This is a Law and Crime Network presentation. This podcast explores themes of child abuse and trauma. Please listen with care. She doesn't believe that she did anything wrong. The other concerning thing about Eve is the fact that she did have to jump into the cactus. She made her jump into the cactus multiple times.

She's saying everything that you say is a lie. Everything that you say is manipulation. You're manipulating everyone around you. You're lying and destroying everyone's life. So for the sake of everyone else's safety, we're duct taping you.

There's no way they're going to be able to keep their mask on now. As time goes on, everybody's going to be watching now. And if you're looking for anything, you're going back through and searching on the channels, you're going to realize how deep the rabbit hole goes. Like, it's not good. I'm Paula Barros, and this is The Rise and Fall of Ruby Frankie, presented by Law & Crime.

very aware of people online who hate me, who would like to cancel me, who would like to see me either burn in hell as I have been told or disappear off the face of the earth. And I'm not going anywhere. Ruby Frankie, the once massively popular family vlogger who claimed to be immune to judgment, has just pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse.

After her plea, documents detailing the specifics of the abuse were made available to the public. And once they were released, they dominated the news cycle and were widely circulated across the internet. The plea documents outlined the abuse associated with each count. The charges were contained to the abuse enacted on Eve and Russell Franke over a three-month period, May to August 2023, when the two children were presumably living under Jodi Hildebrandt's roof.

And it's important to note that these documents state that Ruby inflicted the injury or allowed another to inflict the injury. Jesse Weber, host of Law and Crime series Prime Crime and Sidebar, reads the state of Utah's determination for the four charges Ruby ultimately copped to.

Count one, aggravated assault of Russell, who the courts referred to as RF. The defendant's actions involved the physical torture of RF. Initially, RF was forced to do physical tasks for hours and days at a time. These included wall sits, carrying boxes full of books up and down stairs, and working outside. Eventually, RF was forced to do outside labor without shoes

Remember, all this occurred in Utah, where the summers are extremely hot. He was forced to stand in the direct sunlight for several days. He was forced to remain outside at all hours of the day and night by extended periods of time. These actions resulted in repeated and serious sunburns with blistered and sloughing skin. RF was denied adequate water for several of the days he was required to remain in the summer heat, and he was punished when he secretly consumed water.

Not only was Russell denied rest, water, or sufficient food, he was cut off from community and media, too. He was isolated from other people and denied all forms of entertainment, including books, notebooks, and electronics. What you've just heard is devastating. And unfortunately, the details only get more horrific as the pages turn.

They revealed that just a month before Russell successfully escaped to the neighbor's house to call 911, he had tried at least once before. After Arif attempted to run away in July, his hands and feet were regularly bound. Binding included being tied to the defendant into weights.

But he wasn't just bound with duct tape. Many times, the binding included using two sets of handcuffs, one on RF's wrists and one on his ankles. At times, with RF lying on his stomach, ropes were used to tie the two sets of handcuffs together so that his arms and lower legs were lifted off the ground.

This barbaric binding resulted in multiple injuries to Russell's wrists and ankles. The handcuffs cut through the skin and damaged the muscle tissue. And the abuse didn't stop even when he was visibly hurt. In fact, Ruby and Jody doubled down. These injuries were treated with homeopathic remedies and covered with duct tape. Then the bindings were placed on top of the duct tape.

Finding Russell wasn't the only horrific act the first count detailed. There was more. All of that was only count one.

Count three describes physical injury causing emotional harm. Additionally, the defendant and another adult regularly sought to indoctrinate RF and convince him that he was evil and possessed and that he needed to willingly be obedient to avoid punishments and that the punishments were necessary to repent. He was also told that everything that was being done to him were acts of love.

Count 5 was about the abuse of Ruby's youngest child, Eve, who was physically tortured in many of the same ways as Russell. Other than binding and the specific instances of abuse RF was subjected to, EF was subjected to the same treatment as her brother. She was isolated and forced to do the physical tasks, remain outside and denied food and water.

And Eve, too, was psychologically harmed. She was also repeatedly told she was evil and possessed. The punishments were necessary for her to be obedient and to repent. And these things were being done to her in order to help her. EF was convinced that she was evil and needed to go through these things in order to repent.

