you know, private moment. And they're just constantly saying, wait, let me, let me get the camera rolling. And again, it's a free country. It's a free world. And families can choose that and parents run their families. But as we'll probably mention it again and again, there's some ethical concerns and there's also just some mental health concerns for the kids.

Jordan [00:47:45] Yeah, yeah. And in Shiny Happy People, you saw in full display that there was contractual agreements that the kids had to, they had to fulfill. And most of them hadn't even. They couldn't sign for themselves.

McKay [00:48:03] Their dad signed for them.

John Dehlin [00:48:05] Yeah, right. Yeah. We have a, we have a viewer that wants to make sure everyone knows that the Duggars are not Mormon. And that's true. Bridget Bonner. The Duggars aren't Mormon, but Mormons watched, watched that show. And I think we related a lot to what we saw.

McKay [00:48:22] Totally.

John Dehlin [00:48:22] And was it 19 is not enough? What's the show called?

Jordan [00:48:26] 19 Kids and Counting.

John Dehlin [00:48:27] Yeah, 19 Kids Accounting. All right, so this next is a. It's a video entitled Traditional Family Values in Marriage. Do you want to set this up or just roll it?

McKay [00:48:35] We'll just let it speak for itself.

Jordan [00:48:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:48:37] All right, so here's the next clip.

Guest 2 [00:48:39] This is us waiting in line to eat a chick Fil A because we're supporting marriage between man and woman. And here's the end of the line. We're just Gonna follow the line. Line. We've got a long wait.

John Dehlin [00:49:01] I mean, for those who didn't see, it's just. It's just this commercial shopping mall with this massively long line, and it's showing

Jordan [00:49:10] University Mall in Provo.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] Oh, is that it?

Jordan [00:49:12] Yeah, yeah, I think.

John Dehlin [00:49:13] Yeah. And hear them bragging about sort of like, anti LGBTQ solidarity by standing in a Chick Fil? A line as a part of their exact social media. It's cringy and it's gross knowing that there's such a high prevalence of LGBT depression and even death by suicide within Utah specifically because of Mormon doctrinal teachings about, quote, traditional families and about being gay or lesbian or bisexual as being a sin, as being evil, as being perverted. To see them, like, monetizing that and sort of virtue signaling their religious beliefs in a mall, that was disgusting to me. Yeah, that's my bias.

Jordan [00:49:58] But that's just a little context for this. This was. That clip was back from 2012, before they had their blog channel. And that, if you'll remember, if you were living in the United States, that was when Chick Fil A. I don't remember if it was Chick Fil? A corporate or who it was really. They had come out and they were giving money to anti LGBTQ lobbying groups and things like that, and it had surfaced in the media, and there was a lot of outrage about it, rightfully so. And so I think it was Mike Huckabee who actually pushed back on that idea and was like, no, we should be supporting Chick Fil? A. So this date is going to be Chick Fil? A day. Everybody go to Chick Fil?

Guest 2 [00:50:44] A.

Jordan [00:50:44] And it was huge. Like, I was working at Chick Fil? A at the time, at a location that was owned and operated by a member of my ward. A lot of the employees were Mormon, even though it's not a Mormon company. But, like, everybody I knew who was a Mormon was going to Chick Fil? A just to virtue signal that same thing.

McKay [00:51:05] So such a bizarre thing.

Jordan [00:51:07] Yeah. Really odd. So there everybody was like, yeah, we only want marriage between a man and a woman because that's what we want to do. So we're gonna go eat some chicken sandwich. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:51:17] And that's again, where Mormonism and Mormon doctrine and theology and then this Mormon family vlogging, and in this case, the. Yeah, this. This family, they just all kind of intersect. It's hard to really separate them. Should we go to the next slide? All right, next video clip. Living the for the strength of you standards. Jordan, why don't you explain to us what the. For the strength of you standards are really quick.

Ruby's Religious Teaching and Parenting Philosophy

McKay [00:51:42] So it's basically like a, like the word I like to use is pamphlet, but it's kind of a manual pamphlet guide for the youth of the church of a. Basically like a long drawn out list of things that they have to follow. So in this specific instance, it's like you can't date till you're 16 or you know, if you're going to go on dates, they have to be in groups. And it's just like very specific things that teenagers are supposed, teenagers and younger are supposed to live by.

John Dehlin [00:52:07] And it's changed over the years, but it's like, tell me if I'm wrong. It's like women, you know, don't show your shoulders, dress modestly, don't let your skirts go above your knees, you know, have clean hair cuts, don't wear beards or facial hair. And then there's always that kind of. In this, this pamphlet has changed over time, but in the past it probably would have condemned not just homosexuality, but any sort of same sex sexual behavior prior to marriage. It would have said something like, don't arouse the passions. But what it means is don't masturbate, don't look at porn, and don't have any sexual relations before marriage. And I wonder if past episodes would say things like past versions would have said like, don't see our movies, but just think of Christian purity culture encapsulated in a Mormon pamphlet. Is that right?

Jordan [00:53:01] Exactly. That's a perfect way to sum it up.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] So that's for the strength of these standards. Now we'll run the video clip.

Guest 2 [00:53:08] Do you allow your kids to date? And then other people will get on and comment and they're like, no, Mormons aren't allowed to date before they're 16. No, it's forbidden for her kids to date before they're 16. So the word allowed and forbidden I think are. Depends on what you think allowed means. So do I allow Chad to date before he's 16? If by that you mean am I going to stand in the doorway and forbid him to leave the door if he's going out on a date? No, I. If that's what the word allowed means, then yes, he's allowed.

John Dehlin [00:53:55] All right, what do you guys find interesting about that clip?

McKay [00:53:58] Ruby and semantics.

Jordan [00:53:59] Yes. And, and this is why we.

John Dehlin [00:54:02] What do you mean? What do you mean?

Jordan [00:54:03] We are so literal.

McKay [00:54:05] Everything is like so literal. If she can dodge something based on like the literal sense, like you guys accuse me of doing this, but what I actually do is like the same thing, but I'm just gonna word it differently.

Jordan [00:54:15] Yeah. And this is, this is why I'm so dead. I will preach that this is a Mormon story because just think back to any time when you were a true believing Mormon and you had to explain to somebody the word of wisdom. It was always in a, a sense of, well, I could go out and take a drink whenever I want to, but I know that I guess not the commandments. So yes, I can drink, but I choose not to. That kind of language is just so emblematic of all the bloggers do it. Mormonism in my opinion, and probably by extension a lot of other fundamentalism.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] And do we have the video clip of, of Ruby talking about her kids don't have privacy and live it in, living in the home that, that clip. Do you know what I'm talking about?

McKay [00:55:09] Yes, I think so. If I didn't put it in there, I will get it now.

Jordan [00:55:12] There's one that mentions it for sure. But the reason why we put for the Strength of Youth in there is because the idea that you're supposed to date once after you turn 16 and not prior to that does come from the for the Strength of Youth pamphlet. At the time that that was filmed, I think it may have been revised to exclude any sort of hard age recommendation, but at the time it definitely did.

John Dehlin [00:55:38] Well, what I'm getting at, and we'll get to this, is within Mormon culture and the for the Strength of the Youth pamphlet just barely touches the surface. There's this massive terror around pornography viewing and masturbation and starting at like age 11, and even sooner if you count general conference denunciations of pornography and masturbation. Just like it's like Mormon top Mormon church leaders just can't stop talking about masturbation. So you grow up now within mormonism from age 3 to just constantly hearing the word masturbation and pornography all the time.

Jordan [00:56:14] And before you even really know what it is.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] Oh no, it's promoting. It's promoting the behavior by talking about it all the time. But more importantly, other than killing somebody, the worst thing to a parent that could ever happen would be to find out that your young boy or girl is masturbating or looking at pornography.

Guest [00:56:36] And.

John Dehlin [00:56:37] And so from age 11 or more, bishops start interviewing Mormon kids when they're 12, sitting alone with them behind closed doors, asking them, do you touch yourself? How often do you touch yourself? Where do you touch yourself? Do you look at pornography? Oh, you need to come into my office grown mid aged Mormon male with a 12 year old girl. Oh, you're masturbating. Well, you need to come in my office regularly and we need to check up on that one on one alone.

John Dehlin [00:57:03] And, and then parents, you know, a whole cottage industry of like software programs and Internet filters have come out of Utah to try and help parents lock their computers, TVs down, their, their computers down, their, their mobile phones down so that kids are never tempted to look at porn or masturbate. But what that leads parents to do is to have this massive obsession. Mormon parents to have this massive obsession like constantly like going after their kids, monitoring their kids, checking their kids, checking their browser history, putting filters on to make sure their kids never masturbate. And, and so when you hear later if we're going to show it, Ruby talking about things like, I don't know, did she talk about taking the doors off of her kids bedrooms, her kids not being allowed to have privacy?

John Dehlin [00:57:53] I'm sure this whole controversy about her son getting kicked out of his room and sleeping on a bean bag. And then later, I'm guaranteeing you the marital problems between Ruby and her husband are all around people being caught on the Internet looking at stuff they shouldn't potentially masturbating. And then this obsession, and that's, I think that's why Jody Hildebrandt and connections come in later is because of just this constant tension and terror around, heaven forbid, your, your kids or your spouse, you know, doing those unholy and unnatural things. And I say that in jest.

McKay [00:58:29] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:30] Am I wrong? Did I, did I overstate that?

Jordan [00:58:32] No, you, you hit on a lot of the points that we'll come back to.

John Dehlin [00:58:36] Okay, well I'm setting them up. All right, so what's this next slide about?

Early Signs of Concerning Treatment of Children

McKay [00:58:41] So we're about to get into the child abuse.

Jordan [00:58:45] We've. Yeah, we've given you the honeymoon stage. We're into the thick of it now

McKay [00:58:49] and now it's over. So trigger warning for child abuse, obviously.

John Dehlin [00:58:54] Yeah. Okay.

Jordan [00:58:55] This, this is the least of it. It get, it'll get worse.

McKay [00:58:58] So, all right, we'll watch the video and then I'll give context on this also. But this is, this is 2020. I mean she was doing terrible things also before then, but they were more subtle and now the mask starts to fall, things start to slip and it's becoming more obvious.

John Dehlin [00:59:13] All right, so let's, let's play it.

Guest 2 [00:59:17] Have I ever given something back?

John Dehlin [00:59:19] Oh, sorry, let me play it now.

Jordan [00:59:21] There we go.

Guest 2 [00:59:22] Have I ever given something back more than six.

McKay [00:59:25] Less than six months.

John Dehlin [00:59:30] My bedroom was taken away for seven months.

McKay [00:59:32] And then you give it back, like,

John Dehlin [00:59:33] a couple weeks ago.

Guest 2 [00:59:34] I don't think our viewers know that

McKay [00:59:37] I was sleeping on a bean bag since October, and they gave my room

John Dehlin [00:59:41] back, like, two weeks. See? Yeah. So that's. That's the son. What's his name?

McKay [00:59:46] That's Chad. He's now an adult.

John Dehlin [00:59:50] Yeah. And so he lets slip out this idea that he's been kicked out of his bedroom and sleeping on a V bag for how long?

McKay [00:59:56] Seven months.

Jordan [00:59:57] Seven months that we're aware of.

McKay [00:59:58] At least. I'm sure that wasn't the only time that happened, but that was during that time. During that time. But that was kind of her designated parenting tactic at that time, was he'd was not allowed to sleep in his bed, and he slept in a beanbag. So he didn't have. I mean, just in line with what John just said, I mean, it aligns with, you know, no privacy. He was sleeping in just a regular room with a beanbag in it. So. And what other thing.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] Oh, go ahead, go ahead. I mean, I know. Before we leave, Chad, were you gonna go to other things or were we going to talk about that?

McKay [01:00:29] Yes. I have another point.

John Dehlin [01:00:31] Okay.

McKay [01:00:31] On that slide, but I will talk about kind of what it is. So Chad was kind of designated, what I would say is the problem child. He was kind of, in addition to the two youngest kids. He was very picked on as far as, like, you know, in the videos. He was always the one that was in trouble. Ruby was always taking things away from him. And so he was kind of the focus for, like, as the bad child in a lot of the videos for a long time. And so part of what happened is one of the other horrible things that Ruby did, a Chad particularly, is she sent him to a wilderness camp for troubled teens.

McKay [01:01:07] So this is part of that troubled teen industry that we've talked about, particularly a lot in Utah, where they send kids to and some of them actually die. And, you know, Paris Hilton was here in Utah for one that she'd actually attended when she was a teenager not a few years ago. I want to say that she came here and talked about it. Yeah, but Ruby.

Jordan [01:01:26] Yeah, we don't live there anymore.

McKay [01:01:28] No. But Ruby decided that she was going to send a Chad to a wilderness troubled teen camp. And part of that decision, we learned, kind of as Brief mentioned from the video, was that Jody was Chad's therapist at the time. And Jody recommended that Chad attend This troubled teen wilderness camp. And so they ultimately decided to send Chad. He was gone for months, at least.

Jordan [01:01:58] Yeah, I think it was the whole summer, because they. There was an article that they were talking about it, and I included a. Like, a little snippet at the bottom. But just to be brief, they were saying they had made, like, a video dedicated to him explaining why, because people were asking why he wasn't in their summer vlogs and everything like that.

Jordan [01:02:19] So they kind of, like, laid it all out on the table, and they were like, oh, he was out of. It was a lot of backpedaling because there was a lot of backlash. But he was out of his room because of an incident that had happened with his brother. And a therapist recommended that they be separated. A therapist who we're led to believe is Jody Hildebrandt. And then when he was able to go back into his room, he had to make the choice to prove that he was trustworthy enough to have a door back and everything like that.

John Dehlin [01:02:52] And.

McKay [01:02:54] But this was a whole storyline for eight passengers because everybody was asking, where's Chad? So they did a video and then about it, and she even posted a voicemail that he left her once. And people were asking her, like, when's Chad gonna come back? And she thought it was so hilarious. She was like, I don't know. Could be, like two weeks, could be like six months. Like, she was just so, like, almost jovial about the whole thing.

Jordan [01:03:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:18] And if it's okay, like, we'll. We'll come to this at the end. But I just want to insert a little bit of my analysis. Having got my PhD in psychology here in Utah and having spent six years doing psychotherapy with. Predominantly with Mormons, Couple things. Number one, it's the pure IT one. You know, of course, troubled teens are everywhere in the world and in the United States. So, you know, that's. That's not a particularly Mormon thing outside of Utah. And sometimes in Utah, you know, kids will get in trouble with drinking or drugs or that sort of thing. And of course, Utah has had some very serious drug epidemics specifically around, you know, opiate.

John Dehlin [01:04:00] Opiate addiction. But. But. But also within Mormon culture, porn and masturbation. And I'm saying this as someone who was trained, again, with the psychology, PhD. Masturbation is viewed as an addiction, as a legitimate addiction within Mormon culture. So the Mormon Church has 12 step programs that it sponsors called addiction. I think what Addiction and recovery.

John Dehlin [01:04:34] These adult service missionaries that we talked about are often called as leaders of these addiction. And Recovery groups. And instead of having people, you know, go to these little support groups and saying, you know, I'm an. I'm an alcoholic or I'm for recovery meth addict, they say, I'm a sex addict. And when they say sex addict, they don't mean necessarily seeing sex workers 12 times a day. They literally mean, I masturbated within the past three weeks and I'm an addict and I'm trying to recover. And this is not just adults, married men, married women, children as well. And so again, there's just this massive pathologizing of what a mental health professional would say is a very normative, healthy behavior, which is masturbation.

John Dehlin [01:05:25] So when someone like Chad has the door taken off to his room or he's forced to sleep on a beanbag in the public or sent to an Anastasia named youth camp, the subtext that I read from it is that he was caught doing things sexually that his parents didn't like, and now he's being sent to a troubled teens camp. And. And that's a core reason that these camps are so prevalent in Utah, is to cure their children of masturbation and, quote, sexual addiction.

John Dehlin [01:06:05] And then the only other thing I'll add is that one of the reasons why there's a cottage industry of these troubled teen camps in Utah, as I understand it, is that the Utah legislature passes laws giving parents the right to abduct and force their children into these camps without their children's consent. And that's why wealthy people from all over the United States send their children like Paris Hilton to Utah. Because the Utah legislature, which is like 70 or 80% Mormon, make laws giving parents the right to force their kids into these sorts of camps. Now, did I get any of that wrong, Jordan McKay, that, you know, no.

