Introduction and Episode Context

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is September 12, 2023, and we are in the middle of a few weeks of a coverage of the eight Passengers, Ruby Franke, Jody Hildebrandt scandal. And basically today we are here to interview Adam Paul Steed. For those who don't have that introduction, basically, Ruby Frankie was a Mormon mother and super famous YouTube influencer who with her husband and six children had a YouTube channel called 8Passengers. We've covered that already, so I'm not going to really dig into that other than to say, super popular Mormon YouTube channel. And then the Frankie family meets Jody Hildebrandt, who was a Mormon therapist endorsed by the Mormon Church, promoted by the Mormon Church, supported financially by the Mormon Church. And I'm guessing that Jodi Hildebrandt and her organization connections were referred to the Franke family probably by their Mormon bishop. But once Ruby Franke and Jody Hildebrandt started working together, it appeared as though Ruby Franke's rhetoric got more and more extreme. She started talking about depriving her children of food, her, you know, son of a bed, and just using more and more extreme kind of hyper Christian fundamentalist language. And long story short, this ended with the Frankie husband sort of being marginalized from the YouTube channel. And ultimately the eight passengers YouTube channel was shut down. And lo and behold, miraculously, Ruby Franke reemerges on the scene with Jody Hildebrandt. Basically, I think they started a channel called Moms of Truth where they were giving out family advice, marriage advice and parenting advice on the Internet. And then fast forward to, you know, just in the past few weeks, Jody and Ruby were arrested for child abuse and they're currently in jail. And we've been covering that on Mormon Stories podcast. We did an excellent episode with Jordan McKay giving an overview. So I refer you to that previous episode to just kind of get the overview of the story. We did an excellent episode with Natasha Helfer and my wife Margi about the mental health inner workings and the therapeutic inner workings of Mormonism and of Jodi Hildebrandt and this case. And then finally, just late last week, we interviewed, interviewed Jesse Hildebrandt, Jody Hildebrandt's niece, who basically described her years of torture under the, you know, under the hand of Jody Hildebrandt who she was forced to live with, you know, by her, her parents and grandparents. That that episode with Jesse Hildebrandt is the most watched Mormon Stories episode of all time. And it's only been a few days since it's been released, so we welcome an international audience for those who are interested in today's episode. And thank you, Charis, for the reminder. Jesse Hildebrandt goes by they them pronouns and I just misgendered Jesse. Jesse's been very gracious that if you misgender them, they just like it when you do your best to try and correct and move forward. So I will apologize for misgendering Jesse publicly. I will reiterate that Jesse's pronouns are they them and I will try not to mess up again, but if I do, I'll try and correct myself. But thanks to those who in the comments on both YouTube and Facebook who were kind enough to remind me that we should not misgender misgender people. So anyway, Jesse has so many of you have reached out with so much love and of affection towards Jesse Hildebrandt. Many of you have donated to them to support Jesse, and Jesse has expressed feeling overwhelmed with all the love and support and validation that they've received from many of you. So thanks to everyone who has joined us for those episodes so far. And today we are going to be interviewing a really important figure he in the Jody Hildebrandt story. His name is Adam Paul Steed. And for those of you who know that Jodi Hildebrandt lost her license at one point, let's just say 10 or 12 years ago, it was because of her interactions with Adam Paul Steed and her unethical behavior, basically having all these really unhealthy dual relationships in Adam Steed's life and ultimately breaching therapist client confidentiality, turning Adam Paul Steed into the BYU Honor Code office, getting him kicked out of byu. And it's a really harrowing tale. But the Adam Paul Steed story is much more significant than that because what you are about to hear is basically the story of a courageous young Mormon man from Idaho who was sexually abused as a boy, who had the courage to come out as a whistleblower and to hold both the Boy Scouts of America and to some degree the Mormon Church accountable for the systemic child sexual abuse that both the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America harbored for, I don't know, half a century, if not a century. And what you'll hear in this story is Adam Paul Steed having the courage to not only be a young man as a whistleblower, but also to work with his courageous father to change the laws in Idaho to make pedophiles more liable to extend the statute of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse, which then made the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America more liable for the, I don't know, tens of thousands of instances of pedophilia and sexual abuse that the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America are responsible for. Which of course led to the Mormon Church distancing itself from the Boy Scouts of America, which we've covered on Mormon Stories in the past. But what's happening, truly dark and sinister about today's episode is that after Adam Paul Steed successfully rebuilt his life, got married and went to byu, it appears as though the Mormon Church used Jody Hildebrandt to destroy the credibility and the life of Adam Paul's Steed, almost as retaliation, it seems, for his work holding the Mormon Church accountable in the Boy Scouts pedophilia case. So this case has many layers and I'm so honored to have Adam Paul Steed willing to come on Mormon Stories and tell us his story uninterrupted. He's been covered in documentaries, he's been covered news shows, magazines. He's a nationally internationally known whistleblower and advocate for children rights. Now, there's one twist. We're doing something today on Mormon Stories that we've never done before. And again, We've already got 3,000 people joining us in the live stream. I welcome all of you on YouTube and on Facebook. I'll just say really quickly if everyone would just like this episode and subscribe to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. I'm actually not asking that for any self serving reasons that will make this episode be promoted by YouTube, which will help get this story out. Because this story isn't just about a courageous whistleblower. It's about systemic abuse within the Mormon Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the way the Mormon Church appears to treat its whistleblowers. And that's for me, the most important part of today's case. So if all of you will like this episode on YouTube or Facebook, share it and subscribe to the channel, we will maybe make this one as big or bigger than Jesse Hildebrandt's and will maybe make a big difference in the world to help both the Mormon Church and other high demand religions become healthier about abuse, matters of sexuality, marriage, ethical therapy, et cetera. So please do that, if you don't mind. I would love to see 3000 plus likes on this episode again for Adam more than for anyone. So what's going to be slightly different is I actually started this interview with with Adam Paul Steed last week and we were going to live stream it. We decided last minute not to. It was good that we didn't. He was working with People magazine on a story and we got about an hour and 45 minutes into the interview and it was just so clear that Adam has been traumatized and re traumatized so much that we had to stop the interview. And you're going to see what we're going to do is we're going to play the first part of the interview up until the point where Adam starts to dissociate and really become overwhelmed. And then Adam is here in studio today. What I wanted to do was just give him the weekend to cool down, to get his senses back, to calm down, and then we would finish the interview today. So we're going to start by playing the interview that we recorded late last week. And then as soon as we get to the point where it's clear Adam needed to stop, I will take back over with Adam here live in studio and we'll finish the interview live. Take your questions, take your comments and I'll be monitoring your comments and questions all along the way. So please keep the questions and comments coming. We love a healthy dialogue and that also helps with the algorithms. So thanks for joining us again. I'm John Dehlin. This is Mormon Stories Podcast where we cover Mormon news and culture in long form format to help validate people who struggle in their Mormon journeys, to help provide informed consent within Mormon culture and to help Mormons who are transitioning away from orthodoxy or away from the church find healing and growth. And I'll throw in. Half of our audience has never been Mormon but either come from high demand religions and come to Mormon Stories for support or they love following high demand religions or cults or Mormonism. So without any further ado, thanks for joining us. We're up to 4,000 on the live stream. I am going to start playing the interview from last week and then we'll jump back in in about an hour and 45 minutes. Hope you all enjoy. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's September 7, 2023 and we are in the middle of what was not intended to be 8 passengers/ Jody Hildebrandt connections week on Mormon Stories. We've already done, I don't know, three episodes on the Mormon YouTuber Frankie family scandal that has recently come out over the past week where Mormon YouTube phenom Ruby Frankie has been incarcerated along with highly recommended and endorsed Mormon therapist Jody Hildebrandt of a company called Connections. They both have been incarcerated for child abuse of two of Ruby Frankie's youngest children. The children were found with duct tape around their ankles, lacerations on wrists, emaciated, dehydrated, starved and imprisoned. It's a horrific story. We've covered it on several episodes. Now. We've talked about the story itself with Jordan and McKay. We've reviewed Jodi Hildebrandt in her therapeutic practices with Natasha Helfer. And then just earlier today, we interviewed Jesse Hildebrandt, the niece of therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, who told a harrowing tale of her torture. There's no other way to describe it, of her torture as the niece of Mormon approved Mormon therapist Jody Hildebrandt. Now we have another really, really crucial piece of this puzzle, a really important interview. We are here today interviewing Adam Paul Steed. I'll give just a quick brief overview. Adam Paul Steed was raised Mormon. He was abused. As an LDS Boy Scout, he became a nationally known whistleblower, speaking out against his abuser and then teaming with his father to change Idaho law to change the statute of limitations laws surrounding sexual abuse of children in the state of Idaho, particularly related to the Mormon Church and Boy Scouts as sort of the impetus. So Adam Paul Steed would be worthy of a Mormon Stories interview just for that alone. But the story gets more tragic. Tragic because later, when Adam Paul Steed marries, he goes to BYU Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and miraculously or suspiciously, he's assigned to Jody Hildebrandt by his Mormon bishop to help him with his marriage. And for those of you who know that at some point around 2012, Jody Hildebrandt's license was suspended for a time in Utah. As a therapist, this was in relation to Adam Paul Steed's case where among other even more egregious violations that I believe includes manufacturing or altering of evidence, Jody Hildebrandt's license was suspended for violating Adam Paulstein's client patient confidentiality, reporting him to the honor code. But more importantly, it just appears as though Jody Hildebrandt tried to destroy both Adam Paul Steed's marriage and his life. And I think you'll hear about the inappropriate relationship that Jody Hildebrandt predictably nurtured with Adam Paul Steed's ex wife. And even most disturbingly of all, there's a connection involving multiple general authorities between the Jody Hildebrandt efforts to apparently destroy Adam Paul Steed's life and the Boy Scout case of Adam Paul Steed and his dad being whistleblowers back in Idaho. There's a dark connection between those two that involves I think, two general authorities, but definitely one Elder Hillam, the late Elder Hillam who was in the presidency of the quorum of the 70, who was connected to the Boy Scouts case and disturbingly is also connected to the Jody Hildebrandt Adam Paul Steed case. So that's an overview of what we're going to be talking about today. Just sort of a informed consent warning. We will be talking about abuse today. We will be talking about things that some find traumatic. So please practice self care yourself and also practice self care with anyone who may be listening or viewing this episode. Also, I should say that Adam Paul Steed's story is about to be published in People magazine and possibly elsewhere. So this story's about to get really big along with a Netflix documentary that's about to come out on the Boy Scouts of America and I believe the Mormon Church. So with all that of an intro. Adam Paul Steed, thank you so much for all you've done. But for joining us on Mormon Stories to tell your part of the Jodi Hildebrandt story along with your own story.