This detail tracks with Eve's behavior observed by first responders on August 30th, 2023, when they surmised she believed she was deserving of the treatment she had endured. Lastly, count six was a charge specific to the treatment of Eve. It's described as abuse that constituted physical injury that includes multiple injuries.

She was forced to work outside in the heat barefoot. She was also forced to run barefoot on dirt roads for an extended period of time. EF's feet were repeatedly injured by and she was repeatedly sunburned. When examined on August 30th, these wounds were apparent by scabs, blisters, and sloughing skin. We know this is a lot to take in, but understanding the grisly details of the charges Ruby pleaded guilty to is essential to the factual telling of this story.

Once these details came out, longtime whistleblowers were both irate and unwittingly vindicated. They'd seen the writing on the wall for years before this tragedy was publicly revealed. And there was one longtime onlooker of the Jodi Hildebrandt-Ruby-Frankie saga making headlines, claiming they suffered nearly identical treatment while in Jodi's care. Jodi's biological niece, Jessie Hildebrandt.

Jesse remembers when they saw the details of their aunt's charges in the headlines. They're horrifying. It's horrifying that it has taken to this long and to this degree for people to listen and to do something about it. But not shocking. Not shocking that she could or would do this because she's already done this.

You might remember from previous episodes, Jesse went to live with Jodi when they were 16 years old. As a troubled teen, Jesse was hopeful that living with Jodi may actually be beneficial to them. The church supports her. She's a therapist and she's my aunt. And I believed in the church. I trusted my parents. And I also was so depressed and I wanted help. So I was going into this being like, okay, maybe this is the answer. I have been praying. So I'm going to try to embrace this.

But things quickly escalated under Jodi's roof. So first thing is she made me cut all my hair off. I wasn't allowed to have my hair. I wasn't allowed to wear makeup. I wasn't allowed to, like, I had to wear very modest, plain clothing to the point where I was at, in the end, I only had a pair of sweatpants, a skirt, and two shirts. That's all I owned.

Then, just like Ruby and the Frankie children, Jodi isolated Jesse too. She required Jesse not to speak to their classmates, then eventually took them out of school altogether.

citing school was a distraction from Jessie's issues. It's tricky because the physical abuse didn't just happen out of nowhere. She sets the scene with the psychological and spiritual abuse to then justify the physical abuse. So the physical abuse would happen after each degree of psychological abuse. So, for example, I had to wear duct tape in my mouth. I wasn't allowed to speak at this point at all to anyone. Sounds eerily familiar, right?

And although she isolated Jesse from the community, Jodi bad-mouthed Jesse to anyone and everyone whenever she had the chance. And then she's telling all of these people, Jesse is a compulsive liar. Jesse is a masterful manipulator. That is her favorite term. Anyone that has worked with Jodi, I'm certain when I say that, it's like, ugh, triggering. Masterful manipulator. Everything that came out of my mouth

was considered a lie. I wasn't allowed to be around people because I was so full of evil that it wasn't safe for me to be around people. And again, I believed all of this stuff. Just like Adam Steed. Just like Kevin Franke. Just like Russell and Eve.

Jesse Hildebrandt was mentally worn down to believe terrible things about themselves that just simply weren't true. She's saying everything that you say is a lie. Everything that you say is manipulation. You're manipulating everyone around you. You're lying and destroying everyone's life. So for the sake of everyone else's safety, we're duct taping you. But it didn't stop with the duct tape either.

Jessie shared more glaringly similar parallels to the treatment of Russell and Eve under Jodi's care. I was sleeping outside in the snow. I wasn't allowed to have a bed. I was sleeping in a, what she told everyone, that it was like a mummy bag, you know, sub-zero type of sleeping bag. No, it was absolutely not. This was a, like, $20 Walmart store brand, you use at sleepovers kind of sleeping bag, outside in the snow in the middle of winter in Utah. In their quiet moments, Jessie would plot an escape.