McKay [01:06:50] And I. I've had clients who have been to, you know, various TTI type places within Utah, and I have yet to hear a positive experience. And there are also people online who have shared their, like, kind of horror stories related to the camp that Chad actually went to. And so we know that there was some not great things going on, but Ruby took much pleasure in that. So this is just one aspect of.

Jordan [01:07:18] Yeah.

McKay [01:07:19] Kind of the things with Chad. But the next slide is where things kind of get.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] Yeah. And when you say bad things happening in these camps, like sometimes physical abuse, sometimes sexual abuse, sometimes starvation, sometimes unethical working conditions, or. Go ahead. Other things.

Jordan [01:07:36] Mental abuse and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:07:37] And psychological abuse.

Jordan [01:07:39] Yeah, yeah. I think specifically in the. We were looking into people's stories about this Anasazi camp. And there were people, trained people, certified, licensed people in mental health fields that were doing grossly unethical kind of things, if not straight up criminal kinds of things. And a lot of times they. There's no sort of like consequence or anything that comes to happen because the. The parents essentially sign their rights away in a lot of these instances. So it would be really tough for these things to come to light and a credible way that could be prosecuted or.

John Dehlin [01:08:23] Cassie's circle Time writes, lack of medical care is one of the problems with these camps. Thank you, Cassie. Also, buddy Bo says that this camp was in Arizona. So is he saying that the Anastasia camp was actually in Arizona?

Jordan [01:08:38] Yeah, that one is in Arizona, which

John Dehlin [01:08:40] also has a legislature with a heavy Mormon population. Correct?

McKay [01:08:44] Yep.

Guest 2 [01:08:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:46] And then here's a fun little fact. This is kind of fun. Ray Lawler says Mormon Stories podcast and in this joint production with Jordan McKay is showing up fourth in the list of live now videos on YouTube. That's kind of fun. So that's awesome for helping make that happen. All right, thank you. Keep going, guys.

Ruby's Harsh Treatment of Her Youngest Daughter

McKay [01:09:07] Okay, so next slide, we venture into Ruby's relationship with her youngest daughter, which has always been problematic. In addition to Chad, she's kind of always picked on the youngest to particularly the youngest daughter. And so this clip in particular was the one, one of the ones that went viral and got Ruby on the map.

John Dehlin [01:09:30] Yeah. Six years old. Remember, this is six years old.

Guest 2 [01:09:34] Just got a text message from use teacher and she said that Eve 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. Because I know that her teacher is uncomfortable with her being hungry and not having a lunch. And it would ease her discomfort if I came to the school with lunch. But I responded and just said Eve is responsible for making her lunches in the morning. And she actually told me she did pack a lunch. So the natural outcome is she's just going to need to be hungry and hopefully, hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch.

John Dehlin [01:10:26] I mean, I have no words.

Jordan [01:10:29] Yeah, it's particularly the last bit that really sends me because not only is she totally brushing off the fact that other people are like, this is wrong, but she's also adding it. It's almost as if she's trying to drive home a point like she has to be responsible. This six year old has to be responsible or else she has to suffer the consequences by whatever means. Even if I'm not there. Her peers can't give her anything or anything like that. She should suffer.

McKay [01:11:07] Which in my opinion with also a bachelor's degree, teaching degree. This is not developmentally appropriate for a six year old. A six year old can only be so responsible. And food being one of those things to teach them about is generally not the thing that I would pick.

Jordan [01:11:25] Withholding food. Absolutely.

McKay [01:11:28] You will see. Even Ruby does.

Jordan [01:11:29] Prisoners are afforded food.

McKay [01:11:31] Yeah.

Jordan [01:11:31] And she said. And I. She put up a bit big stink. It wasn't in this clip or any other clip that I could find. But she had mentioned that the. The school was 45 minutes away from the house. Big whoop. It's not a defense or anything. If you are able to choose a school that's 45 minutes away from your house then you can put down whatever you need to do.

Guest [01:11:56] Or.

Jordan [01:11:56] And it was like two hours before the end of school. Just go and pick her up. Honestly. But it. It's indefensible. It's gross and.

McKay [01:12:06] And most importantly it's a pattern.

Jordan [01:12:09] Yeah. And she was willing to upload it to YouTube for the whole world to see and didn't see anything wrong with it.

John Dehlin [01:12:17] Yeah. I just have no words. A six year old.

Guest [01:12:19] Right.

John Dehlin [01:12:19] Like it's just so. But there's this idea of like worthiness and justice and punishment and retribution and tough stern learning. We're going to show a little clip later to talk about how sometimes a Christian and a religious or even a Old Testament biblical view of God can be used as the basis to justify this type of behavior. I have so many really good comments coming in if y' all don't mind. I'm just going to share a few of them.

John Dehlin [01:12:54] Macro Grams wants to just correct me that it's Anastasi, not Anastasi. Is that right? So I think I was getting that wrong. Miku's headphones writes, my high school boyfriend was in Telos Academy on Center street in Orem. And whatever their wilderness camp was they lived in a halfway house on Center Street. I've heard the worst things ever there. So that's just one example of. Of what's going on in Utah in that cottage industry. KB 55122 says I'm a victim of childhood camps and institutions.

John Dehlin [01:13:31] Longest at once I did was a year. And sometimes these people are going to be sent there for like having premarital sex. Like a parent will catch a 16 year old girl or boy having premarital sex and they're off to like a Mormon wilderness concentration camp for six months and it's just. It's just because of that purity culture and this. This driving obsession with sex and the need to keep your kids pure. Because in Mormonism, I think it's worth mentioning sexual indiscrimination. Discretion is next to murder in terms of severity. And I'm not exaggerating. There are scriptures in Mormon doctrine and theology that say that premarital sex is a sin next to murder, literally. Am I. Am I making that up, Jordan McKay.

McKay [01:14:20] Nope. I was told that as a teenager.

Jordan [01:14:22] Yeah, it's right there in Alma.

John Dehlin [01:14:24] Yeah, it's in Alma. It's in the Book of Mormon. A couple other quick comments that are really useful. Kayla writes, yes, they do. I live in Utah, and the place I was sent to, they would come abduct the kids in the middle of the night. So I'm not making that up. There literally are practices of abducting children in the night to take them into these camps. Forced. And parents again, sign away. Tell me if you guys remember this. Ashlyn writes, chad broke his toe at Anasazi and never got it taken care of. Have you guys heard that?

McKay [01:14:59] I've heard various things with her. In denying medical care. And Ruby was very encouraged. Like, if he wasn't eating, if he had to sleep on the ground without any, like, equipment underneath. Like, she took pride in those things.

Jordan [01:15:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:12] Yeah. Someone asked me to remind everyone to please hit the like button. Please subscribe to both Jordan McKay and Mormon stories so that we can blast this video far and wide. The more support we get, the more subscriptions, the more likes, the more people find out about this. And here's an example of why this episode is so important. Charmed Girl writes, I just talked to someone from a wilderness camp from Utah to help me with my teen. I'm so glad I'm watching this show now. I often like to say, silence is the enabler and silence is the killer. And that's one of the main reasons Jordan McKay and Mormon stories do what we do.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] Couple more quick ones. Matt Stoker writes, the message that masturbation is normal and there is not a clinical diagnosis for casual masturbation. Reviewing pornography is not outside of normal human behavior is a message that needs to be heard.

John Dehlin [01:16:09] And we totally agree. Exmo Robo writes, in Mormonism, it is often implied that parents essentially own their kids eternally. So it's unsurprising when some parents take advantage of that. That is such a good point. Finally, we can't forget this message from Jesse Banana. Insane. The idea that I would ever be introducing My child's sexual development by asking them about their private masturbation habits is beyond the pale.

John Dehlin [01:16:40] And the fact that adult men in Mormonism can sit with your 12 or 13 year old girl or boy behind closed doors and talk to them as a stranger about their sexual behaviors is also ridiculous. And then Jacob writes sarcastically, these porn addiction recovery groups are run by licensed mental health professionals. Right. And of course he's being sarcastic because it's literally like grandma and grandpa, like Ruby's parents, that are on a senior mission without a mental health training, leading addiction, quote, addiction and recovery recovery groups for porn and masturbation. Okay, Jordan McKay. I'm sorry, this is just a passionate topic for me. So I'm going to be, I'm going to be hitting it hard because it's a, it's a deadly, it's a deadly issue within Mormonism because there are Mormon youth and adults that die by suicide because of the shame and obsession heaped on about sexuality.

McKay [01:17:37] Definitely. Oh yeah, it comes up all the time.

John Dehlin [01:17:40] Okay, so anything else you want to say about six year old forgetting her lunch and Ruby? No.

McKay [01:17:46] But the next slide will continue to demonstrate the pattern with which we've described.

John Dehlin [01:17:51] Okay, so should we just play the clip of Ruby starving her kids again?

McKay [01:17:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:17:56] All right, here we go.

Jordan [01:17:58] Okay.

Guest 2 [01:18:00] And my kids are literally starving. I hesitate to say this because it's going to sound like I'm like a mean barbarian, but I told the kids, I said, I'm not even going to let you eat breakfast until you get your chores done if I let you.

Guest [01:18:13] All right.

John Dehlin [01:18:13] What's wrong with that? Jordan McKay.

McKay [01:18:16] I don't even have words, but Ruby uses food as a punishment. Like she withholds food. There's been videos that have surfaced of one of her kids, like having hid food in her bedroom because Ruby would take away food so often. And using food as a punishment, I mean, I can't even begin to say how inappropriate it is. But I mean, when we're talking about things as severe is, will come back around to like malnourishment and the effect on the brain and brain development and, you know, very early on developing a bad relationship with food for all of these kids. And so I just, it's ridiculous to me that food would be used as a punishment for not doing a chore.

Jordan [01:18:59] Yeah. And you just think in the grander sense of humanity, when people commit like, crimes against humanity and things of like, of that nature, usually one of the most cruel things that they do is cause a famine or take out or take up the means of their production of food and things like that. Doing that to a child, I could never imagine, even in such of a seeming and seemingly innocuous situation as this.

John Dehlin [01:19:30] Yeah, yeah. And Donna writes, that's the stuff of eating disorders. And I think that's a really important point, Donna, that Donna brings up. There is a very strong appearance culture in Mormonism and in Utah plastic surgeries. There's probably a higher than average implementation of plastic surgeries, cosmetic surgeries, not to shame anyone for that at all. But there just is a heavy emphasis on appearance. And. And so there's a lot of eating disordered behaviors. I would say probably larger, you know, per capita than many other places, just because, you know, Mormon moms and sometimes dads just really want and need to look their best. And so, you know, these punishments to kids around eating and nutrition can be easily intermingled with disordered eating behaviors of their parents and specifically their moms. Did you want to talk anything about that, Jordan?

McKay [01:20:30] No. Absolutely. And eating disorders, Like, I don't know what the incidence rate is in Utah, but it is. I mean, more often than not, especially with Mormon women. I've encountered eating disorders quite often, and so it is definitely a problem.

John Dehlin [01:20:44] Yeah. All right, well, the next clip is Ruby Delay's medical intervention for her daughter. Do you guys want to just play it?

Jordan [01:20:52] Yeah, send it.

John Dehlin [01:20:54] All right.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [01:20:55] I'm cleaning the sink. I'm cleaning the countertops, mopping the floor.

Video Clip 1 [01:21:01] I'm stalling.

Video Clip 1 [01:21:02] I think I'm ready now. I think I'm ready to leave. I put on a little bit of lip gloss, and that will be as much stalling as I'll go. And so she woke up this morning, and she's like, well, my vision is

Video Clip 1 [01:21:11] really blurry, like, more blurry than it usually is.

Video Clip 1 [01:21:14] Kevin just came in, and he's like, I think we need to take Sherry to the emergency room. I said, well, let me take a shower, and then I'll be out. It's been an hour, so.

John Dehlin [01:21:23] Yeah. And we apologize that that video just clip just came out with a accelerated voice. But do you guys want to summarize what we just heard?

McKay [01:21:32] Yeah. So I literally do not understand for any purpose, but her oldest daughter, Sherry, needed medical attention, and her husband even advised that they needed to go to the error, like, immediately because they didn't understand what was going on with her, and it was severe. And Ruby decides to wait for an hour just because. And she literally admits to stalling, but that there's, like, nothing wrong with that in her eyes. Like, she's talking about putting on lip gloss while her daughter needs to go to the emergency room and is needing medical attention in the other room.

John Dehlin [01:22:04] Yeah, yeah, it's just mind boggling there. There are a couple points that people are making that are really important. B writes, sherry talked about eating 1500 calories a day three weeks ago. Now, Sherry is the daughter at BYU, is that right?

McKay [01:22:23] Yes. And Ruby did have her on kind of a restricted calorie diet for a while. She did monitor her calories.

John Dehlin [01:22:29] Yeah, Merlin. And I think that comes with kind of the social media, YouTube kind of dynamic.

McKay [01:22:36] Totally.

John Dehlin [01:22:37] Merlin writes, she talked about being obsessed with being thin in the video with her and her siblings. Alexa writes, and I'm not sure this is true, but Alexa Smith writes, Utah is the number one state for breast augmentation per capita. If, if our sleuthers want to verify that, that's what one of our viewers and listeners is alleging. Emily writes, that's what they did with Josh Dugar speaking about these work camps, that they sent Josh Duggar to a work camp instead of a licensed mental health professional. And obviously the work camp didn't work so well for Josh Duggar who ended up, you know, being accused of sexually abusing his siblings and, and maybe other people.

Jordan [01:23:21] I will correct the record on that. In a lot of cases, Mormon parents are sending their kids to these camps for nothing. Josh confessed to a sheriff's deputy that he had abused one of his sisters and that was their response. And then the sheriff deputy didn't report anything and he is now serving time for sexually abusing children. So it was just like a whole thing.

John Dehlin [01:23:46] And I wasn't trying to say he didn't do anything, but here's the rub. You want to send your kids to a licensed mental health professional, but Jody was. So, yeah, ideally it's a licensed mental health professional that has more allegiance to their ethical code than their religious institution. Because the problem with LDS Family Services, which was the Mormon supported Therapy consortium that Mormon Church bishops referred their ward members to and maybe still do, is that that the way you get on a bishop's list, you know, to get referred to is if you communicate or signal more of an allegiance to the religious doctrine and the principles than you do to the ethical code of your profession.

John Dehlin [01:24:37] And a perfect example within Mormonism of the problem is Natasha Helfer Parker. Natasha Helfer, you know, is a licensed marriage and family therapist sex therapist, who, you know, a couple decades ago started advocating for ethical therapy over Mormon based therapy and, you know, normalizing masturbation, normalizing being lgbtq. And of course, within the past few years, she ends up excommunicated from the Mormon Church literally for nothing other than practicing as a. As a, you know, under the ethical code of. Of marriage and family therapists and sex therapists. And so the final point I just have to mention, because my wife Margi mentioned this, Margi was so disturbed by Ruby's, as Pamela puts it, the glee on her face when she seems to be, you know, punishing her children through starvation or not taking them to the doctor. Did y' all notice that, Jordan McKay.

McKay [01:25:38] Oh, you will see that throughout everything that Ruby does, like, the woman has no shame. But it's. It's. It is like you're. They put it perfectly. She almost gets, like, some sense of joy from inflicting pain and suffering onto her children.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] Yeah, yeah. So it's almost sadistic. And again, that might be mental health as much as it is any Mormon influence. But then did she. Was she encouraged to seek help or not? Or did she get the right help, or did her bishop refer her to Jody Hildebrandt? Right. Which doesn't really. Doesn't really solve that problem. So we just showed the Ruby starving her kids again, Right?

McKay [01:26:15] We did the medical intervention one. So.

John Dehlin [01:26:18] Okay, okay. So now. Okay, now we come to Jody Hildebrand. Anything you all want to say to set this up before we play the clip?

McKay [01:26:28] Play the clip first, and then I'll add everything else.

Jordan [01:26:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:30] Okay. All right, here's a clip about Jody Hildebrandt.

Jodi Hildebrandt's Teachings and Ethics Violation

Guest [01:26:38] Connection requires someone to live principles of being honest, responsible, and humble. So vulnerability means I'm willing to accept the state of existence in this world.

John Dehlin [01:27:01] Oh, wow. There she is.

Guest [01:27:02] Honesty and responsibility and humility are at the foundation of living a life that's connected.