Adam Paul Steed Joins the Conversation

Adam Paul Steed [00:16:45] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] Feel free to correct anything I got wrong or anything you'd rather stay differently.

Adam Paul Steed [00:16:52] Well, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm still coming off of triggers and shock.

John Dehlin [00:16:58] No worries.

Adam Paul Steed [00:17:02] I was getting in the car this morning with my sweet wife and little 2 month old baby to go to our first for our little doctor's appointment for, for our baby. And there was in our second down car garage where it's all secure with the gate and everything, there was a band aid inside of its wrapper on the windshield that said you inbred ho on it. And it's like they know where my wife and our little baby and us live and the secure area. And you know, it just was like my first thoughts was a band aid. So they're saying we're acting like victims and then they attack, attack us. But the thing that was concerning is that my wife's been crying a lot today, worried that me talking about this could jeopardize her safety. She was already worried about this and then that, that anyway, we've had a rough day and you know, it's, it's expected, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:18:11] Well, this would be hard to talk about on under the most ideal circumstances. But I can't imagine with the past week and Jody Hildebrand being put in prison, it's now becoming a national, international news story and all that you've already experienced, it must be validating but also very difficult to be reliving all of this.

Adam Paul Steed [00:18:35] Yeah. If anyone criticizes you as an interviewer for allowing an interview that triggers me, I just want to say ahead of time, that's my own choice because I don't want to live in a world that's a prison full of triggers everywhere. I'd rather talk about the truth than have the world come and help fix this. And to me, it's worth it. And so how do you want to start? What do you want to ask?

Adam's Mormon Upbringing and Boy Scout Abuse

John Dehlin [00:19:07] Maybe if you are comfortable. Let's start with your Mormon stories that relates to the Boy Scout abuse, if you're okay starting there.

Adam Paul Steed [00:19:16] Yeah, I've had a lot of people tell that story. The first reporter was Peter Zuckerman, who did the Scout's Honor series that won a Scripps Award. I didn't know anything about that, but my dad said it was like a runner up for a Pulitzer Prize. And it was stuff, you know, that helped change the world.

John Dehlin [00:19:41] So your story regarding your Boy Scout abuse has been captured in a movie or documentary, is that right?

Adam Paul Steed [00:19:47] It's been a couple. It was in Idaho Falls Post Register. They were the smallest newspaper to win the Scripps Award as they expo, they did this crazy story and Southeast Idaho. And then I think PBS did a national series. And then in a small town, I think it was called that. And then just recently, Netflix producer Brian Knappenberger and Laura Poitras, the lady that helped Edward Snowden come forward, she was executive producer on a Sundance film, the Church in the Fourth Estate. So it's been covered a lot by the press,

John Dehlin [00:20:28] but I'm guessing that most of my listening audience hasn't heard the story. So what if you wanted to summarize the story?

Adam Paul Steed [00:20:35] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:36] We'll try and include links to all those in the show notes.

Adam Paul Steed [00:20:39] Yeah, no, that's fine. I see how it's connected. So I'm going to tell it. I was a victim of sexual child abuse. I was just like everyone else in Southeast Idaho, just about. I was Mormon. We were excited to go be part of scouting. I met Brad Stoles, the child abuser at the church. He was 25. He was charismatic. He gave me a ton of attention and ended up taking me to scout camp.

John Dehlin [00:21:21] How old were you?

Adam Paul Steed [00:21:23] I was 14.

John Dehlin [00:21:24] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [00:21:25] And he took me, he picked me up all the time in his Toyota Tacoma truck and let me use his cell phone and got me food all the time and treated me like everything I said was important and cool. And I fell for this friend that was in my ward a few blocks away that, you know, he was very charismatic, good looking, kind, nice, caring person, and he was studying law. And anyway, so he. I started to have things with Brad that I. I was aware of, but I wasn't mentally able to face it and digest that was happening. I guess the term's cognitive dissonance where you start to catch on to things, but you just say no and you just. It's too unbelievable, so you just like freeze up and can't talk about it. And, you know, I just began with these massages at his house and we'd fall asleep and then it got worse and I had accidentally woke up when something real bad was going on. And. And at that point I absolutely knew what was going on, but I just couldn't like, digest it. Everyone was saying he was a seminary teacher, he was trying out to be a seminary teacher, and he was in their program and such a role model of mine and confidant and he was going to go to. Well, he had all these plans to take me to scout camp, and I still just couldn't get out of it. And I didn't know how to confront it, act like I was sleeping. And so I ended up going to scout camp. And more abuse happened while he was taking me there camp Little Lemhi taking me there ahead of time to get camp ready. And there was some really bad sexual abuse that happened in the cabin by the lake there. And I still just like couldn't digest that this was happening. Like, no, that's not what it was. It must have been something else. Just tons of other narratives and. And you know, these things he was doing to me at night when I was supposed to be asleep. And so then he was going to go to camp and I didn't want to go once the camp was starting. You know, he was over camp, second in charge, and I was making up excuses not to go. And so finally he started not paying attention to me and talking to my little brother and getting him all excited to go. And I just couldn't bear the sight of my brother getting hurt. So I went. I wasn't ready to talk about what happened to me, but I wasn't ready to let my brother go alone with this terrible sexual predator. And I was up there and I was just kind of like looking around and you know, Brad gave me this necklace with his little hands on it. They're holding. And you know, I Sat down. And this other kid that worked at the camp as a staffer said, laughed. And he's like, oh, what are you going to do with that necklace? I was like, what do you mean? And I found out he had one. And I said, what did you do with yours? And he goes, I burned mine. And he looked really serious. And then he was quiet and just laughed, acting like nothing was happening. And anyway, just kind of, why'd you burn it? And he started to tell me things. And, you know, you have cognitive distance about sexual abuse, and then someone's telling you about this person is a sexual predator. And, I mean, these were. He was a kid, too. And there were laughing stories about it. And then they started to tell all these stories about all these different sexual predators that were up there. It was. And terrorization about it. And so I started to helped because outside of my own head, I could see these people were victims. And I started to get really concerned and terrified. And as the week went on, I started to gather the other staff workers into my tent and hang out with them and try to keep Brad from getting close to them. And, you know, he tried to kidnap my little brother and drag him out in a cotton. The middle of the night, my brother woke up terrified with Brad's hand over his mouth as he was trying to abuse him. And, you know, I went to Elias Lobos, and he knew something was wrong. I told him about the child abuse, and he was in shock and couldn't believe it was possible with Brad and was just in shock. And Brad kept trying to sexually abuse kids. He was abusing more and more of them. And Luis Lopez had me get on the telephone with Kimball Allen, who. And there's one other guy. I forget his name. I'll remember his name. He's in all the Idaho Falls postal register articles. But there was a leas for scouting for the whole church was there, and they told me they'd fix it, and they told me not to tell other people about it, and they even had me promise not to tell my parents. And we had a discussion about how it could hurt the reputation of scouting and nobody would want to come here anymore. And I didn't want to feel guilty for ending this beautiful thing.

John Dehlin [00:26:45] So they didn't tell you to report it to the police?

Adam Paul Steed [00:26:47] No, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:26:48] Let alone your own parents?

Adam Paul Steed [00:26:49] No, no, no. But the abuse was getting worse. Brad was now like, he was going everywhere angry. He was storming through the woods. He was following kids, like, not so chasmatically, but just like. And I mean, eventually I had all these kids in this tent at night with me, and he came in to tell various camp stories and then share testimonies out of the Book of Mormon. He had a Book of Mormon in his hand, and he put it on this kid's lap. And he reached his hand under the Book of Mormon and started fondling this kid's penis while he was doing it in front of, like, a whole group of kids. And I saw that and this poor kid's face. Just. If you ever wanted to know, it's like watching, like, life leave a child, you know? You know, he said innocence just drop out of his eyes and. Just wide eyes. And he didn't know what to think. And. And I stopped immediately. And I. I called him out and started yelling at him and tried getting in between him and the kids. And. And I. I don't. I went to the. I. I went to Elias and I. I told him. They said, you just, you know, he had me talk to these people. I couldn't tell my parents everything. I said, this does not work. You said you'd fix this. And I said, I am calling the police. And I called the police. And the police came and they were just like, let's arrest him in front of the flag so all the kids know that this is a bad guy. And they tackled him and put him in handcuffs and took him away. And I came home. Even after all that and writing up these factual testimonies of the child abuse and everything, I still wouldn't tell my parents because those leaders had so conditioned me into thinking that it would destroy everything and made me promise I wouldn't tell my parents.

Sexual Abuse by Scout Leaders

John Dehlin [00:28:34] These are scout leaders.

Adam Paul Steed [00:28:35] These are the ones. Elias Lopez wasn't really, like, an intelligent guy. He was a nice guy, but he was there without knowing. And so he was putting me on the phone to his leaders that he would just follow whatever they said. And this was. Brad Allen was the first. I'm trying to remember the. It's not Brad Allen. It's the other guy. And just look on Idaho for Pulse.

John Dehlin [00:28:57] Do you remember if any were lds?

Adam Paul Steed [00:28:59] Like, all people were lds. That's all the Scout leaders. That's the whole crazy part about it, is that the scout leaders were all, like, professional scouters. So they've got their allegiance to scouting, but then they were all, like, Mormons, too. And so they had their allegiance to Mormonism. And as the scouting story came out, what we started to find was, well, first of all, just real brief. They were going to put Brad in jail for less than A week's time for each kid he abused. He plea bargained to 24 victims of sexual abuse. Serial pedophile.

John Dehlin [00:29:33] 24 victims.

Adam Paul Steed [00:29:34] 24 victims he admitted he'd sexually abused while he was all scared. And he admitted to it. And he said there were others. I don't remember their names. And you know, in the Mormon church, we're taught not to sue. And I chose not to sue scouting. But two of the victims did tell that, you know, people that I had helped come forward. The rest of the victims, you know, these ones sued scouting. It was terrible. I came home from camp, my dad said to me, I know I don't want you to have to talk public for us to tell the news about this. But the. But the prosecutors for Brad Stull's case are on the scouting board and they're going to let him go with less than. First they were going to try to have him not go to jail. My dad was so frustrated and he was on the phone and then it was that he's going to get less than a week's time in jail for each victim he abused. My dad said, we've got to tell this story publicly so that these people can't do this. And so my dad, Paul Steed was a seminary teacher in southeast Idaho. He was near retirement. He had a job. So he was teaching.

John Dehlin [00:30:41] He was a full time.

