Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Latter-day Saint movements Ivins, Utah, USA · 2024

United States: counselor sentenced for child abuse committed through doctrinal control of a mother

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

counselor running the 'Connexions' program, exercising quasi-religious authority over clients

Organization

Connexions Classroom

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Hildebrandt held no church office, and the record says so: her authority was therapeutic control wrapped in religious language — sin, possession, distortion — exercised over a mother who then delivered her children to the harm. It is the same indirect doctrinal path as the corpus's Kingston exception, and it is recorded as an edge case rather than a clerical one.

Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
Threatened spiritual consequence

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2024-02-20 · guilty plea and sentence

Fifth District Court, Washington County, Utah, USA. Jodi Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse against two of Ruby Franke's children and was sentenced on 20 February 2024 to four consecutive terms of one to fifteen years, up to thirty years in total; her counseling license was revoked in May 2024.

Documented coercion mechanisms

therapeutic authority framed in religious language of sin, possession and 'distortion'
control exercised over the children through their mother's submission

Cited record

Sources

national broadcaster court reporting sentencing report CBS News: sentencing report.: National court reporting.
official prosecutor release case record Washington County Attorney: case page.: The prosecuting authority's own case record.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ruby-franke-jodi-hildebrandt-sentenced-child-abuse-youtube-eight-passengers/ Corpus classification: national-broadcaster-court-reporting; evidentiary role: sentencing-report. SHA-256 84ae671accc3ebd11f7034acd6fbe9a6dc5b304725b2d1b834a43de476db4a40
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.washco.utah.gov/departments/attorney/case-highlights-media/utah-vs-franke-hildebrandt/ Corpus classification: official-prosecutor-release; evidentiary role: case-record. SHA-256 16b3fd127ede0d5a2e70f28c1c79a43675377b69f4a7037687ccc8a6fbebdd54
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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