John Dehlin [01:27:13] I mean, already. It's so ironic, because the accounts I've heard about Jody Hildebrand is that the last thing you would say to describe her is humility and accountability, that she sort of ran her therapy sessions and these support groups and these workshops and retreats as the absolute authority in everything that she said, and no accountability. But what. What did you want to say? Do you want me to show that slide and. And have you talked through it, Jordan?

McKay [01:27:39] Yeah, you can pull it up. So some of this we already know, but she is the founder of Connections, and we'll talk more in a minute about what Connections is. And then she's also. She claims to be a coach.

McKay [01:27:51] We mentioned before that she is. She was Chad's therapist. Ruby's son's therapist, and she was also Bo's therapist, and Beau is Ruby's brother. And so when you mentioned earlier that we had mentioned earlier. And so when all of this was happening in the beginning, Bo had actually left a negative review for Jody on her business page and had said that she was basically awful and did not help at all and was just all around terrible. And so there was a lot of kind of scandal around that in the beginning because everybody was like, oh, Jody and Ruby are starting this business together, and she was Bo's therapist, and there's like, you know, confidentiality and things there.

McKay [01:28:30] So she's been involved in the family in more than one way. And then, like we've talked about, she's a licensed mental health counselor. She does not operate within her license right now, as she says, she primarily, like John mentioned before, her, like, areas of forte were sex addiction and pornography. And she ran, like, a lot of, you know, recovering from porn groups and those kinds of things. And then she was on the LDS Family Services referral list for a while. So she was recommended by a lot of Mormon bishops. And then as we'll talk about in the next slide, her license was actually put on probation for an ethical violation.

McKay [01:29:08] And it shouldn't have been the only one because evidently, as John is hearing and as I have heard, there is now plenty to talk about. But we'll talk about that in a second. And then her and Ruby become business partners, which I'll return to in a second. And then later on, you'll also see that Ruby and Kevin attended some of her classes when they were having some

Jordan [01:29:27] problems and even were part of filmed discussions that they had. Couples and things.

John Dehlin [01:29:37] Yeah. And for those who weren't able to view the video, they're just listening. Ruby showed up on that Powderpuff Marketing piece with Jody Hildebrandt. Her face was in one of those workshop groups. So clearly, you know, they were, they were super connected.

Jordan [01:29:52] Even there was other material that I'd seen earlier today. Even in some of that. Sherry, her daughter, showed up in the, the little promotional material. So, yeah, they were very involved.

John Dehlin [01:30:08] Right. Okay, really quick. I, I, I'm gonna just be candid. I have to run down the hall for just one second. So I'm gonna have you guys just take the mic for, for a second and just know I'll be right back. Do you guys mind maybe telling this next story and, and take, taking it through to Will I get, I get right back.

McKay [01:30:25] Totally.

John Dehlin [01:30:25] Yeah, go for it, guys.

McKay [01:30:27] Okay, so next thing that we were going to talk about with Jody was the ethical violation that she committed that garnered a lot of attention at the time. So the article that we reference in it, the general show in a minute is. Came from the Salt Lake Tribune. But, like, essentially what happened is Jody, in her porn addiction therapist role, was reprimanded by the state and had to go. Her license was taken and she was put on probation because she discussed, like, confidential private information about a client with a Mormon bishop and byu.

Jordan [01:31:10] Yep.

McKay [01:31:11] So she disclosed likely information that this man was in therapy for, like overcoming porn addiction and these kinds of things, which is something that you can be disciplined by the Mormon Church for, including if you are at byu, that might kind of interfere with your good standing, which could get you kicked out of school, depending on the leadership. And so she communicated private confidential information about this client to his bishop and to his BYU leaders, basically. And the worst part about it, as if this already couldn't be horrible enough, the worst part about it is that all of the claims, according to the person, all of the claims that she made were false. And so that's one, even worse. But two, as a consequence of this, as a result of all of this, he got ejected from byu. And so.

Jordan [01:32:10] And. And even worse, how much was he paying a month?

McKay [01:32:14] So he wrote in, he was interviewed for this article. We don't know who he is. He kept his identity private, but he said as talking about Jody, she just lied wherever she went to further her agenda to destroy my life. And he said that the bills that he was paying for Jody's services was $2,000 a month.

McKay [01:32:34] $2,000 a month. And he, quote, says, we came there for marriage counseling, and she pulled us into what he calls her porn marathon. And so this isn't inconsistent with other information that we have seen and read about Jod. She's kind of like the horrifying joke is that she ruins families.

McKay [01:32:54] And this, I mean, just on a social worker level who has to abide by an ethical code, sharing confidential information about a client with another party when the client has not consented for that information to be released is a huge ethical violation. Huge ethical violation. Like, she absolutely should have been disciplined by the state. And she was. She was disciplined.

McKay [01:33:19] And so she had a set criteria for things that she needed to complete in order to obtain her license. Again, all of this was documented. She actually includes it on her website, if you're interested in reading it. And so basically, she had to meet a list of things, which was like, additional supervision with another client. She had to Record sessions, like, there was a list of things. And then once she did that, then her license would be reinstated and she would no longer be formally disappointed disciplined. So she did all of those things and her license was reinstated. And as of I haven't checked over the last few weeks, but as of when I checked, probably a month or two ago, her license was still active.

McKay [01:33:57] You can check license status in Utah, and so that's why she got in trouble to that time. But this is only. This is only one instance that we are aware of where she was publicly disciplined by the state with consequence of her license.

Jordan [01:34:15] Well, and it. It's also, as John might add, some context for the only circumstance that we know of where a client or a patient was like, this is not right. And they were able to find the proper channels to report this kind of unethical behavior to the proper licensing bodies in order for there to be any action taken. Because a lot of people probably don't know that that's wrong, that whatever she was doing that may have affected their life so much to the point where they would consider it to be ruined. In the case of this guy, they just moved on. They didn't do anything about it. And they were like, well, that was crazy. And who knows that the outcomes that could have come out of that and just went totally unreported.

John Dehlin [01:35:11] Yeah. And. And I'm gonna go ahead and just share. Share on the screen. You won't be able to see it, but I also shared as a link a very courageous gentleman named Adam Paul Steed made a public Facebook post, and I believe he's the person that's spoken about in this, in this slide that you have, which basically the headline. What's that?

Jordan [01:35:39] That we were just talking about? That one.

John Dehlin [01:35:41] Yeah. Yeah. Important therapist disciplined for telling church and BYU about a man. And so, so kudos to Adam Paul Steed for speaking out, if it's okay. Jordan McKay. And of course, we're going to be. We're going to be addressing this topic more when we do an episode dedicated to kind of the victims and, or survivors of Jody Hildebrandt and Connections later this week on Mormon Stories podcast. So if you have Jody Hildebrandt or Connection Stories, or if you've been a victim of her stuff, if she's, if she's harmed you or harmed your marriage or harmed your family, please email me@mormonstoriesmail.com either with your story, I'll keep it confidential, or if you want to appear on the podcast, we would love to have you because we are going to be spotlighting Jody Hildebrandt and Connections.

John Dehlin [01:36:35] But I'm just going to tell my story because this is where things kind of converge in kind of really weird ways because I've had people, you know, telling me I should cover eight passengers for years, and I just haven't really had an interest. And that's why Jordan McKay do the good work that they do. What I did, what I did have happen to me years ago, is I had a listener reach out to me, and I'm going to call him Terence to protect his identity. But Terrence was a grown man, married, with kids, living somewhere here in Utah. And I don't know the full story of how Terence and his wife ended up with Jody Hildebrandt, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with, let's just say, Terence either admitting, you know, pornography and masturbation to his wife or being caught masturbating and looking at pornography with his wife.

John Dehlin [01:37:35] Or maybe somehow the bishop was involved. But long story short, they ended up in couples therapy with Jody Hildebrandt. And one of the things that Jody did was require Terrence and his wife to attend these support groups that were very expensive that Jody Hildebrand and Connections sponsored. And weirdly, these support groups weren't run by Jody.

John Dehlin [01:38:07] You paid a lot of money and they were run by, again, as I understand it, non licensed people who were not mental health professionals, but were simply friends or former, you know, addicts that participated in Jody's therapy. But imagine this sort of like addiction and recovery group modeled after a 12 step program where couples are in there with, you know, the, the masturbating and pornography looking husband or wife with the non, you know, presumably non pornography viewing and, or masturbating spouse, you know, coming to the support group and confessing their, quote, addictions to the support group without a mental professional. They're paying a lot of money to Jody and, and then talking about sobriety, confessing, you know, their sins, so to speak.

John Dehlin [01:39:10] And then apparently Jody would assign sort of like an accountability buddy to the masturbating partner, as I understand it, such that like, let's just say it's a Tuesday and they're getting the urge to masturbate or look at pornography. They're supposed to text, you know, their, their, their accountability buddy or call them or literally call them and start clapping their hands to make sure that their hands aren't, you know, anywhere where they shouldn't be and receive that level of daily support as if we're dealing with alcoholism or meth addiction. And you know, that in and of itself is wrong and disturbing and unethical in so many ways.

John Dehlin [01:39:54] But it gets worse if you admit to your accountability buddy, or if you come to the group and admit to the group that you have, you know, fallen off the wagon or, you know, relapsed and you masturbated again. And it can be as infrequently as once every three weeks or once a month.

John Dehlin [01:40:17] The group is encouraged, as I understand it, by Jody, to make sure that punishments are exacted to the offending spouse. And so what that means is the group, you know, jumps on the confessor, but more importantly to the spouse of the confessor, force the spouse of the confessor to enact some sort of punishment. And in Terence's case, when I met Terrence, he was sleeping on a mattress in his office in his own house. Why? Because Jody Hildebrandt's Connections therapy group pressured Terrence's wife to punish him for masturbating. And the punishment was no sex, right? No sex for months. And you can't sleep with her. You got to sleep on a mattress in your office, and you think about the shame and the humiliation of your wife or your spouse kicking you out of bed.

John Dehlin [01:41:26] Your kids are like, hey, dad, why is there a mattress in your office? And they wake you up at night, and you're trying to explain why you're sleeping in your office on a mattress, trying to hide it. Or maybe you tell them, maybe mommy says, as a punishment, yeah, daddy is doing sinful, bad things. And so he's sleeping on a mattress because he's not worthy of sl with mommy. Not to mention the fact that you're deprived of any sort of sexual outlet. You can't masturbate. You're not having sex with your spouse. Like, that shame spiral is only going to make masturbation more and more likely.

John Dehlin [01:42:05] And so, of course, you're relapsing, sleeping on your mattress in your shame cycle. You're coming to the group, they're all shaming you for what you do. And then if you relapse and it gets out to the group, the group ultimately, and this is Terrence's own report to me, pressured the wife to kick Terrence out of the house that he was providing for as the primary breadwinner. So my memory is that Terrence ultimately was kicked out of his own house by his wife because of the teachings and the support group that Jody Hildebrandt of Connections was sponsoring with this couple. And who knows how many of these support groups are out there, how many marriages and families were harmed or destroyed by these practices.

John Dehlin [01:42:57] And ultimately, if a spouse can't, you know, can't quit the habit, quit the addiction, they're taught to divorce their spouse. And that's how so many of these marriages and families ended up being destroyed. And again, there are these weird teachings about being synchronous or in harmony or, or in any other ways, sort of like being out of alignment, frankly, with Jody Hildebrandt's own cult like theories that are religion based, that are in many ways, by her interpretation, theologically based in her interpretation of Mormonism. And while this in no way is the norm within the Mormon Church or Mormon Church culture, so much of this sexual shame, sexual obsession, sexual policing and monitoring is absolutely, in my opinion, interwoven into Mormon marriages and Mormon culture.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] And in that way, it's, it's, it can be very culturally and even theologically based on. And I asked Terence to come on Mormon Stories and tell his story. And of course he didn't want to because who wants to talk about shame and pornography and masturbation? And he was so torn because he felt, on the one hand, I don't want to be shamed, but on the other hand, if I let this story go and I don't speak out against Jody Hildebrandt, then I'm enabling her to harm more children, harm more families, harm more marriages. And Terence was not the only person that came to me reporting very similar stories.

John Dehlin [01:44:49] And once, you know, I text. Once I saw the news story of Jody Hildebrandt in Connections, I reached out to Terrence and I said, did you see, sent him the New York Times article on Jody Hildebrandt being arrested. And after swearing, he said to me, I wish, I kind of wish I'd spoken up earlier because I think my silence maybe enabled her own children and maybe many other people to be hurt. And of course, I do not hold Terence responsible.

John Dehlin [01:45:20] People deserve privacy. They don't have a duty or an obligation to bring on the, the world of shame for, you know, what, what a certain culture might deem as sexually deviant behavior. So, Terrence, don't feel bad. Any of you who didn't speak up, don't feel bad. But kudos to anyone, including ultimately Ruby's siblings that did their best to speak out against Jody and these horrific practices.

John Dehlin [01:45:53] Now, as a special guest to Mormon Stories, we are so grateful to have Dr. Julie Hanks here joining us on Mormon Stories podcast. Hey, hey, Julie Hanks. How you doing?

Mental Health Professionals Assess Connections Program

Guest [01:46:08] I'm great. How are you doing, John?

John Dehlin [01:46:10] Good. Sorry to bring you in in such a sort of a heavy moment for the podcast.

Guest [01:46:14] No, it's okay. I've been listening to the whole thing, so really enjoying it. And Jordan McKay, I'm a fan. I've watched several of your episodes.

McKay [01:46:25] We appreciate you. We've always, from even when we were Mormon, I always appreciated your perspective. So thank you for what you do.

Guest [01:46:31] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:46:32] And Julie, for our viewers and listeners who don't know you. You are an actively attending, faithful Latter Day Saint who has also been a therapist in this space for what, a couple decades now?

Guest [01:46:45] Three decades. I'm old. I'm getting old, John.

John Dehlin [01:46:49] So Julie. And Julie's been on warmer stories as well. Julie, take a second to talk about who you are and what you do, and then anything you want to say about kind of what you've just heard so far. And if you want to speak about Jody Hildebrandt and connections or practices like that, including the Mormon Church's own addiction recovery program, let's just give you the mic for a little bit. Is that all right?

Jordan [01:47:13] Yeah.

Guest [01:47:13] Oh, that's great. So I am a therapist, and I've practiced in Utah for almost 30 years. I own Wasatch Family Therapy clinics in Utah and Mesa, Arizona, and written some books. My specialty area is LDS women, and I am on Instagram a lot and post a lot and advocate for Latter Day Saint women.

Guest [01:47:40] It's interesting, this topic. I have been following Jody and Ruby's videos for the past. I. I think it's been about a year, and I've been very, very concerned. In fact, I reported Jody, I think it's been two months ago because of some of the racist, sexist, homophobic things she said online and because she is still a licensed therapist.

Guest [01:48:11] We're bound by ethical responsibilities even when we're not officially acting as a therapist. So I felt like it was reportable and so concerning to have a therapist speaking so disrespectfully of minority populations. I have never worked with someone who has been a client of Jody's, but I have had people say, what do you think about connections? And that's. That's when I went down the rabbit hole. And I have watched hundreds of videos and have been just compiling my own list because I've been afraid about what I've been hearing.

Guest [01:48:56] Okay. The addiction recovery. Oh, yeah. My biggest problem with that is that everyone who masturbates is not a sex addict. Everyone who looks at porn is not a porn Addict. That's been my experience that a lot of LDS people come in and they label themselves as addicts when it's like, I masturbate once a month. Right. Like you were saying, John. So I think that's so damaging. And also, we have victimized. We have created victims in spouses. Like, you've been cheated on.

Guest [01:49:34] We frame things as, you know, if your partner looks at porn, you've been cheated on, you're a victim. And that's created a whole other host of problems for clients that I've worked with. So that's kind of off the top of my head.

Guest [01:49:53] I'm horrified by the events that have transpired this week or what's come to light, and unfortunately, not entirely surprised. I'm surprised by the magnitude of the abuse that these poor kids had suffered, but I'm not. I knew there was. I sense there was something not right because of the teachings of Jody and Ruby and the ethical violations that have been going on, particularly with Jody as a licensed therapist.