Adam Paul Steed [00:30:41] He was teaching several of the victims on this list. Yeah, he was a full time work for the church.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] CBS employee.

Adam Paul Steed [00:30:47] Yeah. And so I remember just listening to him talking to the news and it's horrific story and people just trying to belittle it and people trying to say it was nothing. And him telling had been to tell exactly what was really going on with the sexual abuse and how crazy it was that they were trying to hide this. And so it did affect my life. We lived in a small town, Pocatello, Idaho. And people treated me really different from that. I was beat up. I was called homosexual all the time. I was laughed about at my school. I had a lot of friends and stuff, but there were times where I remember one day where the whole school came after me together. And like all these popular kids pushed me on the ground and they were kicking me and yelling. They had seen Brad Stoells pick me up at school dozens and dozens and dozens of times in his truck. And, you know, I remember I had a cousin that had committed suicide and one of the kids just yelled out that he would fucking blow his brains out too, if he had a. It was. Sorry, I gotta edit halfway through all these derogative terms about homosexuals and child abuse that he said just to get away from me, you know. And that was my. That was the dark side of growing up in southeast Idaho and being a whistleblower against. I know. I didn't know I was a whistleblower. I didn't even know what the term was. I just was trying to save myself and my brother and then these other kids. And then I watched my dad lose his job in CES because he started this. Well, what happened is that was the drama. Then when I was 14, I'm 23, I'm at BYU. I started. I'm super excited. I want a date. I want to get married. I want in the temple. I want to have family. You know, I served a mission. I want all this stuff. Nervous. I'm dating at byu. This girl that I was dating, her dad found out that I didn't have an eagle in scouting and didn't want her to date me. I told people that's why she didn't date me. I was now at byu. I'd come there because I wanted to date her. And we were dating before that and she was super kind person. And now I'm there and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna start dating and I'm in school and just that kind of innocent life again. And then it got all fucked up again. Like, I get called by my dad and he says, hey, this case finally closed on these two victims of abuse. And the. And the reporter found out and he contacted us, Peter Zuckerman, and he wanted to know if. He wanted to know. He wanted to know if he could talk with you. And I said, adam's had enough. Talk to the other 24 kids on the list of Brad Stoll's plea bargain. And he went to the courthouse and the list was missing. And he published something. And I told him it was made international news. And then suddenly they were like, there's a computer glitch. Here's the list. Now's the list of the 24 victims. Idaho had a three year reporting law and it was passed the statute of limitations. And now nobody would be responsible for hiding the child abuse victims because too many years had gone by. And my dad said in that same phone call, I said, one of the kids of the 24 was the son of a bishop in Idaho who just commits suicide. And he left a note that said he was sexually abused. And no one believed him.

John Dehlin [00:34:45] Them.

Adam Paul Steed [00:34:47] And I just remember, like, I knew what I had to do because I was grown up now you're grown up when you're 23. Right. But I wasn't 14 and it was.

John Dehlin [00:34:59] Had you served a mission?

Adam Paul Steed [00:35:00] Yeah, I'd served a mission. Where you serve? Sao Paulo, Brazil.

John Dehlin [00:35:03] And you remained a believing, faithful Mormon?

Adam Paul Steed [00:35:05] Yeah, I was. Yeah, absolutely. That's, you know, and I got a lot from my beliefs about being like Christ, to be kind and do unto others as you do them, and responsibility to be a good person. So then. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:35:30] So no. So back to BYU and Zuckerman reaches out.

Adam Paul Steed [00:35:34] I get those trauma moments and they just erase my mind. But just tell me the last thing I was saying and I'll get to.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] Yeah. So you knew the right thing to do with Zuckerman reaching out.

Adam Paul Steed [00:35:44] Yeah, yeah, I knew that I had to sue Boy Scouts of America so that I could get rid of money. Wasn't even a thought. I just had to get rid of the. The same people that were working for Boy Scouts of America representing it to the church and the people in charge. Kim Hansen. That's the name I forgot. Kim Hansen. Someone I talked to on the phone that made me promise not to tell my parents. And he was still working there. And same with Brad Allen. And I knew there were victims out there now I found out these kids I grew up with, they never got contacted, they never got helped. And I saw a lot of the damage in their lives. And I just felt like I'm 23 and I had enough time to watch their lives get really messed up. And I just thought that, okay, I'm going to sue so that I can get rid of these people, get them out of this institution of scouting. And at that time, I didn't realize at all how big the child abuse cover up scouting was. So I filed a lawsuit and it turned out that it was like the day before the statute of limitations was up randomly out of the blue all those years later. And it was like literally the day before. And my lawsuit could go. They tried to appeal it, saying the statute had been passed up. And then we became familiar of laws in Idaho that were just different than anywhere really that was sane. It just didn't make sense. It seemed like it served pedophiles and helped institutions because the laws were a five year statute of limitations criminally and civilly. And the reporting law was three years. And it was like a minor offense if you didn't report. And you know, so here, you know, in the state of Idaho at that time, a man could serially sexually abuse violently children. And if the children didn't come forward within five years, they couldn't do a criminal case against the guy. I mean, I think every pedophile in the country would want to go to Idaho if they knew those laws were there. It was great job security. And so. And it was civil. It was a five year statute, too. And Idaho had a 50 year statute of limitations for rape, but for children, it was only five years. And it was unbelievable. And I didn't even know what statute of limitations met. My dad started talking to me, saying, we gotta, you know, our case was in the process, but he said, we gotta change this. We got to change this. This can't happen. So he went to. Simultaneously, while we were doing the scouting case, he went to change the statute of limitations in Idaho.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] Around what year was this that you were working with to change the statute of limitations laws in Idaho?

Adam Paul Steed [00:38:43] It was the year we'll put dates together. It was right before the settlement. My settlement with scouting took maybe, I don't know, like nine months or a year or something. And I remember we signed the statute of limitations. It was about a one year process before my dad started trying to change them. He was scared he'd lose his job, he'd lose everything. As it started to develop. And my mother, Deborah Steed, my mom, she had a dream that she found like a family in our house that wasn't. It was like a stranger family she didn't know, in a house that we owned, and she didn't know why they were there. And she was asking them to leave. And they had this 14 year old boy and he just like put this injured hand up and he said, help. And she woke up from her dream and started crying and told my dad, you have to change these laws.

John Dehlin [00:39:33] And so I'm seeing on Google, it was 2006 when Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne signed the bill that eliminated a statute of limitations.

Lawsuit Against the Boy Scouts of America

Adam Paul Steed [00:39:46] Okay. And I was at that press conference. I spoke next to the governor with my then wife, Morwenna, and we spoke to, you know, I spoke at that as I signed that, my brother signed that. And afterwards, the scouting people then gave us the Medal of Merit, their most prestigious award.

John Dehlin [00:40:07] Yeah, okay.

Adam Paul Steed [00:40:09] That was for helping save kids after a settlement. But, yeah, so they changed it then. But in the process of changing it, it was this fight. Like the amount of things, like you get a story inside of a story and a story, and huge influencers like the billionaire Frank van Der Sloot was writing up opeds that probably, I think they cost $100,000 worth of advertising over a period of time. Or something. I don't know the number. I heard someone say that to talk about like this child abuse story, how it wasn't the case. And there were letters going as if they came from the First Presidency all over the Mormon Church in Idaho and Utah talking about this singular event. You know, that they had immediately done the right response with child abuse. It only happened once. And you know, we published those in the Peter Zuckerman Post Register. We published that letter. And then all these victims came forward and there was all this documentation of coverups and this story just started exploding. But it was so difficult. The statues would have never changed. But my father called and my mother. They got all these victims coming forward and they got these people to write letters. And my mom put them all together and got them organized and my dad gave them to all the senators to see the true situation. And it just, things just started to open up. And then even like there was like this one guy that was like over the Senate that wouldn't let it happen. And my dad was every day talking to Curtin McConkey, the LDS Church law firm. And they were coaching and trying to. I don't know if they were coaching. You know, even my dad those times, our church area authority had this inspiration for us that we weren't supposed to do the punitive child abuse case, but just settle for something that wasn't punitive. And you know, we followed 100%. We were important because they wanted us. But my dad just kept bringing this truth up and this truth up and this just process. And they were on the phone all the time, all the time, Curtin McConkie. And I remember in one phone call, my dad was talking about this, like, I don't know if it's Senate pro temp or something, but he was a previous mission president and he was the biggest advocate to stop the child abuse laws from being changed right before they would vote on him. And I remember something about Curtin McConkie telling my dad that they had contacted him and they had talked to him in this thorough contact and that he wasn't going to vote against it now. And I thought I heard something to the effect that he would lose his church callings and things like that. It was that serious that he would have to follow an order and vote in favor to have the statute of limitations changed. After all these deliberations, my dad had. And we had like death threats and we had emails against our family. And the CES came to my dad and they said that his leader right over him. And I Remember this? He said to him, you can't talk to the noose anymore. You can't talk to any of these places about this. You can't help with this process. If you do, you'll be fired from the cs. And my dad was like, hey, all of our life we taught these kids how to stand up for truth and do this. And now it's the most important time to do it. If you ask us to close our mouths and not talk, then I'm ready to resign. And that's how he lost his job. He says he resigned, but they put him in an ultimatum where he couldn't defend the children that were sexually abused, including tons of his seminary students. He had 10 in his classrooms at that point, 10 students that personally confided with him about being sexually abused at camp. And so that happened. We changed the statute of limitations. Millions and millions of dollars of lawsuits and criminal and civil started coming forward in the state of Idaho. I think Idaho is the second biggest Mormon state, the second biggest, you know, and in the works, something that came out really clear is this, you know, this over this massive story that we didn't know. I mean, you just have no idea the scope. We never thought 97,000 victims would come forward in the federal case against scouting. Bankrupt scouting now. Well, victims and all for scouting and LDS was like, I think somewhere around like a third of their membership.