But Jodi was acutely clued into Jessie's ideation. And then she would say things like, "If you went to the police, you would destroy my life. But that's what you do. You are a destroyer of lives. You're a masterful manipulator. This is what you do." Which is removing, like, the horrifying nature of that is very smart because it closes up the loopholes for me.

But in early 2010, despite Jodi's intense intimidation tactics, Jesse made a run for it, just like Russell Franke. So we were outside, middle of January, like freezing cold. Outside Jodi's home, Jesse began walking towards the neighbors. Jodi cried out for them to come back. And I said no. I said no. And she then punched me in the back. I turned around to walk and she punched me in the back and I fell down onto the ground.

She ended up going inside, which in hindsight is like pretty wild that she did that. That actually doesn't really make a lot of sense to me why she left me outside. But I think it was probably just she didn't think I would leave. But I did. I walked to a neighbor's house.

The neighbors were startled by the information Jesse shared with them. So they turned to their faith-based community for advice on how to proceed. So they went to the bishop voicing those concerns about me. But the bishop's response to the neighbor's concern was curious. The bishop went to Jodi with their names, told her, and because the bishop supported her through all of this.

He supported her in all of this. He told her their names and then she would take me house to house and coach me on exactly what I was going to say to these people. Jodi made Jesse walk everything back. She'd be like, "You manipulated them into feeling sorry for you. If you went into church with a sad face on because you wanted to convince everyone that I was harming you, you manipulated them into feeling sorry for you." So I would go into these homes, she would be with me, and I would up the

I would apologize, believing that I was doing it. And I didn't even know I was doing this. And so I was like, "I guess I am manipulating. I don't even know that I am, but I guess that's what's happening." - Jessie had completely internalized everything Jodi made them believe. - And I would apologize and I'd be like, "I'm so sorry. Like actually, Jodi is saving my life. Jodi is saving me." - This level of psychological abuse is almost impossible to wrap your head around if you've never experienced it for yourself.

But Jesse explains how deeply it seeps in. And when you are told for so long at such a volume that you are evil, that you are nothing, that God hates you, it's like more than hates you, is so disappointed in you, that God allowed this to happen, that God did this abuse to save you and you said no. You denied God this gift of

When you are coming from an internalized narrative, everything you do ruins, like everything you touch, every person you touch, you destroy their lives. Even if you understand it here that it's not true, when it has become a core value, a core belief of who you are, you can't just decide that that's not true. We're now seeing the world through the lens that you are evil.

And I'm sure everyone can attest to this. You will find what you're looking for. It's like when you learn a new word and suddenly you hear it everywhere. You get a new car and suddenly you see that everyone's driving this car. When you have a programming that everyone hates you and that the only reason anyone likes you is because you've manipulated them, you will find evidence for that.

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Tickets are going fast. Secure yours now at CapitalOneArena.com. Ex-Mormon YouTuber McKay Forsyth recalls from his time following Jodi's moves that it wasn't uncommon for her to invoke religion when justifying her practices, just like she did with Jessie.

She doesn't believe that she did anything wrong because in a lot of instances, she had mentioned that in her therapy that she had visions from God and direction from God to do X, Y, or Z thing to help her patients out.

And another ex-Mormon YouTuber, Carl Andreessen, explains how wielding faith like this can be extremely harmful. There's this underlying driven passion underneath this where there's a belief system that these angels or Jesus themselves or whoever...

Somehow the prophecies of the church and the end of the world are going to come in and intervene and save. And so at the last minute, there's going to be some kind of divine intervention that's going to make sense of all these bad things that they're doing. And so the belief system pushes parents and people who are desperate for answers and desperate for those things to happen in their life. They're desperate for Jesus to come save them.

They start to push that harder and harder and harder, thinking that they're being more obedient, they're being more faithful. And it leads to this type of extremism to where they're trying to play out chapters of the book or trying to fulfill revelations that they've read in their scriptures. And ultimately what happens is they end up hurting the people around them. Jesse ultimately escaped Jodi's clutches, running away to various shelters, and then finally into the care of a couple who took them in.