John Dehlin [01:50:27] Well, Julie, I just want to say how grateful we all are that as a, you know, actively attending Latter Day Saint therapist, you're willing to speak out publicly about these sorts of things because, as we mentioned, Natasha Helfer and others, sometimes there's a price to be paid. But we really, really appreciate your courage in speaking up. Anyway, and I'm so excited you've joined us today. I want to encourage you to jump in at any point in the discussion from now to the end that you do you want to jump in on. Is that okay?

Guest [01:50:58] That sounds good. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:00] Okay. Thanks, Julie. Jordan McKay. I. I gave a big kind of a ramble rant. Do you. Do you all want to respond to any of the stuff that I said real quick?

McKay [01:51:09] No, I mean, 100 accurate. I mean, my experience, associate therapist validates everything like that you and both Julie have talked about. It's that. I mean, I can't tell you even in my two years working in this field how many men I've had come to me and say, you know, I masturbate once a month. And they lead by telling me I'm addicted to porn. And so it's. It is rampant. The shame is intense, and Jody is truly. And that's why we've been covering her for as long as we have, because Ruby is horrible. But Jody is also pretty sinister. And it's. It's a shame that she hasn't gotten as much attention as she has now. But we're glad this is at least coming to light, and hopefully it highlights Some other, you know, groups or people who might be doing similar things that are also not okay. So that's kind of.

Guest 2 [01:52:01] Yeah.

McKay [01:52:02] Everything that you've said. Completely agree.

Jordan [01:52:04] Yeah. Just piggybacking off of what Jordan was saying. It's been kind of disappointing to see a lot of the other YouTubers who report news and even in the media people kind of focusing and zeroing in basically just on Ruby because she is exhibiting parenting techniques that are abusive. And arguably I've always thought she is an abusive person and. But I think really where things took a turn for the absolute worst were the things that Jody had added into the mix. I don't think that Ruby would have gotten this far on her own if it were not for Jody's involvement with her.

John Dehlin [01:52:46] Yeah.

Guest [01:52:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:50] Were you gonna say something, Julie?

Guest [01:52:52] Yeah. Supposedly Ruby is a certified mental health coach by Jody, which is actually not a thing.

Jordan [01:53:01] It's mental fitness trainer.

McKay [01:53:04] I thought it was so dumb.

Guest [01:53:06] Yeah. And so that's just another, you know, pet peeve that anybody can be a coach. You can just any, any one of you listening can say you're a coach. So be. Be warned, that doesn't necessarily mean anything, although there are some amazing coaches out there. But can I just speak to an ethical issue that it's so unethical for Jody to partner with with one of her former clients? Parents in business like that has. That alone is a red flag. That's a dual relationship and creates a lot of. Of ethical issues as well. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:52] Also. Yeah. Potentially to do social media business stuff with current and former clients. Again, that's. I mean, it's just. Yeah. That's why I said at the very beginning, one of the most important things you get as a licensed mental health professional is the ethical training.

Guest [01:54:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:10] So that's a great point. I just, I don't, I don't want to beat this drum too hard, but I just want to make sure that if we focus on Jody Hildebrandt alone being the source of all evil here, I think we're really missing what is a more important message. You know, one viewer listener, Monica, wrote, we all reported Jody, and you have to ask yourself why.

Why Complaints Against Jodi Went Unaddressed in Utah

John Dehlin [01:54:35] Why in Utah was Jody reported so many times and nothing happened? Well, I have a couple theories. One is that, you know, one of the things Jody, as I've heard, was fond of telling people was that she had the ear of high level Mormon church leaders. She would tell people she interacted regularly with Mormon church apostles. And so I don't think she fully made that up. The fact that she. So many people tell me that she was referred. They were referred to her from their Mormon bishops.

John Dehlin [01:55:10] There was a religious culture that was approving of and recommending her institutionally. And so I don't think, you know, I don't want to skip over that. Also, Jody by no means is the only person dealing with this sorts of stuff, you know, in the past, whether it's the Sons of Helamans or Sons of Helaman or other types of groups, or the Mormon Church's own addiction recovery programs, support groups led by non mental health professionals. If you just Google right now, go to Google Maps, type in addiction recovery, you know, program or group, Utah or Salt Lake City, you're going to see a Google Maps with just infinite dots all down the map of local addiction and recovery support groups hosted by the Mormon Church, by service couples called to lead these groups, hosted, as I understand it, in Mormon chapels.

John Dehlin [01:56:16] And I may be wrong about some of that, but just try it. And you know, Jody is just sort of that unhealthy practice gone extreme. But, you know, and I know that one of the cardinal rules of the Mormon Church is don't criticize the Mormon Church's leadership. Having said that, Julie, is. Is there anything you feel comfortable saying about this not being purely a Jody Hildebrandt problem within Mormonism?

Guest [01:56:50] Yes. This may not be where you're headed, but many of Jody Ruby's teachings are based in Latter Day Saint teachings gone kind of to the extreme.

Jordan [01:57:04] Totally. I. In our analyses that we've done of it, I have titled it A Reskin of Mormon Ideals. Like, you just look at some of the basic ideas of truth versus distortion, you can see that there's obedience and sin and it's all just kind of redefined with new words. And. And I think it's not very different.

McKay [01:57:34] And I think maybe, Julie, you can speak to this and maybe John, also there's. I mean, the way that she's kind of skirted it. I feel like kind of from what we've seen is she's kind of isolated. Her role is like, I'm not operating as a therapist, I'm operating as a coach. And so therefore the ethical rules that apply to being a therapist don't apply to being a coach. And so that's kind of how I think she's skirted that rule. But, Julie, maybe you can speak to why that is also not okay.

Guest [01:58:01] Yeah, in. In ethics, we're not just bound as therapists by the work we do with clients, but also our work in the community. And as advocates and so I don't think she's skirted that. That aspect at all.

John Dehlin [01:58:20] Yeah, really quickly. I just, just for just, just to kind of illustrate the point, I just typed in arp Salt Lake City. What, what's the, what's the acronym for the groups? Do you guys remember for, for the church sponsored support groups?

Guest [01:58:43] I can't adrp.

McKay [01:58:45] I thought. Yeah, that's what I.

Guest [01:58:46] Something like that.

John Dehlin [01:58:48] Yeah. Well, anyway, I'll just. Yeah, I think, I think we've made that point enough. Anyway, so. Okay, so maybe let's go to the next slide which then deals with what connections and moms of truth is. Because that's where I think Ruby and Jody really, really come together in force. Do you guys want to talk about that?

McKay [01:59:09] Yeah, so this is just. I just took this screenshot from the, from the slides off the website and I'll just talk about this briefly. Basically these are the main kind of services that Jody had listed as part of what her and Ruby do. And so there's additionally in to these things. There's also a private Facebook group that if you join like their classes and things that you get access to, which is problematic just in a different way.

McKay [01:59:34] But what you'll see on here is we have the first one which is Connection Insiders, which is literally you get to interact with Jody and Ruby like personally on an app. Like you can ask them questions. You get 24. 7 access to their online community and you can video message with them. And then pricing on there is $21 a month and $21 for 20 minutes of direct video messaging.

McKay [01:59:57] And so remember also, you know, when we look back at that article that was posted in the Salt Lake Tribune, like apparently Jody was charging upwards of $2,000 a month for therapy, which is absolutely unheard of in my regard even you know, as like very licensed, well respected people. I mean, Julie, you could probably say that that's probably pretty astronomical.

Guest [02:00:19] Yeah. Per month. That's a lot.

McKay [02:00:21] That's a lot. So that was bizarre to me as well. And then we have the master classes where she gets a lot of people. She claims it's her best selling course and it talks about how to transform your mental health and relationship in six weeks. And that's $218 and also covers the materials, one of which that we talked about earlier. And then there's the parenting class where Ruby got involved basically was the two of them kind of creating. Let us tell you how to parent and how to. It says connect meaningfully and parent effectively in five weeks. And if you've seen any of the videos and if you watch any of the ones we're going to show you today, it is not healthy parenting.

McKay [02:01:02] So this is just a snippet of kind of the things they provided. And then they also did like some small snippets of what they taught in their courses on social media. So it was free and accessed on YouTube and on their other channels also.

John Dehlin [02:01:15] And this is tricky because it's not uncommon for therapists to run workshops or support groups or retreats. It's not uncommon for therapists to have online courses and to do parenting training or to have Facebook groups or, you know, that sort of thing. But I guess it gets tricky when, number one, the content is unethical or evidence based or science based.

John Dehlin [02:01:44] And I would say a second problem is when it's exorbitantly priced and or folks are pressured to buy it all, to buy the individual therapy, the couples therapy, the support groups and the courses. Because if a Mormon wife is terrified that her husband is going to masturbate or look at porn or their child, and then a therapist with the appearance of the Mormon church's support because the bishop preferred them, if that therapist is pressuring that wife into the couples therapy and the support groups and the online courses, just the terror, the religious based terror of your spouse or your children, you know, committing the sin next to murder is going to be undue influence to pressure people to opt in to these super expensive, sometimes two or $3,000 a month kind of expenditures. Julie, do you, do you want to add anything to that?

Guest [02:02:50] No, I just, I just agree. I totally agree. I'm just reading. I am reading the comments and enjoying those. So thanks everybody for the comments.

John Dehlin [02:03:01] Yeah. All right, so Jordan McKay, should we go to the clips?

Ruby and Kevin's Deepening Involvement with Connections

McKay [02:03:05] Yes. So this next one that you're gonna see is when Ruby and Kevin started participating in Connections. And so you know, the complex relationship with Ruby with Jody being Chad's therapist and then Ruby's brother's therapist, and the inappropriateness of all that. On top of that, we have Ruby and Kevin were also participating in her marriage classes in the very beginning, also when it turned into promotional materials for the class. But this clip is one of the many that you'll see from Ruby and Kevin talking about their experience.

John Dehlin [02:03:36] All right, let's. Let's let it roll.

Guest 2 [02:03:39] So, you know, Kevin would show up in a distorted way or a controlling way or in drama. And what I learned was I, I don't need to point that out. I don't need to Get Kevin to be responsible for him being in distortion. I only need to be responsible for my response to it. I am responsible for the emotions that I go into and I need to own that. And so when I like quite literally drew this line in the middle and said, I, whatever distortion he's in, it could be the reality. And most, a lot of the times it was the reality that you were in distortion. And I don't have to engage that. In fact, it's not my responsibility at all to engage that. My only responsibility is to own mine and to be honest about my. Myself.

John Dehlin [02:04:38] Yeah. So Julie, I just kind of have a tongue in cheek joke. Like in all your training, you know, your, your doctorate level training in mental health, how often did the, the clinic clinical word distortion come up? And what does that mean exactly?

Guest [02:04:52] Yeah, never. And, and when, when people who've been trained with Jody speak, it's like you don't even know what they're saying because it, all of these words have their own meaning like truth and distortion and what's reality. And they use agency a lot. They've borrowed that one from the, from the LDS church, so I get that one. But truth and distortion, the black and white thinking which is a sign of ill health is like at the core of the teachings. Right. It's either this or this.

Jordan [02:05:29] Something else that I have pointed out, and we both have pointed out a lot of times is the, the ambiguous nature of a lot of these things because the definitions are coming from them. So in a moment's notice in a conversation, they're able to redefine what distortion is to make themselves be in the right. And the person who's like a member of the group or who is paying for this course is in the wrong. So they always come out on top because of this ambiguous kind of language.

McKay [02:06:00] The, like, the reason I included this clip was because it demonstrates kind of the weirdness of the language, like Julie just pointed out. Like we actually, after we started investigating kind of this with Jody and Ruby, like our followers eventually asked us to like make a video on like what the heck truth is? What is distortion? Why do they talk like this? Why do they always capitalize the T in truth? Like it's very weird and vague and it sounds like they're kind of speaking their own language, which is why I included this one because it's kind of very bizarre to listen to.

John Dehlin [02:06:31] Yeah. And, and I'll just say that, you know, one of the things we try and talk about on Mormon stories is awareness around either high demand religions or cults. And while we don't, we, we don't find that it's useful to call the Mormon Church a cult on Mormon Stories podcast, we do think it's essential for people to learn the principles of unhealthy organizations or high demand religions or cults. And newsflash, religions aren't the only cults out there. Whether it's some multi level marketing or pyramid schemes, whether it's yoga instructors like Bikram, whether it's, you know, sometimes life coaches or even self improvement groups, certain businesses, certain educational institutions, sometimes in a marriage, it's essential to learn the fundamentals of high demand religions.

John Dehlin [02:07:30] There's a really, really good book that I recommend called Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsay Corbden about the 31 sort of practices of unhealthy organizations. Stephen Hassan, world cult expert, has a book called Combating Cult Mind Control where he's laid out the bite model where cults have excessive control of behavior. They unhealthily control the information. That's the I in cult.

John Dehlin [02:07:58] They have excessive control over thoughts. That's the T in bite. And then the E is emotional manipulation. They manipulate you through either excessive love bombing and praise or excessive fear, guilt and shame. The BITE model cult or high demand religion or unhealthy organization, awareness is crucial and, and you can just very easily fall out of the influence, you know, of an unhealthy religion or marriage or whatever and fall right into an unhealthy business or therapist or coach or whatever. And I think it's fair to say that Jody Hildebrandt seems to exhibit many, if not most of the traits of a cult leader. And this, this idea of the jargon that she uses and the principles that she teaches as if they're the absolute truth.

John Dehlin [02:08:50] I don't know how to distinguish that from Keith Ranieri or L. Ron Hubbard or Jim Jones or Warren Jeffs or any, you know, any modern cult leader that we might want to hold out. Judy, I see you. Julie, I see you nodding your head.

Guest [02:09:05] Yeah, it, there are lots of aspects that feel cult like, like she defines what truth and distortion is. She defines what principles are most important. She defines when you are in distortion or when you are in truth. And in some of her Facebook groups, if people challenge, they get booted out. So it's like anyone who challenges, the authority gets removed. And so all of those factors definitely are concerning.

John Dehlin [02:09:45] Yeah. And, and I've had many, many people tell me that they tried to speak up in one of these support groups. They got kicked out in a Therapy, coaching session with Jody. They tried to disagree with her. They were yelled at, shouted down, or kicked out. People joined these Facebook groups and tried to express concern or even disagreement. They were kicked out. Just a lot of boundary policing based on, you know, Jody's own kind of doctrine. So, Jordan McKay, should we go to the next slide about Ruby taking away Christmas from her kids?

McKay [02:10:17] Yes. This was. This caught. This went a little bit viral for her as well. Put Ruby back on the map. Every once in a while, she does something completely awful, and then social media takes hold of it. And this was one of those things. And this was in a video with Jody where Jody encouraged her to talk about this because she felt it was important.

John Dehlin [02:10:38] All right, here's the clip.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [02:10:42] I'm scared to share this because knowing people these days, I don't know if people are going to, you know, how they're going to respond. So Kevin and I, we have two. Well, we have six children. The two youngest are showing long patterns of selfishness. They have been showing through their choices, their unwillingness to repent, their unwillingness to feel sorrow over some pretty egregious choices that they've made.

Video Clip 2 [02:11:17] So Kevin and I have decided that we are going to give the gift of truth to them this year for Christmas. We are going to give them the gift of boundaries, and we're going to give them the gift of repentance.

Video Clip 2 [02:11:31] So. So we sat down with them and we told these two what our expectations were again. And we let them know how deeply sorrowful we've been because of the choices that they've been making and how it's affected their teachers at school, it's affected their peers, it's affected our home, the siblings.

Video Clip 2 [02:11:59] And we just laid it out very clear. And we told them that this year they are not going to be visited by Santa. So they will. And we prep them. We. We let them know that the Christmas morning, therefore, older siblings will be getting Christmas presents to open and that they will have the gift of love from their dad and I because we want them to really have a visceral experience that hits them. So up until now, I was really hoping that, like, keeping them home from school and wiping the floorboards would, like, really bring pain. Like, oh, my gosh, I really want to change this behavior that I've been exhibiting.

Video Clip 2 [02:12:47] And it didn't.

Video Clip 2 [02:12:48] It didn't. They, like, it wasn't painful for them. They're like, oh, yeah, we get to stay home from school and clean floorboards. This is kind of fun. It's like, ah, so you know, they've had these visceral experiences, you know, and they haven't. They haven't affected them. It's because they're so numb. And so the more numb your child is, the greater experience, the big. The bigger the outcome. They need to wake them up.

Video Clip 2 [02:13:14] You're not going to push a boulder with just your hands. You need some real leverage. And the biggest leverage that a little child has is probably Santa Claus. And so I expressed 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 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. 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.