John Dehlin [00:44:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [00:44:58] And the thing that was so scary is the window. Brad Stoles, for example, had been caught for child abuse before. And so. And there was letters and documentation for it. So any of those 24 victims, if they got a hold of that documentation, could have sued Boy Scouts of America for neglect and keeping this guy there. But so, you know, one the. The thing that came out of it, though, was, was this horrificness that there was something that was starting to be common, and that was that Boy Scouts America was sending child abusers when they'd get caught in camp to LDS bishops instead of to the police. And the bishops were protected under the bishop penitence rule when people confess. So then the records wouldn't have to be reported for the stat, and they wouldn't have to report the child abuse. And that's what Brad Stolz did. And they sent him to a bishop, and the bishop reported he was fine. And then he went back to camp in a state where. Where. And this was previous to him abusing me. And then we started to hear tons of other cases that were identical. And this was in a, you know, a state that if a child Abuser was in the public school system and got caught that they would have to take him to the police and he'd go to prison for like 20 years. And yet in the Mormon Church in the same state, they would get caught at scout camp and then they'd be right back working at scout camp or switch to another scout camp. There were more child abusers coming out of Camp Little Lemhi that we started to find in that area than there were in the epicenter of the Catholic Church case. This case was way bigger than we ever understood. And the more victims came forward with these horrific stories, and that's my mom, my dad and mom would sit there and get called once his post register came out. We got called and called and called and called by victims, like hundreds of victims as we listened for six hours. Traumatic stories as they come forward. And so that's kind of some background on the sexual abuse that happened to me. How as a kid, you know, everyone always said that you were the only one that came forward. And this was all documented. And we need your story. It just kept getting bigger and bigger because there was a way bigger abuse situation going on than anyone imagined, you know, and so this story just kept coming back in my life. And anyway, so during all that chaos and are we okay with the backstory? Is that.

John Dehlin [00:47:43] Yeah, and I just wanted questions.

Adam Paul Steed [00:47:45] Let's pause. I'm in trauma mode. I'm on total adrenaline, but I mean, talk myself down on the feelings, my heart and stuff.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] Yeah. Well, I just think, really briefly, I think it's worth noting this conflict of interest between a very prominent, wealthy and powerful church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Its control of state legislatures, like in Utah, like in Idaho and like in Arizona. And then the Boy Scout, its prevalence in the Boy Scout community, and then its use of its power, money and its law firm, Kurt McConkey, to pressure and intimidate and silence victims.

Adam Paul Steed [00:48:26] I don't know how a church that taught about family and love and truth of Christ turned into this global institution.

John Dehlin [00:48:33] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [00:48:34] Like, how did the hypocrisy turn to that? Why did they betray all the people that tried to believe in the Christ stuff? How did they do that? Now it's like toxic to go to church because there's so much of this covered up stuff. And the church became the richest church in the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars maybe, who knows? But I got called by Ted Kosnov, Tim Kosnav. I think he has 27,000 victims. He represented in the federal case with Scouting. And he said, you know, and you know, I feel like my life's in danger because like, Because like, you know, he said that the laws that were in California would make a victim have like a million dollars or something or a couple million. And they should have that because it takes a hell of a lot to get your innocence back and feel vindicated when it's been hid by the institutions that are supposed to protect you and love you. And he said that not in his lifetime would the statute of the church had such control over the laws in Utah to keep victims from coming forward that not in his lifetime would that change that because of the statutes they could never come forward. And I as a victim and I know that the craziness leaves you when you're validated and the bad people are held responsible and when in my book now if pedophile is bad, but if you're an institution hiding it, you're just as bad, especially if you're doing it to thousands and thousands of people for money. And the thing about Tim is just that like, or he says not in his lifetime, they get. The church would pay 20 or $40,000 after sending someone through hell for, for coming forward. And I seen online on Facebook that this, this thing that said like if you're, if you're a victim of abuse in the Mormon Church, you know, you know those people, they wanted me to sign up. They were going to sell my rights as a victim of abuse in the Mormon Church to some, they just sell them really quickly just to another attorney. And then these people, it was, it looked like they would just lose a case. And then I could never retry my case. I could never be validated. If they just got all the victims in Utah to fill up with this and sign their rights away to cases that were dead end cases, then the church legally wouldn't have to deal with all these victims that they have. They had a third of the membership of Boy Scouts of America. They had the liability of meeting in undisclosed meetings with the church. Man, I even found out the unorthodox to the church Mormon Church practice if victims came forward. I think Elder Helam was over this. The helping of the Church Handbook. The Church Handbook developed in the 1990s and 2000s. Originally in the scriptures, bishops would be judges in Israel following promptings on how to handle cases. But now they have very specific instructions on exactly what to do as this institutionalization of the faith began. And in these instructions, if there was any kind of child abuse allegations or anything, they called these people a Support line that was like attorneys talking to them on what to do. And unbeknownst to the members of the church, these people were. They were ordained as bishops so that the church legally wouldn't have to let any. Respond. Be responsible for reporting any of the child abuses that went. And these sharp, smart people in the law firm. I think they were in. The bishops were in the same building as McConkey and in a law firm.

John Dehlin [00:52:36] Yeah. And we've covered. We've had Tim Koznoff on more.

Adam Paul Steed [00:52:41] Sorry, I didn't.

John Dehlin [00:52:41] No, no, no, it's good. It's important.

Adam Paul Steed [00:52:43] I didn't mean to say that. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:52:45] No, you're doing great. I just. I just. I will say for more on this. We've. We've had Tim Koznoff on. We've talked about Boy Scouts. We've talked about the recent stories coming out about the way Curtin McConkie fielded a support hotline that when Bishops called, Curtin McConkie would do everything to minimize the liability of the church and to pressure bishops to pressure victims and their families not to report to police. And so this whole unholy alliance between the Mormon Church, the Boy Scouts, Mormon bishops, Cardinal McConkie, and state legislatures, you know, that fight against making Mormon bishops mandatory reporters when sexual abuse is reported by victims or family members. This has all been covered by the Associated Press recently, and we have episodes on Mormon stories that will go into more detail. But your corroboration of this, and I should just add, like, I'm Googling this right now. I can't believe I don't know about this, but there's a deseret news article, 2006, ex Idahoan to lobby on child abuse. There's, you know, there are law cases, Steed versus Boy Scouts of America.

Adam Paul Steed [00:54:07] Well, top church leaders know about me. Even. The president of the first or the. Of the Young Men's Presidency called to try to find out where I was so he could fly out in a jet and meet with me to tell me I did a good job on changing those laws. And he did. He flew out in a jet to meet my parents. I couldn't go. There were some issues I had with my wife at the time. It was a shaky marriage, and her parents and other people, Elder Helam, their good friends, had told them to instruct me not to participate in the meeting.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] Yeah. The fact that the Curt McConkie in the church would be trying to influence the degree to which you sued, how much money you sued for, whether I

Adam Paul Steed [00:54:52] push for a punitive case. Yeah, the judge gave me a punitive case and I turned it down because my priesthood leaders told me to.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] I mean, that's just sickening and egregious. I can't believe. I don't know about this story, you know, but I'm also. There's so much that gets covered up and hidden that I'm not surprised. I don't know about this story, you know, but this is not. This is well chronicled in case law.

Adam Paul Steed [00:55:17] When we changed the statute of limitations, their argument was that they didn't want to re traumatize child abuse victims. So that's why they needed the five year statute. They didn't want children to have to revisit the trauma.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] Yeah. So by 2006, 2007, the Idaho laws gets changed.

Adam Paul Steed [00:55:37] Yes. And the inside internal structure of the legal megaplex in the Mormon Church knew very well who I was and my father and what our story and our work had the ability to do to change the laws of the people.

Church Leadership and Conflicts of Interest

John Dehlin [00:55:53] And really quickly, we want to just introduce this person you've referenced, Elder Harold G. Hillam. He was ultimately. He's passed away, but he was in the presidency of the LDS Church quorum of the 70, which means beyond the first presidency of the quorum of the 12. He was one of the top seven leaders of the general authorities. And he has a connection to your case.

Adam Paul Steed [00:56:23] It was like a celebrity. Like, if you're a Mormon, you might shake a hand with someone like that in your lifetime.

John Dehlin [00:56:30] How is he related to the Boy Scouts in Idaho into your.

Adam Paul Steed [00:56:33] Yeah. So I'm gonna. Let me save how he's related to the Boy Scouts later in the story because we didn't know about it.

John Dehlin [00:56:42] Oh, okay.

Adam Paul Steed [00:56:44] We had no clue.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] Okay. Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [00:56:45] So we'll cliffhanger first place. Yeah, first. Sorry. It's like when your life has a cliffhanger.

John Dehlin [00:56:55] Yeah, I'm sorry.

Adam Paul Steed [00:56:56] No, it's okay. We first way. I was excited to get engaged with my wife. She went to Haifa University away from byu and we decided to get married. And she was calling home to tell her parents that she'd get married and.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] Did you say Haifa?

Adam Paul Steed [00:57:13] Haifa University in Israel. In Israel. She had an elite scholarship and she was Dutch and she was from Holland. And I guess Elder Helam was the president of the General authority over Europe at that time or Western or whatever. It was over Holland. And he had chosen to call my wife's father into the third quorum of the 70 is a general authority.

John Dehlin [00:57:41] Right.

Adam Paul Steed [00:57:44] And apparently when she called home to tell her parents about this exciting news of meeting a boy. They knew who I was, but that we were going to get married. They didn't even give her the chance. They interrupted her and said elder Helam's family was in their home eating dinner and they're so glad that she's broken up with me and it's over because this guy was so dangerous and terrible on all these things he'd done at scouting for money and how terrible he was.

John Dehlin [00:58:12] Who was saying this to your former wife's parents?

Adam Paul Steed [00:58:14] Elder Helam's son and I think elder Helam was at the dinner table. And my wife.

John Dehlin [00:58:23] While you were engaged to you?

Adam Paul Steed [00:58:23] Yeah, we were getting engaged. We decided to get married and call parents and tell them we were getting married. And she called back in tears saying she had called her parents to announce our engagement. Her parents in Holland. And at that moment, they were at the dinner table with elder Helam's family talking about how terrible I was as a person. Just all these terrible things about my family and everything. And her parents were like, we're so glad you're not getting married to this guy. And then she didn't even know how to tell them. She just got engaged. And she called me back in tears and she was, what do we do? I don't know what to do. And. And we ended up getting married outside of what they wanted.

John Dehlin [00:59:00] But also, her dad got called suspiciously as an area authority by hillam.

Adam Paul Steed [00:59:05] I never put that link together. But no, that calling happened when I first met. Just right after I met my wife, just not long after I met her.

John Dehlin [00:59:17] Because, I mean, this is in my mind. I'm thinking this is very conspiracy theory kind of minded.

Adam Paul Steed [00:59:23] I don't think think the timetable of me meeting my wife and dating would have given Helam enough time to call him. I think he had already called him

John Dehlin [00:59:32] as an area authority.

Adam Paul Steed [00:59:34] Yeah. Because early in our dating, we went to temple. When he came over to be at the conference where he came over to become an area 70. I saw her parents for the first time.

John Dehlin [00:59:46] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [00:59:48] And so. And we hadn't been dating very long.

