Last month, when popular family YouTuber Ruby Franke was arrested and charged with six counts of child abuse, many folks online described the life coaching business she ran with business partner Jodi Hildebrandt as “cult-like.” According to a new report, it seems to have been an apt characterization.
On Monday, NBC News published an in-depth look at Hildebrandt, who was also charged with six counts of felony child abuse, and her business, ConneXions. NBC spoke with seven former ConneXions patients who were counseled by Hildebrandt between 2008 and 2019, who shared accounts of her over-diagnosing porn and sex addiction, as well as methodically isolating individuals and destroying marriages. For what it’s worth, “porn addiction” is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), although it is severely looked down upon by the Mormon Church, which Hildebrandt and many of her patients were a part of.
Hildebrandt is a licensed counselor and ConneXions, according to its website, offered master classes and individual and group sessions to “help treat those lost and stranded in the darkness of distortion—which addictions, fear, sadness, and all other self-destructive behaviors derive from.” Franke is listed on the website as a “certified mental fitness trainer” who helped create ConneXions content about parenting for social media.
One ConneXions patient, Adam Paul Steed, told NBC News that in 2008, he and his (now ex) wife sought marriage counseling from Hildebrandt, and that she tried to convince them both that he had a porn and sex addiction. When Steed would bring up his past experiences and trauma from being a victim of child sexual abuse, he said Hildebrandt would spin that to be about his sex and porn addiction.
“She was saying that that every time I said I was a victim of sexual abuse, that that was my addiction speaking. So if I had PTSD and trauma, and I mentioned it, they would confront me that that was my addiction of sexual abuse,” Steed told NBC.
Steed also alleges that he was the client that Hildebrandt shared protected information about to the LDS church and Brigham Young University, causing her to be put on 18 months of probation for “unprofessional conduct” by Utah’s Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing in 2012. That disclosure also resulted in Steed being suspended from BYU, where he was a student, and led to his divorce. “My family got destroyed,” he said. “My life got destroyed.”
Another highly upsetting account came from a young man who was 16 at the time, who was sent to Hildebrandt for having a secret phone to play video games on. Hildebrandt chose to put him in the ConneXions’ adult men’s addiction support group, with men working through porn addictions. At one point, he remembered, a grown man detailing incest fantasies to him.
While Hildebrandt was pathologizing her male clients’ issues as sex and porn addiction, she reportedly diagnosed two women NBC spoke with as having “control addictions”—again, a disorder not recognized by the DSM-5. One patient, who was 13 at the time, said Hildebrandt diagnosed her with both control and lying addictions and had her join the adult women’s support group.
Patients were also reportedly discouraged from seeking outside help or guidance from people that were not Hildebrandt, who hyper-focused in on what she called “living in truth.” “She didn’t want you talking to anyone else about your problem,” Stephanie Jones, a former marriage counseling client, explained. “She wanted you talking to people that were also living in truth. So this is where I started to feel like it kind of got cult-like.”
Legal representatives for Hildebrandt, Franke, and the Mormon Church did not provide NBC with comment. Hildebrandt and Franke are currently being held in Utah jail without bail until their upcoming court date, and Hildebrandt’s therapy license is currently active but limited.