Video Clip 2 [02:14:00] So that is our gift. Our gift is a reflection of truth to our child, of this is how selfish you have shown up. And it's not like once or twice. It's not one week. This is like months and months and months and months and months you have shown up this selfish. And so I'm going to reflect truth to you equally, which is about the equivalent of Santa not coming.

John Dehlin [02:14:28] I mean, I just. Again, I have no words. And really quickly, just as a. Just as a reminder for those who are joining us new, I'm John Dehlin of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm here with Dr. Julie Hanks at drjuliehanks.com and of Wasatch Family Therapy. And we're here with Jordan McKay from the Jordan McKay YouTube channel. Jordan McKay. Why don't you guys. Oh, yeah. Please like and subscribe, please like this episode so it gets shared far and wide. Please subscribe to Jordan McKay's YouTube channel and Mormon stories. Check out Julie, Dr. Julie Hanks's stuff. And we appreciate the super chats that are coming in, the donations to make this all possible. Jordan McKay, what do you guys want to say in response to canceling Santa out of love for your youngest children?

Jordan [02:15:15] The kids that she is talking about, you would think are 17 years old. Sneaking out of the house, taking the car places they shouldn't near adults they would have been.

McKay [02:15:26] What, like the way that you.

Jordan [02:15:28] No, the. The youngest one of the two was baptized the following month when she turned eight.

McKay [02:15:33] Yeah, there you go.

Jordan [02:15:35] So these are.

McKay [02:15:36] These are her two youngest children.

Jordan [02:15:38] Children that she's talking about saying that their behavior is egregious. And that she wants to inflict pain by way of punishment and that she wants them to be numb that so that they will finally come to repentance because they've been hurt so much.

McKay [02:15:59] What could they possibly be doing? What could they possibly be doing? I just don't understand. And the. I included this one also because some of the language in there, like when we first started listening to them, numb like numb came up awake. Like these are very much like culty terms. Like you know, everybody needs to be awake and everybody else is numb. And even you know, similar to, not to be extreme. But McKay and I have talked about this since the beginning similar to how Lori Valo described her kids. Kids sort of is like that zombie like numb. Like to consider your kids in this light is just so harmful. And for her to just be so willing to like blatantly put this on the Internet like she does not like she had hesitancy but she still put it out there anyway. The woman has no shame.

John Dehlin [02:16:47] Dr. Julie Hanks, you, you do family therapy couples and, and so does your Wasatch Family therapy. Do you have anything to say about this parenting approach or this parenting technique and whether or not you think it's empirically supported and, or helpful to children?

Guest [02:17:07] Absolutely not. This is one of the first videos I saw and I was shocked. What can an 8 and 10 year old do that's egregious? Like name something. I mean there's. And if they are doing something that's egregious, they need therapy. They don't need to hate Santa for not coming to their house. I mean I just, I can't think of anything that an 8 and 10 year old could do. I mean, yeah, they can get in trouble, they can do, you know, but calling them selfish developmentally that's normal for 8 and 10 year olds to be self, self centered because that's. They, they haven't learned that the world doesn't revolve around them yet. And this is developmentally inappropriate and so cruel. And they're going to watch their, their older siblings open up presents and they're going to sit there and cry. I mean I think that is traumatic. Very traumatic.

John Dehlin [02:18:13] Yeah. Well said. Thanks. Dr. Julie Hinks. All right, so let's go to the next slide. Jordan McKay. Ruby starts working for Connections in 2021. That's two years ago.

McKay [02:18:25] I included this on here. Julie said this earlier but I wanted to put it on here officially so you guys could actually see she is on the website. So she was formally working for Connections. But, yeah, the terminology that they used is certified mental fitness trainer. Not quite sure what that is.

Jordan [02:18:41] Certified by who?

McKay [02:18:42] Yeah, not quite sure what that is at all. But this is when she officially started working with Ruby. She was put on the website. She started appearing in, like, the promotional materials, like, as a her and do, like her and Jody combo. And so the. Her whole purpose was focusing on empowering parents and children to live in truth. Again, truth.

John Dehlin [02:19:03] And then the next slide shows Jody and Ruby getting close.

Jordan [02:19:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:19:08] Anything about that?

McKay [02:19:10] So there.

John Dehlin [02:19:11] I'll just describe the photos really quick. On the left, it looks like Jody and Ruby laughing in a car in bathing suits. There's one where, I guess Ruby's got her arms around Jody wearing a University of Utah sweatshirt, and they're both laughing and smiling, clearly. Kind of photo shots with the professional photographer. And then there's them posing in front of the red rocks in southern Utah with kind of Christmas and Santa outfits on, which is dark for two reasons. It's making that reference to Santa Claus in Christmas, and that's super dark. But also the red rocks in the background, that's where. That's where they end up getting arrested, right?

McKay [02:19:54] Correct. Yes. And that's why this is. I included this because it just seems like they have more than a business partner relationship. Like, it seems like they are very close, very close friends, like, whatever it is, but it just seems more than like a traditional business partner relationship. And this is around the time 2021, that Ruby starts getting included in all of the connection stuff. Like she is with Jody on everything, which is why I wanted to include it. But the following video, and really quick, what.

John Dehlin [02:20:26] What some might glean from that is maybe an allusion to some sort of romantic relationship between them. Having said that, Jody is just super anti LGBTQ homophobic, you know, condemns same sex sexuality, which is rooted in Mormon church doctrine and teachings. And so it's hard to know what to make of that. And then you find out that. That, like, eventually Ruby moves in with Jody and then Kevin's out of the picture. It's just hard to know what to make of this without. And I'm not trying to be, you know, gossipy or in any way scandalous, you know what I'm saying? Tabloidy.

McKay [02:21:10] Totally. Because it's just bizarre. And they do eventually, like, Jody moves in, and then Rui is always at Jody's house. And so it begs the question if it sounds more than just like a professional relationship.

John Dehlin [02:21:22] Yeah. All right, well, let's go to the next slide where Ruby And Jody begin offering parenting advice. Should we just play the clip or do you want to set this up first?

Warning Signs in Ruby and Jodi's Joint Content

McKay [02:21:32] This is probably the one clip. I mean, of the many, this is the one that stands out to me is like almost a very. Like a forewarning. And this could have even been going on at the time. But this is, like, very foreboding for me for what eventually would happen after this clip.

John Dehlin [02:21:48] Because. Just because it's a little bit coded, I think when I've seen this clip, should people kind of listen for signals of. Of physical abuse? Is that kind of why you're playing this clip?

McKay [02:22:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:22:00] Like an unveiled kind of. In veiled, coded language?

McKay [02:22:04] Yes.

Guest 2 [02:22:04] Correct.

John Dehlin [02:22:05] Okay. All right. Not to poison the well, but, you know, sometimes she talks in a bit of a coded, veiled way. Is that fair to say?

Jordan [02:22:13] Yeah, the waters are already poisoned here, so yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:17] Okay. All right. All right, let's. Let's play it.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [02:22:21] This is what love sounds like. When you see someone hurting you, acknowledge the hurt. If your kid came to you on fire, would you say, I'm so glad you trusted me to tell me you're on fire. But if I put out the fire, that's going to really hurt and you're going to end up with scabs anyway, so I'm just gonna love you where you are right now.

Video Clip 3 [02:22:40] No, you.

Video Clip 3 [02:22:41] You throw them on the ground and you start rolling them. You get a blanket and you start hitting the flames, and they're gonna say, you're hurting me.

Video Clip 3 [02:22:49] You're.

Video Clip 3 [02:22:49] You're beating me. You're controlling. It's like, no, dear, hold still. I'm getting the fire out. That's what a loving parent does because nobody will do it. It looks to the world crazy. And because they've never been loved before, it looks. Looks like I'm angry to them. It looks like I'm controlling. It looks like I'm militant. It looks like I'm a monster. It looks like I'm mean. It looks like I'm full of hate. It looks like I'm not accepting it because they don't know what love looks like or sounds like.

John Dehlin [02:23:22] Man. I've heard the saying. Well, I won't say it, but. But you know, Julie Hanks, do you. Do you have a reaction to that clip you just saw? Especially within the context of her providing parenting advice as a non, you know, professional. Non licensed mental health professional?

Guest [02:23:42] Well, she shouldn't be giving parenting advice. And that was a very frightening clip in light of what's happened. Right. The justification of being rough, hitting, throwing Down. I mean, it's just eerie and so, so tragic. And the way that she puts down empathy. Right. Like, oh, you know, that's not loving to say, accept you where you are. It's like, don't show empathy. You have to show kind of this tough love approach. That. That's really loving. I mean, that's. That's frightening, especially in light of what has transpired.

John Dehlin [02:24:24] Yeah, yeah. And an apologist is going to say, well, she's giving a metaphor. She's talking about a house of fire. And so the throwing your kid on the floor and rolling around on the ground, some of it would say, she doesn't mean be physically abusive to your kids. She was giving a metaphor about what happens when there's a fire. And your response to that would be, yeah, she is.

Guest [02:24:48] And look, look where we are. Why are we having this conversation? Because two children appear to be severely abused.

John Dehlin [02:24:56] Yeah.

Guest [02:24:56] So is, you know, is it a metaphor? I mean, you think so, but look where we are.

John Dehlin [02:25:04] Yeah, it's just this sort of punishment, retribution, discipline, mindset without love and compassion and mercy, which in all fairness, you know, you read the Book of Mormon, you read Mormon church doctrine, it always says mercy and justice need to be balanced. And you have a. You do have an Old Testament God sometimes or a Book of Mormon God that can cause havoc, but you also have that balanced with the loving, all loving, heavenly Father, I am a child of God, Christ like figure. So I think a more tempered Mormon doctrine and theology would always be balancing mercy and unconditional love with justice. This is sort of just the justice part taken to an extreme. Is that fair to say, Julie?

Guest [02:25:52] Yeah, I think that's. That's right on. There's. There doesn't seem to be in a lot of these clips. There's not empathy. That's what's lacking. The empathy and connection, ironically.

John Dehlin [02:26:07] Right? Yeah. Oh, wow. Nice. Nice touches, Julie.

Guest [02:26:12] I did not mean it, but that was.

John Dehlin [02:26:15] That was good. That was super good. Mic drop. Jordan, do you have anything you want to add?

McKay [02:26:20] No, I mean, I completely agree. This was, you know, it was unsettling to me at this point. I suspected that Ruby might have been abusive to her children when we started covering her just because of how she speaks. But the justification that Ruby always gives is that this behavior is okay because every other parent that compassionately cares for and loves their kids doesn't truly love them. Like, this behavior is love. Like not acknowledging what my kids need, starving them, like teaching them things that are not appropriate given their age. Like to. To Ruby And Jody, that's love. And everybody else is doing it wrong. And so there's no. That's the kind of really disturbing thing about this is there's no limit to what they can justify when they have reframed abuse as love.

The Mormon Angle and Institutional Failures

John Dehlin [02:27:11] Yeah. And, and I, I'll just say, you know, part of the theme of today's program is, is the Mormon angle. So I am going to add one element of the Mormon angle that's really important to me. You know, many, many people, including Ruby's own siblings, including many of her followers, have reported that they reported these scary utterances and videos and signals to the authorities, to whatever the equivalent of child or protective services is in Utah. But I just want to say this, that if we want to kind of look at a Mormon Church angle when it comes to issues like being gay or apostasy, which is teaching, asking tough questions about the validity of the Book of Mormon or asking tough questions about, you know, the polygamous practices of Joseph Smith, if you utter just a sentence on social media that goes against things that the Mormon Church really cares about, whether it's people like me or Jeremy Runnels or Cody and Leah Young or just the dozens and dozens of people that have been excommunicated over the past several years for apostasy, or like I mentioned, Natasha Helfer who simply spoke up too much about masturbation being normative, about LGBT stuff being normative.

John Dehlin [02:28:38] You know, you can find yourself with church sort of paid investigators copying, you know, your Internet videos or utterances, sharing them with your local bishops or leaders, and then you find yourself in a Mormon Church disciplinary council getting excommunicated. There are all sorts of issues the Mormon Church is very vigilant about. But why in the world, whether it's Jody Hildebrandt or Ruby here, or even Lori Daybell and Chad, Lori Valo and Chad Dabel, there are all sorts of really problematic teachings or utterances or videos or expressions on the Internet that for some reason the Mormon Church doesn't seem to be vigilant about and care about.

John Dehlin [02:29:29] And why wouldn't the way we talk about raising children, the way we talk about love and mercy and parenting, why wouldn't that be something that is reported to the bishops of this family, of Jody's family and shut down? And if they don't stop teaching these sorts of potentially violent and disturbing and family wrecking teachings, why aren't they ending up in disciplinary councils and disciplined by the church? Now, I'm assuming that they never were. Maybe I'll find out that they were excommunicated or facing church discipline. But I know Julie Hanks, yourself have sometimes been reported on and questioned about for some of the things you taught.

John Dehlin [02:30:16] Do you ever wonder why these people were allowed to speak publicly and teach the things that they've been able to teach for so long without any action by the church?

Guest [02:30:28] Because they're not threatening the church. They're threatening other people. I think, unfortunately, that's why. I mean, I think they absolutely should. But her being a bad parent or being an abusive parent isn't a threat to the church. Yeah, and tragic. I mean, this. That's tragic. But I think in a lot of situations, the church or. Or people in the church are worried about protecting the church more than protecting victims.

John Dehlin [02:31:00] Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, that takes us to the next slide. Jordan McKay, which is just a Reddit post on eight passengers. Snark. The subreddit that. That announces, Kevin has moved out, Jody has moved in. Do you all want to talk about that at all? Jordan McKay. We talked about it a little bit.

McKay [02:31:20] I'll just cover it briefly. They. This is kind of when things went nuts for eight passengers and connections. Like, as soon as this. I remember the day that this came out, our DMs were flooded with this because this was such big news. After not really hearing anything from them, like, because Ruby stopped posting videos on eight passengers. And so she had kind of taken up connections full time. And there were rumors of separation, but nothing had really been, like, super confirmed. And then this came out that the moderators of this subreddit had a verified source that was able to verify that the information was accurate, saying that basically Kevin moved out, her daughter had completely distanced.

McKay [02:32:04] Her oldest daughter, had distanced herself from Ruby and the rest of the family, like the immediate family, completely, which we later confirmed. And she later confirmed herself. She went on a podcast and talked about it. And so family's starting to turn because her siblings wouldn't really talk about it, but would like comments that were like, dissing on connections and things. So you knew that the people in the inner circle were aware, but nobody was really saying anything.

McKay [02:32:31] And so essentially what came out of this was there was also suspicions that Ruby was being physically violent, that the cp, like the dcfs, had been called multiple times, that, you know, the kids had been left alone for longer periods of time, which was later verified to be true. And then they also said that Jody's car was spotted outside their home starting six months from this post.

McKay [02:32:53] And basically it was there so often that it was insinuated that Jody was basically actually living there and then Kevin kind of disappeared from the house and wasn't really seen there again and then apparently had found an apartment and moved out. And so this was earth shattering to the eight passengers image because we're operating on a whole, you know, modus operandi of family values, traditions like marriage and suddenly all of that is crumbling. And this, her apparent business partner has moved into her house.

John Dehlin [02:33:27] Yeah. And Julie Hanks, I don't know what to make of the lack of action by child, Utah Child and Protective Services or whatever the formal name is, other than to say that I'm sure social workers are swamped with so many reports they're underfunded, they're under resourced. But then again, I would say if Utah, which is overwhelmingly an LDS backed legislature and you know, the politicians, et cetera and the population, you might think Utah would invest in Child and Protective Services at a higher than per capita rate because of, you know, the predominant cultures stated values of valuing children, of valuing families, etc. Do you have any experience where you can speak to the lack of action on the part of Child and Protective Services for so long?

Guest [02:34:28] Julie Hanks yeah, I think there are a few things going on. I think that social workers in the CPS system are totally overworked and overwhelmed. So I don't want to throw them under the bus. I think everyone that I know who investigators have been doing the best they can with limited resources. I think we don't have more resources because you actually have to admit that we have a serious problem in order to have more resources. Right. We value families, but we don't necessarily acknowledge the level of abuse that is happening in our communities.

Guest [02:35:09] That would need to happen first before resources are put there. Also, there seems to be privilege for well known wealthy families right there. You don't, you don't think like they're not the quote unquote type of family that abuses their kids. I think there's an image piece to this too where you know, unless there is physical signs of obvious abuse, you know, they probably wouldn't investigate.