John Dehlin [00:59:51] So he became an area authority while you were dating her?

Adam Paul Steed [00:59:55] Yes. Okay. And the thing was then, you know, we went to this real rocky engagement with just tons of trauma with her family trying to end the engagement. And then finally they agreed and we come over and seen them in Holland several times and tried to be real peaceful and everything. And so we get to the temple day where her whole family and her dad and her mom and everyone were there and, you know, we were just getting ready and the temple cellar at the Idaho Falls Temple, elder Groberg was 45 minutes late and we didn't know why. And then we got married and there was a bunch of stuff going on. My wife then was super upset. I don't know everything that her parents were telling her. It was a really rocky beginning. Later, after all this stuff came out, years later, the secretary to Elder Groberg had been in our family stake. She contacted my dad and she said, I have to tell you guys the truth about this. That day that your son was going to get married, Elder Helam called Elder Groberg, President Groberg at the Idaho Falls temple, and spent 45 minutes while he was supposed to be going to the wedding, trying to convince them to call the wedding off and not let it happen in the temple. And he said that he was telling him that this was this terrible kid at scouting that had lied about all these abusers and all this money and everything. And finally Elder Grohlberg said, this is my temple and my calling. And after they got into a heated argument, this lady overheard, she said it was like a heated argument inside the temple in the office. And finally he said, this is my authority under my jurisdiction and these people will get married. And he hung up the phone. So those are two pieces of how this guy influenced our life. You know, we were married. And so just to summarize, I just

John Dehlin [01:01:57] want to highlight this. You become a child whistleblower to a confirmed self admitted pedophile. You work with your dad to change the state laws in the state of Idaho to protect children. And what you get from that is behind the scenes, high level Mormon church leaders apparently do all they can to smear your name and to smear your family's name wherever they can.

Adam Paul Steed [01:02:27] Well, we didn't understand why Elohilam would do this because he was called of God and one of the top, you know, he had been like, I think, you know, it's common in the Mormon church to say, you know, the church isn't perfect, but the high ups, they know what they're doing. And this was the president of the first quorum of the 70. I thought a lot of the apostles would get called from that position. If you look at it, actually the apostles are kind of older in the present, probably these younger people over the entire general authorities would be kind of like running the church facilities. In a lot of ways. Elder Helam was over the Sunday school books. He was over that for the whole church. In the 90s and 2000s, I think I need to get the dates right. But I mean. And they're not, I'm sure, and this is kind of disturbing that a friend of mine who had a top apostle and his family explained that the church on the inside, they purposely created extra boards so that it would be ambiguous whether it was the church leaders who knew all of God's truth, whether they would be responsible for the things. But that these people would sit. That the prophet would sit there and rubber stamp every decision. Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And they didn't want anyone in the public to know that because then, you know, it was nice that they were these auxiliary places in between so that they could. The ambiguous city could blame it and the church leaders wouldn't be responsible for it. And I don't. That's what I heard from this person firsthand, that there was, you know, that there. All I know is there hasn't been accountability for how they work. No, no. It's all been secret. So we just have to fit these shattered pieces together. Here's this top general authority tried to stop the engagement, tried to stop the marriage in a crazy backdoors way that we did find out about, and then was the first person that my exes and her dad went to when the Jody Hildebrandt case exploded in our lives for help.

How Adam Connected with Jodi Hildebrandt

John Dehlin [01:04:47] Maybe we should back up. Should we back up and. And talk about how you got connected to Jody Hildebrandt?

Adam Paul Steed [01:04:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:54] Yeah, yeah. Is that the okay part in the story to do that?

Adam Paul Steed [01:04:56] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:58] So how. Yeah. How did. How did you get connected. How and why did you get connected to Jody Hildebrandt? I

Adam Paul Steed [01:05:08] went to a bishop. Mormon bishop was a BYU student.

John Dehlin [01:05:13] How long had you been married? Do you remember?

Adam Paul Steed [01:05:15] We'd been married for two years and a few months.

John Dehlin [01:05:21] So around what year would this have been? What year were you married?

Adam Paul Steed [01:05:26] Not good with dates, with trauma.

John Dehlin [01:05:27] Oh, yeah, of course. Do you remember what year you were married?

Adam Paul Steed [01:05:33] I promised that I would unremember my anniversary. Yeah, it was like In September of 2006, I think.

John Dehlin [01:05:44] So this might have been 2008.

Adam Paul Steed [01:05:45] Hold on. Sorry. No, it wasn't that. My. No, my daughter was born in 2006. In November. It was. I think we were married in 2005 in like August.

John Dehlin [01:05:59] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [01:06:00] Ish.

John Dehlin [01:06:00] So it might have been 2008.

Adam Paul Steed [01:06:03] Yeah. Two years into our marriage and. And now I had just, you know, the scouting case finally picked up some steam and. And you know, we had the psycho. Psycho. The psych evaluation of the child abuse damage to me and we were going into our settlement process, and it was reaching the middle of winter, so I was trying to finish up all my schooling. Settlement for the child abuse case in scouting, they take a long time.

John Dehlin [01:06:34] So you were in settlement talks with who?

Adam Paul Steed [01:06:38] I was in the settlement talks before I met my wife.

John Dehlin [01:06:43] Boycotts or the church.

Adam Paul Steed [01:06:45] Before I met my wife at Brigham Young University, my ex wife. And then I met her, and then we went to get married. And she knew about the scouting settlement coming up.

John Dehlin [01:06:55] So you were settling with the Boy Scouts of America?

Adam Paul Steed [01:06:58] So we had a case against Boy Scouts of America. It wasn't settling. I don't remember at what point we had decided to settle. I mean, we were building a case, but it was, you know, two years into my marriage when we suddenly went, you know, had the psych evaluation with Marilyn Moody Brown in Boise, Idaho, about the damage that happened to me, you know, and I. I was a pretty resilient, optimistic guy. I want victims to know they can get their life back. And if someone says it's better to die than to be sexually abused, that's not a person that was sexually abused. As an outsider, turn your life around and live and make a great life forward. So anyway, but we were up in Idaho and we had that report, and that report was really damning towards the child abuse Scouting was trying to cover up and the trauma and the damage it caused. My life kind of was equated to a money value in a settlement process. How bad is this kid damaged? How much counseling does he need? This is how much we should give him. And so we finished a scouting settlement. I desperately just wanted to get back to my normal life. And I remember I was in school in the fall, and I just did this report near the end of fall, and I started missing finals and stuff because there was a lot of trauma around sharing all the abuse that happened in this extensive way with the. You know, I think it was 50 pages long and very professional people that knew how to handle this. A doctor and. And they gave that report. And so are the terms of the settlement private? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:41] Okay. Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [01:08:44] They had us sign on, like, how much money we can't talk about.

John Dehlin [01:08:49] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [01:08:51] But yeah, it wasn't a putative damage case.

John Dehlin [01:08:59] Right.

Adam Paul Steed [01:08:59] And I think the report made them realize how much they had a libel. And so somewhere around sometime, we changed these statute of limitations. That also showed that now if the state has changed their laws for statute of limitations, they don't have a strong case against us. If everyone in the state has come to terms with the Truth. And so we finished this case and we settled. When we got to settlement, it was like through winter or January, something during that year. I had got behind in school because of this trauma of giving this report. I had all these deals with teachers that we'd work it out, and we had more time, and I was just busy trying to work on that. But it was real difficult because of what had happened. And then we got this settlement. And I remember when I was talking to my bishop at Wymount Terrace, I said to. I believe it was Bishop Olson. O L S E N I believe. And I said to him, I said,

John Dehlin [01:10:15] this is your ward, Bishop.

Adam Paul Steed [01:10:16] It's our ward bishop at Wymount Terrace.

John Dehlin [01:10:18] It's a married ward.

Adam Paul Steed [01:10:19] Yeah. I said to him, hey, we should probably get some counseling. We want really good counseling. He got back with me after doing something on it, and he said that he felt that we should go to this group called LifeStar and that it would be great marriage counseling. And we later learned that his brother owned LifeStar. Oh, and Jody worked for as a chapter in lifestyle, you know, an area or something. Yeah, yeah.

LifeStar Therapy and Bishop Referral Conflict

John Dehlin [01:10:55] That's just a horrible conflict of interest that a bishop, a Mormon bishop is recommending LifeStar to you when his brother is an owner in the company.

Adam Paul Steed [01:11:05] Yeah. He knew all about the amount of money that we just got, and he sent us to his brother's company. And I don't know. You know, you could theorize that maybe Elder Helam plan to send me to Jody. But I think as the story develops, we'll understand that Elder Gilam became. Anyway, he facilitated Jody in an extensive way. And a lot of it's just circumstantial. We'll just keep telling everything that we saw because these people are so secret, but we'll tell it and let people

John Dehlin [01:11:47] think they can make the connections. So your bishop recommends you go to LifeStar. For those who don't. Yeah. LifeStar is known now as being an infamous network of Mormon therapists that really stoke and nurture and milk this idea that if you masturbate, you're an addict. If you look at it, if you look at porn, it's even worse. And they do 12 step program kind of things. And they pathologize masturbation as an addiction, as infidelity in the marriage. And then they have therapist groups, and I don't know if there are support groups as well. But as you mentioned, Jody Hildebrandt was the head of a chapter along the Wasatch front. So you go to LifeStar. What happens next.

