The business partner and co-defendant of former YouTuber Ruby Franke has pleaded guilty in her child abuse case.
As acknowledged in her plea agreement, Jodi Nan Hildebrant, 54, engaged in a series of physically and emotionally damaging behaviors against two children between May 22 and Aug. 30 of this year.
Documents list an array of grotesque treatment, which the defendant ostensibly committed in the name of discipline. For example, she forced the children to do physical tasks for days and left them outside so long in the summer heat this year that they experienced repeated, blistering sunburns and “sloughing skin.”
She bound a boy in handcuffs at his wrists and ankles. Bindings cut through his skin, damaging muscle and tissue, documents said.
“Additionally, the defendant either physically forced or coerced [the girl] to jump into a cactus multiple times,” documents said.
Hildebrant pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse on Wednesday in a court in Washington County, Utah. Prosecutors dropped two counts of the same charge as part of a plea agreement.
Hildebrandt’s attorney, Douglas Terry, told reporters after the hearing that she took responsibility for her actions, and that she pleaded guilty so that the children did not have to testify. She decided to plead guilty before Franke entered her plea agreement, he said. Franke had agreed to testify against her as part of her agreement.
“It is her main concern at this point that these children can heal both physically and emotionally,” he said.
Each charge carries a one to 15-year prison sentence, documents indicate. Terry acknowledged that his client, like Franke, agreed to be sentenced consecutively, but he declined to discuss her possible term.
Her sentencing is set for Feb. 20, 2024.
The abuse landed on law enforcement radar after the boy, 12, managed to escape from Hildebrandt’s home on Aug. 30. He and the girl, both malnourished, received treatment at a hospital. Franke’s other minor-aged children were taken into the care of child protective services.
Franke gained notoriety for her YouTube channel “8 Passengers,” which had more than 2 million followers at one time. It featured videos of her, her husband Kevin Franke, and their six children. However, the channel was taken down earlier this year amid allegations of child abuse and other disturbing behavior.
Hildebrandt founded “Connexions Classroom,” a parenting workshop class aimed at creating “joy in your life and your relationships.” Connexions was the subject of criticism for allegedly espousing extreme methods of parenting, which include rejecting young children who fail to live by their parents’ beliefs and cutting off communications with people who don’t abide by the program’s teachings.
Jessi Hildebrandt, a niece, described similar isolating behavior. The relative, who uses they/them pronouns, told Jesse Weber on the Sidebar podcast in October that their parents left them with Jodi Hildebrant as a teenager.
“Jodi is very smart in how she approaches her therapeutic modalities because they are so extreme. If she were just to start out with those things, everyone would recognize it and they would be shocked and be like, ‘absolutely not,”” Jessi Hildebrandt said in the interview. “She’s very subtle and she’s very calculated. It’s like a frog being boiled in water. You start off with the cold water and slowly turn up the temperature.”
According to plea documents, the defendant sought to convince the children they were evil and possessed, that the punishments were necessary for the kids to be obedient and repent, and that these were being done to help them.
After her plea hearing, Franke released a statement through her attorneys in which she claimed that Hildebrandt manipulated her into abusing her children.
“Ruby Franke is a devoted mother and is also a woman committed to constant improvement. Initially, Ms. Franke believed that Jodi Hildebrant had the insight to offer a path to continual improvement. Ms. Hildebrant took advantage of this quest and twisted it into something heinous,” the statement says. “Over an extended period, Ms. Hildebrant systematically isolated Ruby Franke from her extended family, older children, and her husband, Kevin Franke. This prolonged isolation resulted in Ms. Franke being subjected to a distorted sense of morality, shaped by Ms. Hildebrandt’s influence.”
Speaking under an alias, a Franke cousin told Law&Crime’s Angenette Levy in September that very similar abuse went back generations in their family.
Attorney Randy Kester, a lawyer for Ruby’s husband Kevin Franke, told Weber at the time that his client had nothing to do with the abuse. Ruby and Kevin Franke had been separated for about 13 months as of August. Kester said Kevin Franke was unable to see the children during that time.
“Emotionally, she was controlling him,” Kester said. “Because she knew how much he valued their marriage and valued their family. And it was his desire to be able to get back with the family and preserve his marriage. Kevin never had any reason to believe that his children were being abused. And if he had even one inkling that his kids were being abused and that the separation wasn’t for any other purpose than to figure out a way between he and Ruby to reunite their family, he would have been down there in two seconds.”
He blamed Hildebrandt as the “spearhead toward essentially destroying his life and destroying his family.”
Jerry Lambe and Savannah Williamson contributed to this report.
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