John Dehlin [02:35:45] Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about the extent to which the Mormon Church has sort of embraced social media influencers over the past 10 or 15 years just as it's trying to remake its image and embrace the Internet age. The last thing the Mormon Church wants is, is a family, Mormon family, known and loved by millions to be found out, to be in, in disarray or unethical or, or heaven forbid, to have the kids taken away from them or. Or, you know, incarcerated.

John Dehlin [02:36:23] So I could see, just like with O.J. simpson in the. In the University of Southern California community, you know, if you watch, you know, the documentaries about O.J. simpson, you'll know that there were many, many reports to police and to local officials about his behavior and his abuse of his wife that went unreported and not acted upon because the community, the local community tended to circle around and protect his image, in part to protect the image of the surrounding community. In the same way, there would be all sorts of cultural and religious and social influences just wanting to hide this, tamp it down, because the last thing the Mormon Church want would be Donnie and Marie Osmond to have mug shots, you know, and I'm saying that metaphorically.

Guest [02:37:16] Right, right, right. And look what. Look what's happened because. Because we didn't intervene. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's so tragic.

John Dehlin [02:37:27] Jordan McKay, you all want to add anything there?

McKay [02:37:30] I mean, I. I completely agree. You know, as a social worker, everybody's overworked, underfunded, and we can. We only can do what we have in the moment. Like, I can only do something about the information that I have. And so it could have been that at this time, you know, Ruby could have been behind the scenes, like, physically abusing her children. But if I were a DCFS worker and I walked into that house and the kids didn't have any visible physical injuries, and the house was not in complete and utter disarray, and there weren't any other, like, obvious glaring signs of abuse other than potentially some outsider reports, like, that's not a whole lot of information to go off of that's pointing me to that direction.

McKay [02:38:09] The other thing that I think is important to keep in mind in this case is that people have been calling DCFS on eight passengers for years, like, since the dawn of their channel. So I would not doubt that that potentially played a role because DCFS has come to investigate them multiple times. And this is words out of Ruby's own mouth. And everything up to this point Ruby has stated was unfounded and nothing was done. And so I wouldn't doubt that that potentially plays a role, that every time they've gone to the eight passengers house and every time there's nothing that they can do anything about that once they start getting calls like that, at some point, like, at some point it kind of falls to the back burner.

McKay [02:38:47] Right. Because how many times do I have to go there and see nothing's going on before we realize that Nothing is truly going on. And we don't know the degree of the abuse that was happening at that time, like when Ruby and Kevin were there versus when the children are in Jody's home in Ivan's, which is not even a place that the kids should be. Like, if I were to, you know, if I'm a DCFS worker looking at the child, the Ivan's residence would not be an address that I would even have. And so there's a few reasons I think this flew under the radar.

McKay [02:39:19] But, yeah, I completely agree. And I mean, there's a larger system here at work too. If we don't, you know, we have to acknowledge the privilege of the fact that they are wealthy and white. And I think that also plays a role here. So there's so many factors here, and I don't blame any of the social workers that were involved in this. I think this is a much larger issue.

Jordan [02:39:35] Yeah, it kind of plays into. There's a lot of. Since everybody here except for me has, like, accomplishments and education. Coming from the YouTuber angle, you see a lot in the Internet age now of people who are taking people that they don't like and they're weaponizing services against them, especially things like swatting to the point where some creators, the. The police are the dispatch or whoever takes the call, they recognize, oh, this person's a YouTuber and they have a lot of haters. We don't need to send the SWAT team this time because it's already happened a couple times. So it could be happening in that capacity as well, where they're aware that these people are in the public eye and they're saying, we've been there. We haven't seen anything. We can just totally disregard this.

John Dehlin [02:40:30] Yeah, that's great. That's great feedback. Just got a text, just got a message in. Jamie says still appreciate your perspective and feedback. McKay. Absolutely. What's that?

Jordan [02:40:43] Jamie's. Jamie's from our channel, so.

McKay [02:40:45] Oh, thanks, Jamie.

Jordan [02:40:47] I love having people in my corner and.

John Dehlin [02:40:49] And Jordan, thanks for reminding us that the acronym in Utah is. Is dcfs. Utah Division of Child and Family Services. And we still want to encourage people to report any abuse that they're aware of to dcfs.utah.gov we won't get into the fact that in Utah, Mormon Church leaders are not mandatory reporters to dcfs. And that's another podcast, and we've done several on those. But unfortunately, the Mormon Church works really hard in states like Arizona and Idaho and Utah to make it so Mormon Church bishops are not mandatory. Reporters. When abuse is discovered in an ecclesiastical setting. Let's go to kind of the beginning of the end or, you know, one of the last final steps before this all blows up, which is Ruby quitting eight passengers. Have I played that clip?

McKay [02:41:45] Nope, not yet. So go ahead and roll it.

John Dehlin [02:41:47] Let's go ahead and play it.

Guest 2 [02:41:49] You wonder where I've been on my vlogs. You wonder why I left YouTube to save my kids. No amount of money. And I'm telling you, I was making millions. And I left it because my kids were being hurt. Hurt with entitlement. They were being hurt with people's advice. And they didn't have a mother up the front saying, I don't care what

McKay [02:42:16] the world's opinion is.

Guest 2 [02:42:17] This is the truth, and this is where I stand. And fortunately, I had a chance. I had them in my home long enough to do it, and I'm not going to lose them. They're seeing truth, they're accepting truth, they're loving truth. And so this is my passion, is to invite you to stand in truth and put your opinions to the side for a minute, because your kids are the target of distortion.

John Dehlin [02:42:42] I mean, Julie Hanks, you've got the piano playing there. You've got Jody wiping off the tears. What's. What's not to be moved by that video clip?

Guest [02:42:52] Well, it. It's not true, right? It's not true. She has lost her children, and her oldest daughter doesn't talk to her, and now she's lost custody of four of her children. So it just feels really manipulative at this point. Like that. That she wanted to. She left vlogging to save her children when that's the opposite of what's actually happened.

John Dehlin [02:43:20] Yeah, I mean, save them from her, basically.

Guest [02:43:23] Right.

John Dehlin [02:43:24] Is what was needed. Jordan McKay, your. Your reactions to that.

Jordan [02:43:28] This one was just like the final. This has gone too far. There's like, the point of no return, essentially, because she was taking the channel offline, essentially. Or stopping. Had still been up at this point when they had filmed that video, but she was essentially morphing it into, like. We're all saying this is expl. Exploitative. You're making money off your kids, and maybe they benefit off of it, but you are the one who puts the money in your pocket and, you know, at their expense. And she's saying that she's quitting to save her kids, but it's because her kids have become selfish and they've become spoiled because of all of the great things that they're able to afford.

Jordan [02:44:16] Now because they have so much extra money. It was just so sickening to think that she was so lost in the sauce she didn't even understand why what she was doing was wrong. It was Jody's opportunity to tell her, this is why it's bad, and this is why or how we can make people trust us and what we say more. Because you're going to have an emotional talking point now about how what you were doing was distortion and now you're living in truth because you decided to shut down your YouTube channel.

McKay [02:44:51] Well, in the usefulness of it like this information has now been weaponized because I'm a woman with almost 3 million subscribers making millions of dollars off my channel and I have given up everything for connections. And so for an outsider to see something like that, it's like, oh my God, this woman gave us millions of dollars. It's huge. And so there's no doubt that that was a huge factor in this.

Theological Influence on Extreme Parenting Practices

John Dehlin [02:45:18] One of the things, you know, because we're trying to focus on the Mormon angle on this particular episode. This is another instance that I think theology has a place. You know, the Mormon Church is officially called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And that Latter Day Saints refers to kind of a millennialistic Christianity where Mormons are taught that we are in the end times, that Jesus is right around the corner. And for 200 plus years, pretty much every generation believes that they're, you know, no pun intended. Julie dazevan Hanks They're Saturday's warriors, right? They've been saved for the last days. It's Saturday night before Jesus comes on Sunday and Jesus is coming any minute now.

John Dehlin [02:46:08] That fuels the prepper movement, that fuels, you know, not just within Mormonism, but within broader evangelical Christianity. And, and for me, there's even reminiscence of kind of again, the Lori Valo, Chad Dabel stuff, prepper stuff, where you get this sense that Ruby is just like the. The world is closing it around us and righteousness is disappearing and wickedness is everywhere. And I'm shutting down my YouTube channel because Satan's about to take control because Jesus is about to come. You know, is it fair to say that there's a millennialistic Christian teaching that is wreaking havoc on the mental health of many Mormon families? Julie Hanks Is that fair? Not fair?

Guest [02:46:54] Yeah, I think it's fair. There's a lot of talk on, on their channel about the world. The world is grooming your children. You're the. The world is influencing technology is bad kind of that you Know, we need to be. To isolate ourselves from the world. So that's. I think that's definitely influenced by. By Mormon teachings.

John Dehlin [02:47:20] Yeah. Yeah. Jordan McKay, anything you want to add before we go to the August 30th?

McKay [02:47:27] I mean, this was kind of the. This was like the beginning of the end, basically, when we. When we got to this point, and even the, you know, the area that they're even filming in. And some of these clips, like the last one that you guys just saw, like, this was actually filmed in Jody's basement in her home in Ivan's in Washington county in Utah. And so there were, like, pieces that were slowly coming together kind of behind the scenes that everybody was kind of speculating. And then we hit August 30th, and everything falls apart.

John Dehlin [02:47:56] All right, well, let's go to it. So August 30, what happens?

McKay [02:47:59] August 30, my Instagram account breaks, basically, as I got about a million dms about this case, and rightfully so, because the main image that we got that John will put up is this Instagram story from Sherry Frankie, which is Ruby's eldest daughter, who does not speak to her anymore, with the caption, finally, and the photo is of a police cruiser and a police officer with a decently sized gun standing in front of what would be Ruby's Springville home. And so this got posted, and then everybody went nuts because this obviously means something. And then there was a Reddit post that came about that pointed more attention to this.

McKay [02:48:39] And essentially what ends up happening is law enforcement shows up at Ruby and Kevin's home that is located in Springville. And according to the reports of the people that were there at the time, Kevin and Ruby were both there. They were separated. They were talked to. There was suspicion throughout a lot of these events that you'll see, everybody's like, where the heck is Kevin? Because Kevin's largely been absent and no one knows where the heck he is throughout all of these things and over the last year or so.

John Dehlin [02:49:07] And someone's asking, who's Kevin? Kevin is Ruby's husband.

McKay [02:49:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:49:11] Former byu. Former. Former BYU professor. Yeah, keep. Keep going.

Jordan [02:49:15] Estranged husband at this.

McKay [02:49:16] Yeah. I mean, separated at this point, but not.

Jordan [02:49:19] Not legally. Not divorced.

McKay [02:49:21] So as far as we know, the reports were that both of them were walked in different directions in handcuffs. So everybody assumed that Kevin was arrested. I'm thinking now that he was probably just detained because he was not arrested. Because we find out a few days later when he releases a statement from his BYU educated lawyer, Mormon lawyer, that he is seeking to like. The word they used was like, fatherly involvement of his four children, which the kind of rumor now that's coming about this is, does Kevin not have custody of the children?

McKay [02:49:58] Because if we're talking from a social work angle, you know, number one priority when we're taking into custody, like when kids are having to come into state custody, usual typical priority is a kinship placement, which is with a family member or another parent, if it's appropriate. And so in this situation, another parent that's not abusive would be ideal, and custody would generally divert to that person. But if Kevin doesn't have custody of the children, then that creates a whole new question as to where the heck has Kevin been and why doesn't he have custody of his kids?

McKay [02:50:29] So he's largely a missing puzzle piece. And all of this because no one really knows what's going on with him. And then he suddenly falls off the map and then gets a lawyer. So really we don't know anything about Kevin at this point. And so that's the beginning of these events. John, if you flip to the next one, it comes to the rest of

John Dehlin [02:50:48] it really, really quickly. I just want to play a couple quick show, a couple quick comments, and this one's going back a tiny bit. So. So many viewers, and I apologize for jumping back, but I just want to hit it while we're hitting it. So many viewers, when they saw the video clip of Ruby crying and saying she's shutting down eight passengers, they mentioned Jody putting her hand on Ruby's knee for an extended period of time. On the one hand, let's not pathologize or stigmatize any sort of signs of consolation or affection between any gender. But on the other hand, there were just so many comments commenting about that. I know we're jumping back, but does anyone have anything to say about that? Or should we just. Just say we're not going to comment on that?

McKay [02:51:39] Jody is very touchy.

Jordan [02:51:40] Yeah. There are so many photos of her and Ruby where they're. They're really close. And a lot of people like to poke fun and say, oh, maybe they're. They're lovers or whatever, because she is extremely homophobic. And there's a lot of a trend of people who are being very homophobic,

McKay [02:52:02] being actually gay, which is also harmful to the community. To perpetuate that is like a driving narrative. But it is, and, you know, it. It comes back to, we don't want to speculate on somebody's, you know, sexual orientation. So, yeah, we don't know But I do understand what they're saying because Jody is very touchy and kind of affectionate with Ruby.

John Dehlin [02:52:22] Yeah. There's another comment. And the knee rubbing, massaging by a business partner therapist, is that appropriate? You know, those are all fair questions.

Jordan [02:52:29] They have a very close personal relationship outside of their professional relationship, and I think we can just leave it at that.

John Dehlin [02:52:37] Another comment that's really chilling, Honey Rebellion notes that Chad Dabel, the, you know, the guy who's in prison for likely being involved in murdering his own wife and the, the killing of, of Lori Vallow's two children. Chad Daybell is from Springville, which is also where, where Ruby, Frankie. And this is for those who don't know where Springville is. It's about 30 minutes south, I think, of Salt Lake City and just a little bit south of Provo, Utah, which is where BYU is located. And, and if, you know, if, if the dad, what's his name, if he worked for byu, it would make sense for him to live in either Provo or Orem or Spanish Fork or Springville.

John Dehlin [02:53:25] But isn't it, isn't it kind of dark that this is also happening in Springville? And is it, would it be too easy to make, make a lot of that or Julie Hanks, in your view, is this sort of prepper, end times, almost neoconservativism that seems to be sweeping Utah? Is it, is it a surprise to you that two national disturbing news stories are both coming out of Utah county and specifically Springville? Is that a surprise to you?

Guest [02:53:59] Kind of, yeah. Let two, two huge stories. It's kind of a surprise from the same small. Because it's a small, small city.

John Dehlin [02:54:08] It's not a small town.

Guest [02:54:09] Yeah, I think it's, it's eerie.

John Dehlin [02:54:12] Yeah.

Jordan [02:54:13] That nasty shallow lake has to be.

John Dehlin [02:54:17] Yeah. But there's just, in all seriousness, there's a real sense of suppression of strict orthodox culture that Utah county, along with Rexburg, Idaho are, are just known for and famous for. Is that fair to say, Julie Hanks?

Guest [02:54:36] Yeah, unfortunately, I think it's. I think it's true.

John Dehlin [02:54:40] Yeah. Another person asks Patty Gee asks, why wasn't Kevin aware of what was going on? Didn't he see the kid's condition? I just want to say that my opinion is that what Jody, what Jody Hildebrandt seemed to traffic in was in parental alienation of the father of the dad, because ultimately she was the kind of matriarchal authority in her self improvement mental health cult. And it just always seemed that men were on the outs. Men were shamed, men were stigmatized, and ultimately men in too many cases that I've heard, were run out of the family, largely because more often, than not, and I, I hate to be so candid, they were the masturbating member of the couple of the dyad.

John Dehlin [02:55:36] And so, you know, all, all the support groups and the, in the couple sessions were aimed at the masturbating male where, where they end up either sleeping on the, on the mattress in the office or ultimately kicked out of the house. Is that unfair that, that maybe, that maybe Kevin suffered a similar fate under Jody's direction?

McKay [02:55:58] I wouldn't doubt it. I don't think it excuses Kevin from any of his involvement here because I think to some degree he was involved in this and neglectful of the children. But I completely agree because if you think about it, it's kind of twisted because the reason, you know, Ruby and Kevin participated in Jody's classes because they were having problems.

John Dehlin [02:56:17] Yeah.

