Where Is Jodi Hildebrandt Now? Inside Her Life After Child Abuse Scandal

Jodi Hildebrandt is a former counselor who is currently serving time in prison for aggravated child abuse.

Hildenbrandt made a name for herself in the Utah community for her therapy services that applied teachings from the Church of the Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ to people’s relationships and parenting. She founded the ConneXions program in 2007 and quickly became an influential social media creator.

In 2019, Hildebrandt started working with Ruby and Kevin Franke and their six children, who had risen to fame through their popular YouTube channel, 8 Passengers. However, Ruby and Hildebrandt’s relationship took a dark turn in 2023 when Ruby and four of the Franke children moved to Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah.

During their time together, Ruby and Hildebrandt allegedly punished and tortured her two youngest children. Ruby documented the abuse in her journal and wrote about denying them food, requiring them to do repeated acts of physical labor and even tying their hands and feet together.

In August 2023, Ruby’s youngest son eventually escaped and sought help, and Ruby and Hildebrandt were arrested shortly afterward. They were both charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse and pleaded guilty to four counts. Hildebrandt was sentenced to four consecutive prison terms of one to 15 years.

Hildebrandt’s rise to prominence, her connection to the Franke family and her crimes are all revisited in the Netflix documentary Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story, which hit the streamer on Dec. 30.

Here’s everything to know about where Jodi Hildebrandt is now and the crimes she was convicted of.

Who is Jodi Hildebrandt?

Hildebrandt is a former therapist who was born and raised in the Church of the Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ and served a mission for the church before getting married. In the Netflix documentary, Evil Influencer, one of her fellow missionaries described Hildebrandt as a former beauty queen and basketball athlete who successfully convinced several people to convert to the LDS faith.

Although Hildebrandt has kept much of her personal life private, she previously shared in speeches that she got married in 1993 and had two children with her husband. Hildebrandt and her husband, who has not been publicly named, got divorced three years later. She has also never shared her children’s names but has said that they’re estranged from her.

After getting divorced in 1996, Hildebrandt returned to school and studied English at Brigham Young University before getting her master’s degree in psychology at the University of Utah in 2003.

During her time studying to be a counselor, she took an interest in sexual deviancy, sexual addictions and relating relationships and the practices of the Church of the Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ to sexuality.

What was ConneXions?

Hildebrandt began making a name for herself in the Utah community when she founded the relationship counseling business, ConneXions, in 2007. ConneXions was a program specifically designed for marriages that aimed “to help you flourish in your relationships,” per the now-defunct website.

In addition to marital counseling, Hildebrandt and ConneXions also offered parenting counseling to “dispose of distortion’s ugly lies in order to live in Truth, connection, and freedom.” Past clients shared that Hildebrandt bent the teachings of the LDS church to fit specific relationship issues and justify the conclusions she came to about a couple’s problems.

“Jodi was so good at taking vulnerable people who were coming to her because they were not in a great place in their lives and framing it in a religious context that kind of fit enough with other stuff they’ve been taught and then pushing them to do things that I know a normal therapist wouldn’t be encouraging people to do,” Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke said in Evil Influencer.

He added, “She found a niche, and she marketed it. Jodi was very successful at getting people to give her money.”

ConneXions offered group, individual, couple and family therapy, as well as various workshops, online content and week-long programs. Investigators later estimated that Hildebrandt was earning around $46,000 per month from her individual client work, alone.

In 2012, Hildebrandt’s therapist’s license was suspended in Utah after she breached client-patient confidentiality. The patient, Adam Steed, later told PEOPLE in 2023 that Hildebrandt had “destroyed” his life by disclosing information he told her to Brigham Young University and the LDS Church.

“These super sophisticated forms of manipulation that Jodi did just destroyed my life in incredible ways,” he shared, while adding that Hildebrandt “completely controls the relationships [during counseling].”

Steed added, “Her doctrine is that she believes that relationships need to die before they can be reborn.”

Despite her license suspension, Hildebrandt rebranded herself as a life coach and continued finding success with viral videos, retreats and workshops. She rose even higher up in the Utah community when she joined forces with Ruby.

What was Hildebrandt’s relationship with Ruby Franke?