But their time in her care has come at a great cost well into adulthood. This nearly killed me. This affected every aspect of my life, every single part. My ability to have friends, my ability to have partners, my ability to hold jobs. I have complex PTSD from this. And if people don't know what that is, it's an incredibly complicated form of PTSD.

Jodi Hildebrandt will likely never face consequences for the abuse and emotional turmoil she inflicted on her own niece. But for what she did to the youngest Frankie children, there's irrefutable proof. Jodi has finally been exposed. Back in Utah, it was now time for Jodi to face the court. With Ruby's admission of guilt and willingness to testify against her former business partner, Jodi was left with little wiggle room.

But in the United States, you're considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. So could Jody feasibly fight her charges? Utah-based assistant attorney Jeremy Diaz explains Jody's precarious legal situation.

there's a possible defense of appropriate parenting. There are different situations where maybe you're acting in a way to defend yourself or you're defending another one of your children from maybe a violent sibling. When you're talking about serious bodily injuries, it's a question of, I didn't do it intentionally. It was really more recklessly. So at that point, it's more of a defense about level of punishment.

Given the unlikelihood of getting off without any jail time, in hopes of a lesser sentence, Jodi ultimately chooses not to fight back. Once Ruby pled guilty and she knew that Ruby was going to testify against her, her case became a lot more difficult. Because again, some of the conduct that Jodi is accused of and was charged with is the stuff that Ruby was doing to the kids.

On December 27th, 2023, just four days after Ruby pleaded guilty, Jody enters court in the same gray and white striped prisoner's clothes to stand before Judge John Walton. Then Ms. Hildebrandt, how do you plead to count one aggravated child abuse a second degree felony? Guilty. And to count three aggravated child abuse a second degree felony? Guilty.

In her plea agreement, Jodi admits to participating in the child abuse.

But she has one more disturbing detail to add. The other concerning thing about Eve is the fact that she did have to jump into the cactus. And you're not talking about how it's jumping into the cactus one time. According to the plea form that Jodi filled out, she made her jump into the cactus multiple times.

Jodi's plea sets off yet another media frenzy. With her admission of guilt, these two women who concerned onlookers had been looking to pin down for years were finally caught and no longer a danger to society.

And no longer were opinions about the two women merely speculation of abuse. Now it was both proven and public record. There's no way they're going to be able to keep their mask on now. As time goes on, everybody's going to be watching now. And if you're looking for anything or going back through and searching on the channels, you're going to realize how deep the rabbit hole goes. Like, it's not good.

But there was another group linked to Ruby and Jodi that had yet to speak out. The Mormon faith-based community that had once held them, especially Jodi, in high esteem. Ex-Mormon co-host of the YouTube channel Jordan and McKay, Jordan Forsyth, speculates on what may be going on behind the scenes in the church. It's not uncommon for them to excommunicate people. So it's not uncommon for them to kick people out of Mormonism altogether. But they do it quietly.

usually. They don't draw attention to it, they rarely make a statement, and so they are very quiet about these things because it's like they're, I mean they have a very well-funded PR department, and so they're very intentional about everything that they do when it comes to like the media and public relations. And so to our knowledge, and we I feel like would be the first to know, I feel like our DMs would be blown up if they made any kind of reference to either of them.

In the days following the pleas, Carl, who had been tracking Ruby and Jodi's moves, shared what came up for him emotionally, given his connection to the Frankie family. I really felt heartbroken for the kids. I felt terrible about all of that. And then I got really mad. Like, it's a big paradox where I was relieved and elated that she finally got caught. And I was overjoyed.

and that all of this was going to come out. But at the same time, it's really sad that this is going on and there's probably other people going through the same thing right now that haven't got caught yet. There's an active shooter situation going on at the high school. My son goes to the high school. I have a missing gun at my house. On November 30th, 2021, Ethan Crumbly opened fire on his classmates at Oxford High School, killing four students.

In an unprecedented turn of events, his parents, Jennifer and James, were charged in connection with their son's acts of violence. It's a case that raised questions about parenting, responsibility, and what could have been done to prevent the heartbreaking outcome.

Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of this landmark case, taking you behind the scenes of the trials of Jennifer and James Crumbly that has everyone asking, what would I do if I were held responsible for my child's crimes? You can listen to Sins of the Child exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

By the end of 2023, Ruby and Jodi remained behind bars in Utah's Washington County Jail. While they had entered their respective pleas, the two women were still awaiting sentencing. In the state of Utah, each of their charges is a second-degree felony and carries a 1-15 year prison term.

Jeremy Diaz breaks down the numbers of what that could mean in terms of a sentence for Jody and Ruby. Utah Code says that in this sort of a situation where there's second degree felonies, even though it's four and people can try to do the math and say the top end is 60, right? Because at the end of the day, when we're talking about prison time, you're talking about a top end and a bottom end.

um, a ceiling and a floor, let's just say a ceiling and a floor. The ceiling as it looks is 60 years, right? 15 times four is 60 in Utah by statute. If it's not a first degree felony and carries a life ceiling, um,

The highest ceiling you can get on consecutive second-degree or even third-degree felonies, whatever they plead to, the highest you can go is 30. So we know for sure that the top end for them is 30. The question is the bottom end, and that's what the board has to decide. In the pre-sentence report, there would have been a calculation of...

of the offense and their overall criminal history. You can pull this up on the Utah sentencing guidelines, the criminal matrix. For something like this, the matrix will give a recommendation for how much time they should spend on each of these. As a general matter where there's four for the first count, they'll do the full recommended time

But there's yet another legal tentacle to this, since both Ruby and Jody's charges are consecutive. And then on the subsequent counts, the question is concurrent versus consecutive. We know that these are consecutive here. If they were run concurrently, if they were run at the same time,

Basically, the time that would be recommended for the board as far as the calculation of how much time they'd spend would be 10% of that 18 months. So if it's concurrent, they do 10% of that 18 months. That would be added to the 18 months. When it's consecutive, so one after the other, they don't do 18 months, then 18 months, then 18 months. According to the sentencing guidelines, they do 18 months, and then they do 40% of that 18 months.

I know, that's a lot of numbers at once. To put it simply... Their first opportunity to get a review in front of the board would probably be around the 40-month mark. The terms of Ruby and Jodi's sentences are subject to change based on measurements like signs of rehabilitation, good behavior, and showing accountability for their actions. It's been speculated that Ruby may not serve the full term she's facing.

As for Jodi, Jesse was able to get insider knowledge related to her sentencing. The likelihood of her getting maximum sentencing is incredibly high. On the next and final episode of the rise and fall of Ruby Franke, we'll learn what the Utah courts agree upon in Ruby and Jodi's sentencing hearing and explore the fallout of their twisted path. Also, what does the future hold for children on the internet? And what does a path to healing look like for the Franke children?

I think with Ruby, it was more of a situation of her wanting to kind of mend what the wrongs that she did with her children. That's what I think it was, and to kind of fully come out and tell her story. She recognized the authority that she had and abused it and used it as a tool for her to gain influence, money, power, all of these things.

It's hard to admit that our parents aren't amazing and maybe the death of the dream. You know, a lot of my patients over the years have said, like, I just wish I had a normal mom or dad or I just wish they'd shown up for me the way that I needed. And we still hold out hope in a very strange way. There's still this like dream of what a parent could be. And so it's going to be way easier to look at Jodi Hildebrand to be like, she's the problem.

because she's not my mom. I know in several jurisdictions in the United States at the moment, there's legislation coming through to protect children who have their image and likeness online, whose families profit off their image. I think that looking to the future, we're going to see a lot of cases of children taking their parents through legal action to rectify and remedy their privacy being taken away.

Anybody can be a predator, right? Anybody can be an abuser. So whether it's the mom or the religious leader, the pathology is pretty similar. I don't think when someone's being abusive, they think about it's my kid versus it's someone else's kid. I don't even think that they care. That's all coming up on the finale of The Rise and Fall of Ruby Frankie.

This has been a Law & Crime production. I'm your host, Paula Barrows. Our executive producer is Jessica Lowther. Our producer and writer is Cooper Maul. Our editor is Brad Mabee. Our bookers are Alyssa Fisher and Diane Kay. And special thanks to Sean Panzera for designing our key art.