Adam Paul Steed [01:12:32] Yeah, so I'm going to just talk this story because I got so much stuff that's just terrible about this. But instead of bringing interrupting the story too much, I'll just talk through my 26 year old self. Just what were the actual effects or what actually happened while we were. So we get into this therapy group. Jodi's really charismatic. My wife starts just loving it. I'm excited she's getting help and some of the personal issues that she had struggled with. And I didn't originally mind the strictness with the group because I thought that it was therapeutic to. There was a lot of guilt and shame behind masturbation and pornography in the Mormon Church. I had a lot of guilt and shame as a kid growing up. I had discovered masturbation a few weeks before I met Brad Stoles and just on my own, quietly. And I always believed that God sent this pedophile into my life to punish me because I was a sick person. You know, I had a lot of guilt and shame and I was like, I was good everywhere else in my life but inside I had this one area that, you know, in my childhood mind was basically, you know, if you look at a woman and you lust after her, that's the same thing as committing adultery in your heart. That's like a, a teaching in the New Testament or something. And then other scriptures that said that committing adultery was the same thing as next to murder. You know, you do the spiritual geometry in an innocent child's mind and you keep struggling back and forth with. You know, I remember, I think it was Cindy Crawford on the underwear section of Sunday paper. That was my. I tried to resist, but I couldn't, you know, sneak in the bathroom looking at this and discovering masturbation for the first time. That was my deep dark secret. And I was scared to death to talk to anyone about it. It certainly wouldn't have been something I would have shared with anyone at that time in my life. When I was 16, I was 14, then 13 and 14 and I was 16. I finally came to terms that I could talk to my bishop about it and confess. It was a huge thing. I think my parents thought I might have been bipolar at the time because I would have depression during certain times a week. But I think it had to do with how many days after the Sunday paper came out and in the same cycle. I always went through hating myself for this problem and trying to do better and by a few days forgetting about it and being happy but person again. You know, looking back, I believe that was innocence. But yeah. So I grew up. And it's interesting. I just want to. I will interrupt for a second. I was reading these notes of Jody Hildebrandt telling the Honor Code office about me and the Honor Code office. Ed Morin's writing in these notes what Jody tells her. And he's also writing in the notes what my ex wife tells her. And he says the bold is what my ex wife says. The other stuff is Jody's. There's this huge amount of stuff in there. It's interesting how Jody starts out in those things saying that I was so dangerous and so scary. And she says in there, we should visit those. Actually, she says I was the most dangerous man she had ever met in her life. And then later in the same notes, later on, she says I was just her garden variety addict as she was starting to like, show how professional she was and how it's insane, but just want to go back. So I started this lifestyle program and in the program there was couples, we were all couples. And I thought it was like marriage therapy. And right away in the beginning, Jodi was just like, there's a couple of doctors. And she just started just really enforcing all the time. And I want to point out that Jody moves the real world into an abstract of like doctrines and teachings that she just goes over all the time. And, you know, if somebody hurts somebody, they don't talk about how they hurt and who they hurt and how to make it better. They talk about like an addiction in your head and a problem and self denial and codependency and nobody's talking about what actually happened to the person. Nobody's helping make things better. Jody's not meeting with you and asking you much about your personal issues at all. She was, I later learned, using the group sessions to ask us for personal sessions. I heard that was unethical to solicit personal counseling in a group session. I think that's what I remember. But she was just, you know, she had you in these groups of people and they're laughing and she's funny and she's nice and she's just like her little co host self, you know, helping people say things they can't say, finishing sentences for people. And anyway, we like Jody. I was telling Bishop Olson, hey, this is a great lady. We should have her come to the church and get everybody in this group. You know, she's got a hand on this stuff. She knows how to make everything go away. You know that you never have an intermittent porn or masturbation problem. Again, she's got this. She's super charismatic. And they set up. Bishop Olson, set up to have her come for, like, it was like a state conference or something to speak so that everybody could come to Jody Hildebrandt. And, you know, it was like, we're in this, like, group, and then they separate us into the girls only group and the guys only group. And then things start to take a really dark turn.

John Dehlin [01:18:27] How so?

Adam Paul Steed [01:18:35] Well, so if you've looked at porn or masturbated, and I think. And in all honesty, I had looked at probably about two hours of pornography collectively in my entire life up to that point. Up to that point, yeah. It got a lot worse the last two or three weeks of my life. Start with Jody, because at that time I had fought. I'll explain it. I looked at it. Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Penthouse Online, Googled it, then called a bishop immediately. I think it was a cry for help at a certain point when my mental health was really at a low, where if I kept following this, I knew it would destroy me. But, like, so the one thing I knew, though, is I knew I always told the truth. And if you haven't been able to never mass aggregate again, when you promised yourself as a 14 year old you never would and you did it again and then you tried not to over and over at least knowing that you always tell the truth is really important to you. It's like you're. You know, I can't quite fully stop this problem, but I know that I'm an honest person and Jody took that away from us in our marriage. Like, she. I was always honest with my wife 100%. I felt terrible if I accidentally looked on something. And, you know, there were several times in my marriage where I confessed to her that I googled something and I looked at it for 20 seconds or 30 seconds, and then I felt terrible. And then I called her. You know, I was insecure and I was trying really hard to do this. And also later I realized that I had some. A little bit of ptsd. And it helped me feel like I was normal if I looked at a beautiful naked woman versus the ptsd I felt like I was running from. I needed help. I have a different kind. I didn't need to join a cult and. But so I talked to. Well, near the end, it got really, really bad, all these arguments. And the last, you know, since my wife started with Jody was like, right when we got pregnant with our second baby. So it was like nine months of Jody in therapy and, you know, culminating with the baby being born and her running into hiding. Three weeks after our baby was born, with the kids disappearing and. And our one year old baby. And our three week old baby. Our three week old baby with Jody and, and. But you know, right up a few, a little bit. Right before that happened.

John Dehlin [01:21:18] Yeah. Can you take us to what led to your wife?

Adam Paul Steed [01:21:23] Yeah, there was just. My wife started confronting me on all sorts of behaviors using that abstract language Jody would use. I didn't violate and start talking it all out verbally. And

John Dehlin [01:21:35] I think the term is distortion. Are you in distortion?

Adam Paul Steed [01:21:40] Well, yeah. Let me the self denial about addiction and minimization because we just interviewed Jesse

John Dehlin [01:21:47] Hildebrand, Jody's niece who lived with Jody. And Jody would accuse Jesse of horrific things when she was just like a 15, 16 year old girl, very innocent, devout Mormon. Jody would accuse her of abortions and having sex.

Adam Paul Steed [01:22:06] Oh, that lady's gonna go to hell. I'm sorry. She lies. She makes it up. Jody's like Ted Bundy. She's pathological. Ted Bundy's got that smile where he's just. Nobody can get their head around what he does when they look at his pictures or listen to some of the things. She is completely pathological.

John Dehlin [01:22:25] So what lies was she planting in your ex wife's mind about you?

Adam Paul Steed [01:22:29] Well, put your mind. You've been honest with your wife. You've gone through having to call a bishop and go through repentance process. And her coming in talking about how it's okay, Adam, don't worry, I forgive you, I love you. Let's put this, let's put this behind us. Let's get your life going and her being the hero and you having this shaky marriage. All these.

John Dehlin [01:22:49] Jody being the hero?

Adam Paul Steed [01:22:50] No, no, no, my wife. Oh, okay, okay. You know this process we go through and then you know. But my wife always knew that I told the truth. In fact, she said I told it too often, it was my fault. And so, but these. So there were. There's several stories at the same time. There's the what's going on in the progression of Jody's classes with us. There's what's going on with my wife becoming way more confrontational with me. Over a million things that aren't important and using abstract language about it. And then there's what's going on when I start to try to get out of this stuff. And then there's this terrible things that happen. So it's hard to tell. Such a. I used this other term the other day. It's the friction of complexity. It's a super complex thing and it's hard to grab everything. But I'll give several explanations of it from different areas about this. And I'm sorry if it's messy. It is pretty traumatic.

John Dehlin [01:23:50] Take your time.

Adam Paul Steed [01:23:50] And I'm very happy about Jody's niece coming forward. And we'll probably have some similarities and how hard it is to capture this. There's a difference between a crime that they punish a criminal for. If there's like two variables separating the criminal and the crime, Everyone can say he went over there, he got a gun, and he shot somebody. But when there's a hundred variables, but the end result's exactly the same, that Jody's done all this manipulation in all these different areas by subtleties. But then you see these end results. It's really hard to find out who this. You know, but then there's this huge body count of people whose life she's destroyed. And in the same way. And when she does it over and over, it becomes methodic and Claire to her, but not to people. It's all newness about. And they'll have their life gets destroyed to a point where they can't confront it anymore by the time she's done with them. But to go back, Jody's doctrines right in the beginning was addictions. Everybody has addictions. So, you know, how did I get in this porn addiction therapy group? I needed marriage counseling and some counseling for trauma with the abuse case that happened. But Jody turned, you know, everybody has addictions. These are word for word quotes that Jody said. And. And she said everybody has an addiction. I mean, whether it's reading your Book of Mormon too much.

John Dehlin [01:25:17] And Jesse talked about whether it's food

Adam Paul Steed [01:25:19] issues, whether it's

John Dehlin [01:25:24] exercise.

Adam Paul Steed [01:25:26] Yeah, exercise. Or pornography or child abuse. And then Jody would always say, the way you act out doesn't matter what matters, it's the addiction in your head. And that's what we're going to focus on. And so that was kind of the beginning where, okay, we're all in here taking this class. So in order to justify someone to use an unusual amount of control over your life, like there's a relationship with, you know, I've used this example, you know, like, it's not okay to just go up and push somebody really hard, but if they were like in the street and a car was going to hit them and you didn't have time to tell them, and it's totally okay to push somebody really hard. But if the car is gone and it's not there it's not okay to just go up and slam people in the head, you know, and hurt them. And so, you know, it's interesting people. Their general feelings are. It's interesting, like 9, 11 happened, and all the people who normally argued their own ways, they all joined up and gave the president unprecedented power. And in other words, when people are really scared, they give. They're okay with giving somebody power, this incredible amount of power. And you flip that around if you have this tool that, you know, Jody's program of control works really good for serial rapists and pedophiles in a prison. But that's. Jody was aspiring for power over a huge amount of money and power and probably cool people who've done powerful things. She wasn't looking for, you know, to hang out with serial rapists and pedophiles in prison. You know, Jody. Jody wanted money and she wanted power. And she wanted to take from one set of victims. She wanted to take. They were really powerful people with money. She wanted to take their money and she wanted to take their power and use it in her own way for herself. The other set and the prestigious people. Jodi, right in the beginning started indoctrinating us. That. Here's the lady that worked at the Elks Lodge in Provo Canyon that knew. She knew. And I think she. I can't remember. So that she had worked with Paris Hilton and we know how that turned out. Now, her experience there, I don't. But Jodi talked about these world famous people. That's as if she was their counselor. And now she's working on your problems, your little problems. There was a euphoric feeling that you're important. She said the mayor of Salt Lake Work, you know, was one of the people. I mean. I mean, she shared everybody's personal stories without using, you know, that they were. They were people that came to. She used. She talked about general authorities, how they didn't have a hand on it and they needed to come to her. And we all follow church leaders perfectly. And is this. They're using this person, you know, is this euphoric religious feeling that this lady is going to help us? Come here, you far from the earth. Come to the lady who will help every teenage boy never masturbate or look pornography again in their life. Have an eternal marriage and go to heaven.

John Dehlin [01:28:42] Yeah. So she gave the impression she had direct contact with Mormon general authorities.

Adam Paul Steed [01:28:47] Oh, she said she did. She said that these people came to her for help.