McKay [02:56:18] And so for Jody to kind of like, you know, weasel herself in here and then knowing that they were already in a vulnerable, vulnerable position because they were struggling and then knowing that information and then being able to drive like a further wedge between them, like, it sounds like, I mean it, it sounds like she knew what she was doing to me.

John Dehlin [02:56:36] Yeah. All right, well, let's go to the main August 30th slide and just tell us the dark, you know, findings.

The Arrest and Criminal Charges Explained

McKay [02:56:44] So this is the very summarized version, but basically here's what we know from August 30th. So Ruby's 12 year old son sneaks out of Jody's window in her Ivan's home. She lives in Washington county in a very, very large home.

McKay [02:57:01] Her 12 year old son runs to a neighbor's home and they answer the door and he starts asking for food and water. He's extremely emaciated, looks malnourished. He had duct tape wrapped around his wrists and around his ankles and he had like open wounds and lacerations that we later learned needed like immediate medical attention. And they were able later to verify that the lacerations came from being tied up with a rope. So this is like the first piece of this, is this poor child was somehow able to crawl out a window and get to the neighbor's house outside of, outside of Judy, outside of Jody's home.

McKay [02:57:36] And Ruby was not there at the time. And so the neighbor of course, calls the police and they come, Ruby's still not there. It's just Jody. And they go into Jody's house. Police go into Jody's house. They Find the other child, which is Ruby's youngest, who's 9 years old, who was also extremely emaciated, also had open wounds and signs of physical abuse. And when the police scanner audio came out, we found where they found her youngest daughter was, they termed it as a panic room that was under the garage and the door was closed with a safe. And so it was a safe door. And so basically whoever was in there was locked on the inside, no windows.

McKay [02:58:20] So that's where they found Ruby's nine year old daughter because her son led the police officers to, to her in there. And this poor kid is so horribly traumatized. And obviously I'm sure Ruby and Jody were villainizing any person in a position of authority who could help them. Because her youngest daughter refused medical care for approximately four hours. It was four hours before officers and EMS that were there at the time could actually convince her to get medical attention for the wounds that she had. And they were both taken to the hospital and both had, were extremely emaciated and malnourished. And so they were receiving medical treatment.

McKay [02:58:58] Obviously there's designated treatment for the level of malnourished that they were, but that's kind of where all of this was brought about. And we, we learned later that Ruby was coming from Springville back to Ivan's. And so there's some, there's some speculation about the timeline, about what's happening, where and who knows for sure. But we also found out from the audio, the police scanner audio, that Ruby attempted to go to the hospital, Ruby did go to the hospital where they had her two kids. So the theory is that Jody called Ruby and said they've taken the kids to the hospital. And Jody or Ruby started racing home from Springville to get to Ivan's and instead went to the hospital where the kids were.

McKay [02:59:42] And the hospital contacted law enforcement and law enforcement said don't let her in. And so Ruby was not able to get to them. And then Ruby went back to the house. And then upon some police conversation, looking in both of their cars, talking, they were both promptly arrested for aggravated child abuse. That was intentional and it was two counts at the time.

Guest [03:00:07] Can I, can I bring up something? My understanding was that the safe room was from another case that they were talking about on the police scanners at the same time. So that's what I read on Reddit. But so that may be, that may be part of another case and not

McKay [03:00:27] this one, which I would love that because it would make me feel better about that piece of information.

Guest [03:00:32] A lot of the Commenters are saying the same thing. That. That was from another conversation that was discussed at the same time. Overlapping calls. I hope it's true, because that just makes it even more sinister.

McKay [03:00:47] Yeah, And I mean, that's the. And if they were tied up, I mean, if we even just roll with that logic, like, there wouldn't be much of a need for them to try to escape because they couldn't.

Guest [03:00:57] Yeah.

McKay [03:00:58] You know, the whole situation is just absolutely atrocious. And both of them are arrested and taken to the same jail and where they've been this whole. They've been since August 30th. And then slowly over the last few days, there's been, you know, information that's kind of slowly disseminated over time. And then, John, if you roll to the second one, I listed what the

John Dehlin [03:01:21] charts are really quickly. I just thought I'd play here's. Here's a visual representation. I believe that's. That's a video of Jody's house. Is that right?

McKay [03:01:30] Yeah.

Jordan [03:01:31] And interesting enough, the. The promotional material that Jordan included at the start when we were introducing Jody is in front of her house at one point.

John Dehlin [03:01:41] Yeah, I've seen this neighborhood, I'm pretty sure in St. George. And, and I. I think it's worth mentioning that southern Utah, you know, we talked a little bit about Utah County. I think southern Utah might even be a little bit more just sort of, I don't know, just guns and. And end times and bunkers. I just, I think in kind of a bit of a more rural nature. There's something about southern Utah that, you know, that is important here, and I don't exactly want to overstate it, but there's something there. All right, so now let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is arrested and charged. Let me switch back to this tab. Okay, go ahead.

McKay [03:02:33] So on the night that they were arrested August 30th, the information came from the Washington County Sheriff website, and we were able to confirm that it was, at the time, two counts of aggravated child abuse, with the stipulation that it was knowingly or intentionally. If you're familiar with Utah criminal code, that matters because that changes kind of the punishment for these kinds of acts. It's not just aggravated child abuse. It's stipulated whether it was, like, medical neglect, whether it was reckless, or whether it was intentional or knowingly. And of course, intentional, unknowingly committing aggravated child abuse is going to hold larger weight punishment wise, which makes it a second degree felony.

McKay [03:03:10] So at the time of that arrest, both Ruby and Jody were charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse. Either I think it was yesterday additional information came out. I read the probable cause statement that they added four more counts to Jody and Ruby of additional counts of child abuse.

McKay [03:03:29] And that information is online and you can find it and read it. But basically it's for these, these two children, but it's more descript of what was actually happening for the two of them. And it kind of described the nature of the wounding and the malnourishment. And they, the account, like the counts are very intense, like these criminal charges are very intense because aggravated child abuse holds basically this kind of stipulation that death could be imminent. Imminent emotional and psychological harm that is like lifetime worth damaging. Like we're talking about very, very severe cases of abuse here. And additionally, it was notated in the probable cause affidavit that Jody was in direct care of both of these two children at the time.

McKay [03:04:15] And so there was. Ruby was not there. And so now there's a lot of speculation around how much, much time was Ruby taking or how much time was Jody taking care of these children versus Ruby. And so the reason that Ruby was also able to be charged was an actual YouTube video that they pulled as evidence that was recorded two days prior to when they were arrested that proved that Ruby was in the house, which was how they justified that Ruby was aware of the abuse because she had been there. And so the two of them have identical charges with some different stipulations around, you know, their involvement.

McKay [03:04:51] And so including awareness because Jody was able to be charged with direct, like, physical abuse, because the intentional piece was that she had evidence of treating one of the child's wounds in her bathroom. And that was how they were able to apply the intentional charge because she was aware of it and didn't do anything about it. And so that's kind of this piece of it. And then they were both also denied bail. So neither of them can get out at this point. And then their first, I think their Trial date is September 8th for the both of them.

McKay [03:05:28] I was recently told that the prosecution of the state prosecution petitioned to use the same judge for both cases. They currently both have two different judges on each of their cases in the state is petitioning that they combine them both, which according to my lawyer friend, will likely be denied by the defense because it will be easier to blame each other if their cases are distinctly separate, like we saw with Lori and Chad Daybell. And then as a consequence of all of this, all four of the minor children are currently in DCFS custody.

John Dehlin [03:06:03] And it was Gerardo, my. You know, one of my. One of my collaborators here at Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. He noted to me how extreme it is for bail not to be offered. And he told me that even Lori. Lori Vallow was offered the option of bail, but she just couldn't come up with the money for it. But, but his point was even Lori, Even Lori Valo was offered bail. So what do we make of how extreme and rare it is that people aren't offered the option of bail is? Do either of you have a thought on that?

Jordan [03:06:39] I think one crucial difference between Lori and these two was they were in different states. So I. I'm not really sure how it varies between. Was it in Idaho that she was apprehended or. Yeah, yeah. It might be a little bit different because of that.

McKay [03:06:57] But also she has money, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you let her go out on bail and she runs.

Guest [03:07:03] Yeah.

Jordan [03:07:03] I mean, that. That house, somebody put it in the chat. I think his estimates were around $3.5 million.

John Dehlin [03:07:11] Yeah. Yeah. So I'll just share. Yes. Heather Rose wrote 3.1 million dollar house, which is just shows how much money. Julie, you seem like you want to add something.

Guest [03:07:23] I have a family member who lived in that same development. Yeah. And they're not cheap houses.

John Dehlin [03:07:31] Yeah. And I mean, we're not shaming people who make money. But. But when you're making a lot of money off of. Really unethical on a single practices. Yeah.

Jordan [03:07:42] Divorced.

John Dehlin [03:07:43] Oh, yeah.

Jordan [03:07:44] Was making an incredible amount of money to be able to afford that.

McKay [03:07:48] Well, if you're charging $2,000 a month for therapies.

Jordan [03:07:51] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:07:54] The other, the other thing I mentioned, Southern Utah, and I don't want to hate on southern Utah. There's many great people there, obviously. And, you know, that's bigotry to assume anything about anyone just because of some group they're a part of.

John Dehlin [03:08:08] I will also just want to say, you know, Candace Wright's absolutely true, John. I live in southern Utah. Much more of a fundamentalist type of Mormonism here. I mean, it's not going to be a surprise to anyone that literally, the FLDS Church, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints led by Warren Jeffs, is in southern Utah. Slash, you know, Colorado, Arizona. That area is known for literal fundamentalism. And I also. You guys may or may not be expecting this, but. But just recently we had another national news story. Southern Utah. Man kills wife, five children and mother in law before shooting himself.

John Dehlin [03:08:47] And that was in Enoch, which is Iron county, which, you know, I don't know my Utah geography as well as well as I should, but that's not super far. Isn't that near Cedar City, which is. Which is kind of near St. George, am I right?

Jordan [03:09:02] I don't remember. Maybe.

John Dehlin [03:09:04] Yeah, it is. It's near. It's near Cedar City. So there's something going on in southern Utah that that is. Is a factor in all this as well. Okay, I guess. Should we go on to the, to the. One of the last slides?

Jordan [03:09:22] Let me just interject with one, please.

John Dehlin [03:09:25] Okay.

Jordan [03:09:25] Particularly troubling parallel that I had drawn because I totally forgotten about it. But if we think back to what we were talking about earlier with the oldest son, Chad, and him having cruel and unusual punishments with his beds being taken away and having to sleep on a beanbag and ultimately being sent off to a.

Jordan [03:09:50] A trouble, a wilderness camp, the nail in the coffin on that whole situation and him receiving these punishments was him duct taping that same child to a pole or a basketball hoopa or something of that nature as a prank.

Jordan [03:10:09] And then it comes out in this situation just this week that this same child was. Had duct tape around their hands and their. Their feet. And Ruby willingly, knowingly let that happen by some random person. So it's just so, so incredibly sad to think that. And that's why I hold that Jody was the kindling for this fire. And the. It just made it ten times worse.

John Dehlin [03:10:48] We have one comment from Hillary Pearl that says the boy was apparently in such bad shape, wounds and malnourished, that the responding officer got emotional and let EMS step in and took a few minutes. And, you know, these are. These are cops. You know, they see a lot of bad stuff is kind of the point, Julie.

Guest [03:11:14] Yeah, Yeah. I believe it was the reporting party who got emotional. So the neighbor, not the cop. Okay, what I read.

John Dehlin [03:11:21] Okay. All right. Thanks for fact checking us, Julie. That's good. But. But clearly a very, very sad and disturbing abuse of children. Awful. And then should we talk about, I guess, Ruby's siblings speaking up?

Family Responses, Community Reactions, and Systemic Failures

McKay [03:11:47] Yes. So this is kind of fraught with controversy as well, because there's one of the sisters, Bonnie Holing, made a video about this and then promptly deleted it. What, like a few hours later?

Jordan [03:12:03] Yeah, it was in the same day

McKay [03:12:04] because she was getting such critical comments. Because the thing I think that is the issue here is there's so much information that those of us on the outside don't know. And the other problem in this situation is that even if the siblings, like Ruby's sisters, were aware of what was going on, based on these statements, it sound like they knew. It sounded like they knew things were bad. And they claim that they've tried to do things, but people on the outside are upset that they didn't try to do more. But in a situation like this, like a person who's not directly involved other than making reports and providing information, other than doing that, your hands are kind of tied.

McKay [03:12:42] And so I don't know necessarily that the sisters didn't take any action. I think that they were probably limited in what they were able to do. And so these two. These are the statements that were made. So the three siblings, the three sisters created this one, saying that for the last three years, we have kept quiet on the subject of our sister, Ruby Frankry, for the sake of her children behind the public scene. We have done everything we could to try and make sure the kids were safe. We wouldn't feel right about moving forward with regular content without addressing the most recent events. Once we do, we will not be commenting on it further.

McKay [03:13:15] Ruby was arrested, which needed to happen. Jody was arrested, which needed to happen. The kids are now safe, which is the number one priority. So these are her sisters. And I mean, to publicly acknowledge. And making a dang Instagram post about the fact that, like, yeah, my sister needs to be arrested. Like, that's. Yeah, that's a lot. And then her daughter. This is from her oldest daughter's Instagram account, saying from. This was posted on August 30th. Today's been a big day. Me and my family are so glad justice is being served. We've been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and I'm so glad they finally decided to step up.

McKay [03:13:50] Kids are safe, but there's a long road ahead. Please keep them in your prayers and also respect their privacy. And that was from her oldest daughter who dropped contact with Ruby before. Like, way before all of this was happening. And so these were the two statements that was given by the family. There haven't been any others that I've. I've seen thus far. But it's. It's sort of harrowing that even her daughter is like, we've told CPS this. We talked to people about this, and nobody's done anything until it got this bad.

John Dehlin [03:14:18] And that's Sherry Frankie, right?

McKay [03:14:20] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:14:21] I mean, I'm torn. I'm torn. I'm grateful. You know, part of how this story got so public so fast is because of the reporting of the siblings. And I guess anytime you speak up publicly involving family, especially with a large platform, there's. There's a degree of courage and of difficulty and complexity that is accompanied to that. And kudos to them for reporting this to CPS and police in times past. But I also have the thought we showed at the beginning of this episode how many millions of followers collectively all these siblings have. And when I hear that, when I read that statement that they kept quiet for the sake of the children, I guess it does demand the question, like, what if they had used their massive platforms to speak out for the children?

John Dehlin [03:15:19] Could they have helped the children sooner? And maybe that's unfair. Is that a fair question to ask or is that an unfair question to ask any. Julie Hanks, do you have a. Do you have a thought, McKay, do you want to go first?

Jordan [03:15:33] If Julie's ready, then I'm fine.

John Dehlin [03:15:35] No, go ahead, McKay, then Julie.

Jordan [03:15:36] I think this is where kind of the intersection with the Internet comes, because you have to understand kind of the hive mind of the Internet and how things work, because these people, they have such a large following and they're posting content creators constantly. And when they, they come out and they say, for the past three years, we've silently watched this, and for the viewers, it's just been business as usual for three years. And maybe some things were mentioned or noticed here and there, but you couldn't tell that there was supposedly such anguish that was going on behind the scenes. So when they come out and they say things like this, it.

Jordan [03:16:15] For the, the people who are critical and. And whatnot, they're like, you were putting all this out there. You could have done something, and seemingly you didn't. So they kind of should have expected there to be some backlash in regard to that because it seems like regardless of whatever the circumstances that we don't know are, from the outside view, it looks like they weren't doing anything.

John Dehlin [03:16:44] Yeah, I often like to say that silence is the enabler and silence is the killer. We've covered on Mormon stories in the past the extent to which when abuse and even sexual abuse erupts in a Mormon congregation, a Mormon award, and Julie Hanks, you can disagree with me if you want, but so often the cultural instinct is to hide it, to silence the victims, to silence the family members, to sweep it under the rug and to say, we're going to handle this internally. We don't speak publicly, we don't air our dirty laundry in public. There's even been general authority talks over the Pulpit and general conference denouncing, quote, the airing of dirty laundry.

John Dehlin [03:17:27] So I do think it's fair to say if we're going to talk about the Mormon angle, there is a Mormon angle to circling the wagons, keeping things quiet, keeping things silent, and, and not to speak out publicly. And then I'll just share, you know, a couple little comments. Heather writes, if Lori Vala's family and friends would have stepped up sooner, her kids would be alive. No such thing as stepping up too early. And then there's an alternative point of view from Liz Krause, which is if they spoke out sooner, sooner, Ruby may have become more extreme, even sooner. So, I mean, it's. It's complicated. Julie, I see you nodding. What would you add?