In 2019, Hildebrandt teamed up with Ruby after she and her then-husband, Kevin, turned to her for family and marital counseling. At the time, the Franke family had already found massive success with Ruby’s YouTube channel, 8 Passengers.

The now-defunct channel followed Ruby and Kevin as they raised their six children together in Utah and managed the everyday chaos of a family of eight. By 2020, the channel had surpassed 2.5 million followers.

However, around the same time, Ruby’s followers began to notice a shift in her parenting and her harsher punishments — including taking away a child’s bedroom, cutting the head off one of her daughter’s toys and not bringing her daughter lunch at school.

Shortly after the Frankes started meeting with Hildebrandt, Ruby became a staple in various ConneXions classes, speeches and videos. Ruby and Hildebrandt developed a close relationship and often collaborated on projects with their respective platforms.

In 2022, Hildebrandt moved into Ruby and Kevin’s home. Later that year, she and Ruby kicked Kevin out of their home, and she encouraged them to separate, as well.

In addition to their personal lives colliding, Ruby and Hildebrandt also created the “Moms of Truth” profile that took over Ruby’s popular Instagram account. The two shared several videos about strict parenting and setting boundaries with difficult children.

In May 2023, Hildebrandt and Ruby moved four of the youngest Franke children 300 miles away to Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah. At the time, Kevin was not in contact with his youngest children.

What did Hildebrandt do to Ruby Franke’s children?

After Ruby moved her and four of her kids to Hildebrandt’s home in May 2023, the two of them raised the children together and set strict punishments and boundaries. During that time period, Ruby kept detailed journals where she documented the abuse she and Hildebrandt imposed on the two youngest children.

In the released journal entries, Ruby wrote about how two of her children were sources of “evil” who needed to be punished. She wrote that her daughter “manipulates me,” while her son was “defiant.” She wrote that she punished her son by forcing him to stand in the sun and poked him with a cactus.

Ruby further wrote about times when she denied her kids food, forced them to do demanding physical labor, pushed them into a pool, and stole their water. She later alleged that she had gotten so caught up in Hildebrandt’s teachings that she did the abuse as Hildebrandt directed her to do so.

“Ms. Franke and Ms. Hildebrandt held Franke’s 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter in a work-camp like setting,” the Washington County Attorney’s Office later released in a statement. “The children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment.”

The office alleged that the children were “prohibited from interacting with others and were hidden in the home when others came to visit.”

“The children were also forced to do manual labor outdoors in the extreme summer heat without shoes or socks,” they added. “They were similarly forced to stand outside, on a cement patio, in the summer heat for hours and even days. They were beaten, and the 12-year old was bound hand and foot after a previous attempt at running away. Additionally, the children suffered emotional abuse to the extent that they came to believe that they deserved the abuse.”

Investigators determined that Hildebrandt and Ruby were motivated by “religious extremism” and believed that “the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies.”

On Aug. 30, 2023, Ruby’s 12-year-old son escaped and sought help from a neighbor, who called the police. Hildebrandt and Ruby were subsequently arrested on child abuse charges. Both Ruby and Hildebrandt later pleaded guilty to four of the six counts of aggravated child abuse.

Where is Jodi Hildebrandt now?

In February 2024, a judge sentenced Franke and Hildebrandt to four to 30 years in prison, which was the maximum sentence for their offenses. Due to Utah state law related to consecutive sentences, the women won’t serve more than 30 years.

During their sentencing, both Hildebrandt and Ruby spoke about their crimes, with Ruby admitting to abusing her children and apologizing to them. However, Hildebrandt did not apologize and instead insisted that she committed the abuse out of love.

Hildebrandt is serving out her sentence at the Utah State Correctional Facility, Dell, where the women’s general population lives, per inmate records.

Hildebrandt’s crimes and controversial background are told in the Netflix documentary Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story, which premiered Dec. 30. Although Hildebrandt did not participate in the documentary, several of her phone calls can be heard in which she discusses continuing her mission.

“The blessing’s pretty clear and it says, ‘The strongest message you will ever teach is the power of your example,’ ” she said in a recorded phone call. “What’s a better example than to go prison unjustly and then go teach the gospel? Which I plan on doing.”