John Dehlin [01:28:51] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [01:28:52] And you're sitting there like, I knew it. I knew everybody they were perfect. But I knew somebody, you know. But what's so scary and dangerous about Jodi, looking back, let's look back for a minute, is she was removing from patients, clients. There using All Confidential was nothing. She was spinning charisma and using it however she needed to. But she was removing from people that their actions mattered, that it was an addiction in their head. So if you take someone that truly is mentally ill and you teach them that their actions don't matter, and you give them all these euphoric feelings and you show them to just focus on this control behavior of confronting people and controlling them and punishing them. The other huge doctrine Jody Hildebrandt always taught, and it just manipulated the religion, it manipulated the hell out of Mormons because it was such a deep filling. And as she thought, you know, it paradigm'd our deepest belief. She said the relationship has to die so it can be reborn. It was like a resurrection thing. And we were the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We worshiped Christ. And this resurrection I did. Oh, yeah, it has to die to be reborn. And Jody taught that all these people in support of us, they were all codependent relationships, and it was toxic. And she would just spin it all into this language until she'd have everybody just chopping all the arms of support off in your life till there was no one else to support you except for Jodi Hildebrandt. There were all these boundaries that you had to draw. She coached people to get them so that they wouldn't be near anybody. And she just always taught the relationship needed to die before it could be reborn. And very shortly, I learned that if it didn't die on its own, Jody Hildebrandt would kill the relationship so that

John Dehlin [01:30:39] it could be reborn, meaning your marriage.

Adam Paul Steed [01:30:41] She would destroy it in any sociopathic way alive. And if you look in these records that I've got, I've got written documents of her in action doing this to be scrutinized by professionals, meaning emails between

John Dehlin [01:30:57] her and your ex wife.

Adam Paul Steed [01:30:58] I've got Jody, Yes, I have this document as emails between Jody Hildebrandt and my ex wife. As her patient, as she. She takes this girl that struggled with control issues and was three weeks after a baby was born trying to figure out logic at that point in your life. And from earlier on, she takes her from someone that talks about her life and her problems with me as being little things in normal people's marriages. And Jodi teaching her how to confront all that stuff. And then Jody weaving into her that she has to be scared of all this stuff with all this addiction talk. And then Jody talking, like in the honor code office to Ed Moran. She says she has to help Morwenna because Morwenna and denial and confusion. Patient of hers that's in this one over here. She says she has to help Morwen identify how she's a victim, that having. Accepting that a husband had looked at porn and masturbation, how Morwenna didn't know how terrible that was, and that she had to help her understand that that's wrong. And then Jody turns around and starts talking about how she had to help Morwenna, who didn't think it was bad, just thought it was normal, had to understand why I couldn't be in the bathtub with our baby. And that she had to help Morwenna understand how dangerous I was and how I was the most dangerous person she had ever met. And see, we subpoenaed Jodi Hildebrandt's medical records of me and they were like half of a page long. And they said nothing. And she never asked me about myself. And yet she. And also. Okay, so these records in here show. Let's go back because the story is really confusing. These records show how she took a girl with small issues and taught her how to become a Jody Jr. To go out and to recruit other women into the program. Jody hired my ex wife at that time as her. Jody was her therapist. And while being her therapist, she hired her to work for her. These emails show my ex wife having. You know, you can tell in the emails she had some problems and she insecurities. And she'd write to Jody, am I doing this right here? Let me send this paper that I need to write so that all the girls can hear these statements when we go out. And we'll take these to church leaders and we'll recruit all these women into the program. And I need a statement. And Jody looks at it, well, that's not sharp enough in this area and do it more in this area and do it this area. Eventually, Jody gets her to. They go back and forth in these emails, create a document that completely changed from all the stuff that she shows is the real issue she had with her husband at the time into something that's completely, completely 100% evolved into something that would help Jody's cult take over all these new people. And it was violent and it was dangerous and it would totally destroy me as a person.

John Dehlin [01:34:08] And it's worth noting that if it's true that your ex wife's dad, by this point, was an area authority for the church. It has to be that Jody felt motivated by. To be treating or helping the daughter of a very powerful Mormon church leader who would be connected to Hillam and other top leaders of the church. So there must have been some sort of perverse motivation for Jody to be inserting herself so forcefully into your marriage.

Adam Paul Steed [01:34:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:47] You know, putting the Boy Scout stuff aside.

Adam Paul Steed [01:34:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:50] You know, she must have been like fresh meat. This is exciting because I'm treating the family of a powerful Mormon leader.

Adam Paul Steed [01:35:00] Yeah. In here I have actually Morwenna's dad, Chris Klievig, Elder Klaueg, writing a letter to help lifestyle promote bringing people in. Because he's an area general authority. Jody's having. Morwenna is writing her dad, helping him compose this letter, and she's sending it to Jody, and Jody's deciding on how it should be changed and edited. And Morwenna's complaining about how difficult it is to get her dad to face his own addictions and denials and stuff.

John Dehlin [01:35:31] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. Again, it's September 12, 2023. We are an hour and 38 minutes into the most viewed live stream in the history of Mormon Stories podcast. We've got 9,600 live stream viewers on YouTube and Facebook. Welcome to you all. We are here in the middle of what we think is a really important interview with Adam Paul Steed. And we hope you've been enjoying it. We're just going to ask again, for the sake of Adam's story and for the importance of this story, and frankly, for the sake of the Mormon people, for the sake of the Mormon Church and for people in high demand religions everywhere. We're going to ask everyone right now to take a second to like this episode on YouTube or Facebook and to subscribe to the podcast, Mormon Stories Podcast. Not for any selfish reasons, I swear. We just want YouTube to pick this video up and share it as broadly and widely as possible so that Adam's story can be told. I feel very strongly that Adam was likely targeted by the Mormon Church because of his role as a whistleblower with the Boy Scouts of America and changing the statute of limitations laws in Idaho. I believe that Jody Hildebrandt worked closely with the Mormon Church and Adam's bishop to destroy his reputation and destroy his life, at least in part because of his role as a whistleblower in the Mormon Church. And so we're now ending the interview that was prerecorded late last week. What you would have seen is Adam begin to read a letter that his father in law at the time who was an area authority for the Mormon Church. It was a letter that Mormon therapist approved and supported. Mormon therapist Jody Hildebrandt got Adam's father in law as an area authority to write an endorsement letter supporting LifeStar and Jody's work that Jody was going to use for marketing materials. We're not going to play Adam rereading that letter only because at some point, it just became really over, frankly, really overwhelming for Adam. And. And so we. We ended the interview. Now we're back in Studio on September 12 here with Adam Paul Steed. Again, we appreciate your patience as we tell the best we can, a full story and allow Adam to tell his full story. So I want to welcome Adam Paul Steed, welcome you back to Mormon Stories podcast. How are you doing?

Adam Paul Steed [01:38:13] Hi. I'm nervous. If I tell dumb jokes, it's because I'm nervous. There's a lot of trauma here. I was out in the parking lot while this was playing because I didn't want to listen to it before I came into this because I just need to tell the truth and not get distracted by the fear or the anxiety or anything. I just remember this nervous joke just rolled in my head, and it was like, you know, as a little kid, you're always raised to be a bishop or stake president or general authority or something. And I was like, oh, I. I'm getting to give my conference talk where I get to testify of my truth to this broken people. And there are so many damaged people out there because of this situation. And I recognize that no matter how traumatic it is to me, our people deserve to know the truth so that we can heal. All I want is for our people to heal.

John Dehlin [01:39:07] Well, it's a really heroic thing that you're doing. And I can tell you've been traumatized and re traumatized so many times that just people can't understand the courage and the fortitude it takes to be willing to be a tireless whistleblower, not for any personal gain, but for the health and safety of a people that you love.

Adam Paul Steed [01:39:32] Yeah, well, in my mind, the trauma I feel when I talk about this is a sacrifice because later I'll feel a lot less trauma when I know that we make the world a better place.

John Dehlin [01:39:43] Beautiful. I also just want to say we're fortunate to have with us in studio Amanda Gilbert of Channel 2 News here in Salt Lake City. Adam and Amanda connected, I think yesterday or the Day before. And Adam requested that Amanda be here for the remainder of the interview. And we on Mormon Stories. You know, I was on. I was. I've spoken with multiple news outlets over the past few days and I do want to just say if any of you have experience with Jody Hildebrandt or Connections and you're willing to talk to national reporters, at least anonymously at first for your safety. These reporters are looking to do national stories and they've asked me not to mention their names necessarily or the programs. But if you'll email me@mormonstoriesmail.com just say Jody Hildebrand or connections victim willing to speak to media, whatever in the subject line, I will put you in touch with these reporters because we want this story told locally and nationally and internationally. And with that, Amanda Gilbert. I bet you you're not from here. I bet you never thought you'd be on Mormon Stories podcast.

Adam Paul Steed [01:40:58] Yes, I'm just here to ask questions too. I wanted to interview Adam today, so thought it'd be better to tag team than make you do a bunch of interviews. Appreciate that. Sometimes I feel like we do this locally just to make when multiple news outlets want to ask questions, rather we all just do it together. So thank you.

John Dehlin [01:41:21] Well, we're glad you're here. Thanks for joining us, Amanda.

Adam Paul Steed [01:41:24] Thank you.

Jodi Hildebrandt's Influence on Adam's Marriage

John Dehlin [01:41:25] All right, so this, there may be a little bit of repetitiveness in this, but I want to kind of try and just tell a story because we've got the story of how Jody Hildebrandt ruined your marriage. Then there's the story of how Jody Hildebrandt unethically interacted with the BYU Honor Code office to get you kicked out of BYU and to smear your reputation and to, to get you in trouble with the law, which is a, which is a huge story and then eventually get kicked out. But then there's also the COVID up, which is the BYU Honor Code office trying to hide that it was acting unethically. And then all the of it ends with sort of these likely tiebacks to the same general Authority Hillam that was overseeing the Boy Scout, the very Boy Scout camp and you know, activities that you were a whistleblower on. So basically the, the general authority that, that you blew the whistle on, so to speak, ends up attending your unethical hearing. Right. For which you were ultimately exonerated. And the thing that you weren't exonerated for. We'll get into it was, was pretty much manufactured by Jody. So we'll get into all that. But those are the stories we're going to try and tell. And I, we, again, we just appreciate you being willing to, to be here to talk through that.

Adam Paul Steed [01:42:56] Thank you. I've given a few documents to you guys. It's kind of, for some reason, it's pretty traumatic when I read them. And so maybe one way that we could just go about it is you could find some parts that, and you could kind of read them and ask me about them and then I can get into my story.