Guest [03:18:08] Well, it sounds like the family did make reports and they were doing things, even though it wasn't coming out publicly. But coming out publicly when you are talking about kids in an abusive situation, it could have made the abuse a lot worse for the kids.

John Dehlin [03:18:25] Right.

Guest [03:18:26] And so I, I think I give them a lot of grace. It's a really difficult situation. And if they were trying to go through proper channels and try to get child Protective services and the police involved like it sounds like they were, I mean, that, that's probably. Or that could have been safer for the kids to not blast it all over the Internet and, you know, that could have put the kids in. More. In more harm.

John Dehlin [03:18:57] Well, at a minimum, I hope. Governor. What's his name? Cox. What's the governor? Spencer Cox. Oh, Governor Spencer Cox in the Utah State Legislature. Learn about this story and do whatever they can do with DCFS to try and make it so instances like this aren't ignored in the future. The last slide we have is from Rolling Stone magazine and it's in its title, Ruby Frank's neighbors called the cops several times out of concern for the children. Source says Jordan McKay. Do y' all want to say anything about that final slide?

McKay [03:19:33] Yeah. The main reason that I included this was it's just another instance of it sounds like people were trying to intervene and it didn't seem like, you know, it was reaching the wrong ears or something was off because this neighbor, it sounds like it's Jody's neighbor and Ivan's and had called the police multiple times and nothing, it sounds like nothing came of it. And the reason that she called a lot of the time was because the children appeared to be left at home for extended periods of time without an adult present. And if we're talking about her two youngest children that were involved in this, they're nine and 12.

McKay [03:20:07] And so, yes. Can they probably be on their own for a small amount of time? Safely? Yes, probably. But for extended periods of time, that's not necessarily appropriate. And then they said that the article, the neighbor said in early 2020, it started getting weird. People were concerned because Ruby completely stopped her YouTube stuff and then it kind of turned dark. She taped up paper over all of the windows, would disappear for weeks at a time, and would leave those little kids just alone in the house. So, I mean, there's something just, to me, really eerie and culty about like taping up the windows like Jod's.

McKay [03:20:43] The, like the neighbors around Jody are not that close to her. Like, they're close, but not close enough that you'd be able to see in the window. So the fact that like Ruby is taping up the window so no one can see inside, like, it. It's just insidious.

John Dehlin [03:20:58] Yeah. Julie, you have anything to add to that?

Guest [03:21:03] Just the whole thing is so heart wrenching.

Guest 2 [03:21:06] I.

Guest [03:21:06] No, I don't have anything else to say other than those poor kids.

John Dehlin [03:21:10] Yeah. All right. Well, this has been, in my view. I mean, we've got still 5,000 people joining. What I want to do as we end is give each person a chance to kind of summarize any final thoughts and particularly speak to the Mormon angle of this and if there's anything for the Mormon church to learn, for the Mormon people to learn, for us to glean from this, because we're not anti Mormon on Mormon Stories podcast. We don't hate Mormons.

Final Thoughts, Theology, and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [03:21:42] We respect a lot of good that the church does. We love people in and out of the church and we don't want polarizing language. We just want people in the church to be healthier and people who leave the church to be healthier. That's certainly my view. And I'm. I'm pretty confident saying that, that Julie hanks and Jordan McKay share those views. So while Julie and Jordan McKay kind of gather their final thoughts, I'm going to share something that I was forwarded, which is a tick tock video by a woman who goes by Abby M. Benson on TikTok, and she's never been Mormon. She comes out of the evangelical Christian tradition.

John Dehlin [03:22:26] And this is a video clip that basically is just making the point that theology matters. And while we're not specifically talking about Mormon theology, I think in here she's talking about Bible based Christian theology. But I think it, it can apply to any theology, including secular theology, so to speak. Secular tenants that that can be harmful.

John Dehlin [03:22:56] But I'm just going to roll the clip and this will be kind of my closing thoughts as it relates to the Mormon Christian angle of. Of how we might think about, you know, a more constructive religious theology that might then help prevent things like this from happening in the future.

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [03:23:19] We need to talk about eight passengers.

Video Clip 4 [03:23:21] Okay.

Video Clip 4 [03:23:21] I'm having so many thoughts right now, and I think that all the discourse that I have seen online is missing a huge part of this puzzle, and that is the theological, intentional, and institutional nature of this. Okay? So after watching the eight passengers, like all the drama that's happening and the arrest that happened yesterday, and also taking into account the Shiny Happy People documentary about Duggar, and also just thinking about my own personal experience being raised in a really strict Southern Baptist church, here's what I want to get at.

Video Clip 4 [03:23:50] The connection between strict and cruel and rigid and unrelenting parenting and religious communities is not an accident. It is very intentional. Okay? And it stems from control and it stems from theology. Because if you walk in to any church on a Sunday morning. Well, not any church. You walk into 90% of churches on a Sunday morning. Here's what you're going to get told about God the Father. You're going to walk in, you might hear the Lord's Prayer, Our Father who art in heaven. So you're getting used to that God father language where you're seeing. You're seeing God as a parent, okay? And then you're being told the following about God.

Video Clip 4 [03:24:29] God does not love you unconditionally. God does not love your sin. God wants you to change in order to be loved forever. If you do not change, you will be sent to an eternal hell where you will burn and live forever in constant torture.

Video Clip 4 [03:24:42] To be in my love and light, you have to repress all parts of your humanity and flesh because you were born broken and sinful and disgusting. That is our example of fatherhood in the church because that is the way God the Father has been expressed. So how do you think those parents, parents that hear this sermon are going to show up as fathers? If God the Father is cruel and unrelenting and mean and jealous and doesn't give us unconditional love, how do you think the parents are going to act?

Video Clip 4 [03:25:16] And.

Video Clip 4 [03:25:16] And like. What I'm trying to get at is that this is not an accident. The church uses that language to control. Parents use that language to control. Like, are we seeing the connection here? Because think about how differently parents over here would treat their children. They were told each Sunday, God loves You exactly who you are, how you are, and you do not have to change an inch. God loves you exactly how you are. And even if you don't do exactly what you think God wants you to do, hell isn't real. Like, we. If we want to change this part of society, we have to interrogate this part of society. It is not an accident that this happened.

John Dehlin [03:25:58] So shout out to Abby M. Benson. And so I'm going to do a defense of Mormonism and then a critique. And the defense is there are literally hundreds, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Mormon parents that are not super strict, that are not controlling, that are loving, that don't torture or punish their kids, that teach their kids that they're worthy and that they're whole, that aren't cruel and that teach unconditional love. So in no way is it my view that in any way Ruby or Jody represent Even, even the 10th percentile of Mormon families. That would be super unfair and unrepresentative. So many Mormon parents and families I know are loving and kind and good people.

John Dehlin [03:26:50] But I will say that there is always a strain in any religious tradition, including Mormonism, but also Islam and Judaism and evangelical Christianity and Catholicism that does emphasize strictness. There are interpretations of scripture and theology that emphasize strictness and control and hell and punishment and torture and brokenness and unworthiness and purity, culture and cruelty and jealousy and conditional love. And I just want to say that we all, secular and religious, need to be vigilant, that our language is about love and kindness and unconditional love and worthiness and wholeness and compassion. And this applies to secular people as well as it applies to religious people. And I hope that we can all, all, all of us, not just the Mormons, not just the religious, all of us parents, secular and religious, take a lesson of kindness and compassion and humility and unconditional love as a lesson from this tragic story. Julie Hanks, we'll have you go next.

Guest [03:28:14] Yeah, I think that we always need to put relationships as more important than principles or what we believe is right, that the human part of us is always more important. And that's the opposite of what they were teaching. It's like principles are more important than people. And I say that that is never the case. And there are strains of that in orthodox Mormon teachings, but I disagree with that. And I think it's always people over the principles and over being right or conformity. And so just take care of your relationships and. And love each other.

John Dehlin [03:29:01] Beautiful. Thank you. Dr. Julie Hanks, you can check Julie Hanks out@Dr.juliehanks.com. you can also check out Wasatch Family Therapy. And then, Julie, you're on Instagram and all the places. Facebook, all the places that are good. Right, Julie?

Guest [03:29:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:29:19] All right, well, thanks for joining us today, Julie. You made this program way, way better than it would have been, and it was already great. Thanks. Thanks, Julie.

Guest [03:29:28] Thanks.

John Dehlin [03:29:28] All right, Jordan McKay, y' all are the. Y' all are the reason this episode happened, and y' all really are the experts in the heart and soul of this whole episode. And you do such great work on your YouTube channel. Jordan McKay, let's give you both kind of the final word here. Take turns.

Jordan [03:29:45] I'll let you go first.

McKay [03:29:46] You're letting me go first?

Guest 2 [03:29:47] Yeah.

McKay [03:29:47] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:29:47] I always do.

McKay [03:29:48] I mean, there's. There's so many things here to, I think, to take away from this. I think, you know, one of the biggest things is scrutinize people that you see online. Like, be critical of the things that you take in and the things that you watch. Like, don't take everything at face value.

McKay [03:30:06] Be mindful of what you're seeing, because this is the perfect example of, you know, the perfect, let's say, Mormon family vlogger with, like, the amazing kids and the perfect husband and the perfect relationship and then a business partner and being successful. And then this is what's going on behind the scenes. Like, you truly. You truly never know. And the. The danger of people like this having influence and having a platform and the dangerous message that this sends about mental health and how just because you have a license does not mean that you operate ethically. And thank heavens for people like Julie who can stand within the church still and speak to people and understand people and empathize with people, even if they don't fall within the, you know, typical box that is Mormonism.

McKay [03:31:00] Like, we need those people, and those people need to be vocal so people know they're not alone. Alone. But it's. I mean, I just don't even know how to proceed from something like this. Like, just be mindful of what you watch. Be mindful of who you listen to. And I just. Every piece of me hopes that this sweet little boy that got out of that house has all the resources and a lifetime of therapy that he will need, because this is the. And I think this is the same thing that I kind of took away from Lori and Chad, too, is the sinister thing about this, is these people are.

McKay [03:31:41] Are your neighbors. Like, they're your friends. They're your co workers. Like, everyone is capable of doing horrible, horrible things, and nobody starts out doing that. Typically, I think Ruby and Jody represent taking something like a religion to an extreme and sort of moving down the slippery slope of religious extremism. Extremism. And taking, like, facets of Mormonism that they liked and then rebranding it into something absolutely insane and then using that to justify abuse of children. Like, there's.

McKay [03:32:14] There's no lengths to which these women wouldn't have gone, I think, to send a message to these children. And so I'm incredibly grateful that that poor kid got out of that house.

Guest 2 [03:32:25] House.

McKay [03:32:25] Because it truly makes me wonder that if that hadn't happened, if this would have been a much different conversation a few months down the line,

Jordan [03:32:35] I guess.

John Dehlin [03:32:36] Thank you, Jordan.

Jordan [03:32:37] The grand takeaway that I've had from this is that I've never been more disappointed in being right my entire life. In a lot of these episodes where we were talking and just about these things and discussing the harmful tactics that they were employing and teaching to other people, I can't remember a time when we. We weren't like, this is dangerous.

Jordan [03:33:01] Somebody could get hurt. And by that point, we're probably gonna be too late. And unfortunately, it ended up being that way. But it goes to show, like they say, don't meet your heroes. You have to criticize and call out everything, even if you look up to that kind of person.

Jordan [03:33:21] And we as a society don't benefit from letting. From letting these kinds of things fall by the wayside and just upholding those traditions that our forefathers had before us and keeping them as societal norms. We have to deconstruct a lot of those kinds of ideas, because it's not that we're getting some sort of, like, uptick in child abuse and things of that nature. Those things were always there. We just live in the information age where at a moment's notice, we're going to get a notification on our iPhone that the same thing happened again. So the cracks have been shown because of the Internet and our access to information at all times.

Jordan [03:34:08] We just. We have to work together to be able to eradicate this kind of really deep, systematic trouble that we have had for such a long time.

John Dehlin [03:34:22] Beautiful. Well said, Jordan. Well said, McKay. Yeah, thank you so much for. For making. For all you do and for making today possible. I'm going to again, ask all of you right now, please like this episode. Episode. Please share it. Please go to Jordan McKay and YouTube and subscribe. Please subscribe to Mormon Stories Podcast and. And share and like this episode and comment because it really does help the algorithms and helps get the word out. And we're all about education at the end of the day. Jordan McKay, any. Anything you guys want to quickly share about your program, what you're doing next, how people can support you.

McKay [03:35:07] A big thanks, John, for having us on. We were glad we were able to. To collaborate on this. We're continuing with our typical content, if you don't know much, about eight passengers. We have a whole playlist of videos that you can access if you want to get more in the know. And then we have plenty of other videos about other Mormon vloggers and other popular religious influencers as well. And you know, subscribing to our YouTube channel and watching is a. Is a huge support. And then you can also follow us on instagram @jordan mckay. Yeah, and then we also have a Patreon where you can become a channel member also.

Jordan [03:35:38] Patreon.com jordanmkay yeah, we're not always so, so melancholy. This is a kind of an exceptional situation. We do make a lot of jokes on our channel. We're a lot more crass.

McKay [03:35:52] This just wasn't the time, unfortunately.

John Dehlin [03:35:55] You guys. Wait, you guys swear? Is that what you're saying?

Jordan [03:35:59] Never.

McKay [03:36:00] I swear to the point that YouTube will demonetize us if we're not careful.

John Dehlin [03:36:04] Yeah.

Jordan [03:36:04] If I don't edit it. Yeah. They'll say no.

John Dehlin [03:36:09] Well, serious, thank you both so much for all you do and for making this happen. And I'm just really impressed with your channel. You guys are doing great things. So thanks Jordan McKay.

McKay [03:36:19] Thank you.

Guest 2 [03:36:19] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:36:20] Yeah, and I just want to thank everyone for the donations, the super chats today, those are helpful. The main way you can support Mormon Stories podcast if you want to see this type of content continue is to go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button, become a monthly donor and then we'll use that money to cover expenses and staff and resources and all the things we do to try and make this content possible again. Support Jordan McKay. Support Julie Hanks and, and and her amazing work as well. Thanks to everyone who commented today. Those comments are useful.

John Dehlin [03:36:59] So many kind things are being said in the comments. We love seeing you all here in the super chat and we hope you'll join us again soon. And yeah, be good to each other and be kind to each other. Remember that we're going to be doing another episode coming up on Mormon Stories Podcast, specifically about survivors or victims of Jody Hildebrandt and of connections. If you want to appear on Mormon Stories Podcast about your experiences with Jody Hildebrandt, email me@mormonstoriesgmail.com if you have stories about Jody Hildebrandt or connections and you want to maintain your anonymity, you can email their stories@mormonstoriesgmail.com and we'll try and get them on.

John Dehlin [03:37:41] I also want to make a quick plug for the Mormon Mental Health Association. I told you about Natasha Helfer and about, you know, her important work. She is one of the founders of the Mormon Mental Health Association. And basically what the Mormon Mental Health association is, is a network of therapists that have been vetted. And basically what you can do is you can find a provider all throughout the United States.

John Dehlin [03:38:12] And it's a provider who, instead of who is competent, culturally competent in the treatment of Mormons, treating people who are in a high demand religion is an expertise. And so you want people who have the cultural competence of working with this population, like Julie Hanks and her therapists at Wasatch Mental Health. And so if you go to this map with the Mormon Mental Health association, you can find, you can go to Utah and click on it and then you can drill down and find therapists who, you know, have been vetted and who have an allegiance to their ethical code over anything else, including religious beliefs and, you know, religious affiliation.

John Dehlin [03:39:05] So they're, so it's a great organization. It's Mormon Mental Health Assoc.org Please check it out, please support it. They do great work. And yeah, I just want to make sure and plug that. And yeah, check out for more content like this in the weeks and months ahead.

John Dehlin [03:39:27] We'll be covering, covering, you know, Mormon culture and Mormon current events as they happen. I'm John Dehlin for Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks again for tuning in today. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast, Jordan McKay podcast. And I think Dr. Julie Hanks has her own podcast. Take care, everybody. We'll see you soon.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.