John Dehlin [01:43:19] Absolutely. Let's begin. I want to just sort of really laser in on how Jody Hildebrandt ruined your marriage and has ruined so many marriages. So you've already talked about, about how, you know, you were referred to Jody Hildebrandt by your Mormon bishop, correct?

Adam Paul Steed [01:43:38] Yeah, yeah. I just finished the scouting settlement and was called in by my bishop, was talking to him. There was a discussion about how there was this really, really, really good therapy program that could help us. We had this money and we could afford it. And I was sent to Jody Hildebrandt. But me and my wife together, the bishop was saying it was for both of us as a couple that we could both benefit from this program.

John Dehlin [01:44:12] Okay, so you start by meeting as a couple with Jody or individually with Jody?

Adam Paul Steed [01:44:18] Yeah, we started by meeting as just a couple that our bishop sent us there and, and we had a one year old baby at the time. And this was right about when my wife got pregnant with our second baby. When we started therapy with Jodi Hildebrandt

John Dehlin [01:44:34] and what was her approach as a marriage. As posing as a marriage therapist, what was her approach at first with you and Morwenna? Right? Is that.

Adam Paul Steed [01:44:45] Yeah, yeah. So we drove to this place, I think it was in Lehi, Utah, off of State street or something. And we got inside of this group and it seemed almost like a retreat at Alpine or something. You know, just all these happy couples smiling and everyone excited. There were probably like, I think five or six couples in this group. We're all sitting in a room and in comes Jodi, the, you know, smiling and laughing and saying things and everybody laughing with her.

John Dehlin [01:45:19] And was that. Was that after you'd met with her individually?

Adam Paul Steed [01:45:22] She's like, no, no, no. Okay, that.

John Dehlin [01:45:25] So she was doing one on one to many from the very start.

Adam Paul Steed [01:45:27] Yeah, yeah. I keep. I think it's unethical to have group therapy and to, to grab your clients out of the group to do one on one.

John Dehlin [01:45:36] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [01:45:36] And.

John Dehlin [01:45:37] And well, normally there's an intake. I mean, I. Again, for those who don't know, I pursued a P. I completed a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology as a result of all the Mormons and ex Mormons I've had to interact with as a result of this podcast. So I've. I've led group therapy. I practiced psychotherapy under a licensed, you know, psychotherapist for six years. So I, you know, I know how this all works. And the first thing you do is you do a one on one intake, either with the individual or the couple to get their full history. And you would never just immediately have them start in group therapy. But you said you started in a group.

Adam Paul Steed [01:46:16] Yeah, yeah, we started in a group. Jody wasn't my therapist. I was just in a group. And right away she really caught your attention, what she was saying. She would argue these arguments that got into your head. Some of the things she said right in the beginning was like, kind of like from my perspective as a member of Mormon Church and everybody in this group was Mormons. You know, there's just this feeling that you always want to be temple worthy. And as a guy, sometimes that was hard to do when the Internet came out or if you ever looked at an indecent picture or anything, and you had to repent to your bishop and you know, you've gone back and forth thinking, oh, this is the last time. I'll never do this again. And sometime you mess up again and you call bishop and you know, you're sitting there thinking, this lady's promising that if we go into her program and do her stuff, we'll never have problems again.

John Dehlin [01:47:17] Yeah. And one of the things I want to make sure the world knows and reporters know is that in the Mormon Church, sexual sin is, is next to

Adam Paul Steed [01:47:25] what in terms of murder? You know, you're a kid and you're at Sunday school and they're reading scriptures and it's like if you look at a woman and lust after her, that's committing adultery in your heart. And then another scripture, it's like committing adultery is the next thing to murder. And you do the spiritual geometry in your head and you're just like, oh, you know, and then people at church are telling you, well, what is pornography? And they're like, well, if it turns you on, it's pornography. You're a kid, you're not allowed to, to masturbate. So practically you have no sexual outlet at all as you develop as a teenager. So you get into this hypersexual state where anything you see, you're like, oh, I'm sorry. I mean, I was repenting to my bishop for Underwear ads in the Sunday newspaper. That was too much for me to look at. I mean, that's just for seeing them. Just for seeing them. It's like, oh, I had terrible thoughts. I'm sorry. And just feeling so bad that I was, like, committing murder. Literally committing murder. I remember just some little kid. I was 13 and I discovered masturbation in the bathroom alone. Who doesn't have that story? But then, like, three or four weeks later, I meet Brad Stulls at church, the charismatic guy. Stull at church, the charismatic guy who became the pedophile a year later that I turned in. And me always thinking this was God's punishment to me because I was a fallen man, that I was a sexual pervert, that I had problems because I masturbated.

John Dehlin [01:48:53] Even though you were the victim. So you basically believed that you deserved to be sexually abused as a child?

Adam Paul Steed [01:48:58] Yeah, I thought it was. It was my punishment because I was such a bad person.

John Dehlin [01:49:03] Because you were committing the sin next to murder, basically.

Adam Paul Steed [01:49:05] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so, like, you grow up and you get deeply immersed in the Mormon culture, where you realize, like, you're doing everything you can to be this great person. And. And I prayed every day with my family that I'd get married in the temple, that I'd go on a mission, and then I'd get married in the temple, and we'd wake up and have. But there was one part of my life, it's like, why can't I be consistent 100%? Why am I 99% consistent in this area? I feel so guilty and so terrible this drags through into your marriage. And I remember right before I got married, six weeks before, my wife called and she said to me, no, this wasn't six weeks before. This was a bit before. We had just decided to get married. And this was super exciting time. She was over in Haifa University on a scholarship, and I was up in Idaho on our farm or near our farm and stuff. And she called me and she was in tears, and she said, I called to announce to my parents that we're getting engaged. But Elder Hughes, Elder Helam was there, or it was Elder Helam's family. And they talked about how I was this terrible kid from scouting, how they could never let their daughter marry me, how I was like this predator, this terrible person that I was lawsuit hungry. All this stuff I remember. I. Like, when I heard all this stuff, it just. I was so depressed for a couple of days. And then I remember, like, being triggered because I was a victim of child abuse with this stuff. And I just remember thinking, I'm not. I don't have problems. I'm not like that. I'm a good person. And I remember I. Some terrible moment, I went online and I looked at Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and then I called my bishop and I went into this repentance process and called my wife and told her I wasn't worthy to get married. You know, and I talked to my bishop and he said I was worthy, and we moved on. So for me, that was like a hiccup. You know, went into a marriage not feeling worthy, though, because of this kind of stuff. And there's so many Mormon men that feel the same way. I was blown away when I was in my Wymount Terrace ward, where finally we had an open conversation of who here had an issue like this, where they've looked at pornography or something before. And almost every single man in my entire elders quorum raised their hand.

John Dehlin [01:51:25] Yeah, of course.

Adam Paul Steed [01:51:26] Every single one of them, sir. So we were just normal people.

John Dehlin [01:51:30] Well, and part of the story is that the Mormon Church creates and or exacerbates this problem because if you go to the 90s and 2000s, you couldn't have a Mormon General Conference without porn or masturbation being mentioned two or three or four times in an entire general conference, by my memory. And so if kids by at 8 and at 4 and at 10 and at 12, if they can't go to church, I mean, sometimes porn and masturbation were mentioned more than Jesus Christ in a Mormon Church service.

Adam Paul Steed [01:52:02] Yeah. You don't go to kids and say, quit looking at porn and don't masturbate like this and this and this. Because then what are the kids thinking? What are they looking at and what are they doing?

John Dehlin [01:52:13] They're going to do it more.

Adam Paul Steed [01:52:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:15] Like, psychologically speaking, the more you tell someone not to have a thought, they're going to have that thought more.

Adam Paul Steed [01:52:20] More.

John Dehlin [01:52:20] It's called the white elephant intervention. And as a psychotherapist, I learned this, that you sit there with your client to teach them if they have obsessive thoughts, if they have ocd. An exercise you do is you say, all right, think about a pink elephant. Right? And they think about the pink elephant. Then you say, okay, now, for the next minute, I'm going to time. You don't think about the pink elephant for a minute. And I'm. And I want you to count. If you do think about it, count how many times you think about it. The client's going to think of the pink elephant. 10:15, 20 times in a minute if they ever stop thinking about it. And that's psychologically what the Mormon Church was doing and continues to do, mostly to its men, but also to its women.

Adam Paul Steed [01:53:03] Just adding to that, the Mormon Church got super, super rich during this same time period. Super wealthy?

John Dehlin [01:53:10] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [01:53:10] I mean, billions and billions of dollars. And they had an economics department paying attention to the thousands, millions of bishops interviews to see how it goes. And they develop the Bishop's Handbook that basically tells bishops that as soon as someone talks about their sexual trauma, you get them to promise that they'll follow the church leaders, that they'll pay tithing, that they'll go to church on Sunday. And, you know, to me, because I've worked with victims of abuse and stuff, you do not take your own personal agenda and incorporate that at the vulnerable kind of bubble window that happens after a person right after they've talked about their trauma.

John Dehlin [01:53:45] Yeah, yeah. In my more cynical moments, I've called sexual shame sort of integral. The secret formula, the secret ingredient in the Mormon Church's business model. Because if they can get as many members as possible feeling intense sexual guilt and shame, then they need Jesus to make them whole. And who's the intermediary between a Mormon and Jesus? Their bishop. What is the bishop going to tell them? Attend church, fulfill your callings, and pay your tithing to be worthy. And so sexual shame is core to the Mormon Church's financial business model.

Parallels Between Hildebrandt and Church Dynamics

Adam Paul Steed [01:54:24] Well, there's just some types and shadows or parallels between Jody Hildebrandt and the Mormon Church, in a way, is that it does do good, I think, for people that are real sexual offenders to be controlled in a real stringent way. It's like a tool you've got. The Mormon Church has a tool for a real stringent sex offender, or Jody Hildebrandt does. But if you're trying to get power and money over all the moderate people, you have to find a way for them to reinterpret in their head and their belief structure that really moderate, normal things are super dangerous things. That's the world I grew up in.

John Dehlin [01:55:01] Yeah, totally. Okay, so you attend these Jody little groups. How. How do they progress in terms of her treatment, her model, her approach, and how it starts affecting your marriage?

Adam Paul Steed [01:55:15] Yeah. So right away, you know, it was just like, so we're in this group, me and my wife are talking every day about all the stuff we're learning in Jody's group. We're excited, I'm thinking. And she starts to teach this idea that the relationship has to Die for it to be reborn. So in your head, you're like, yeah, sure, people's relationships die if they do these terrible things. But now we're kind of buying into it. Like, hey, our relationship could die, and then we could be reborn. And now all of our little, you know, these little problems would be gone. This is great. And the crazy thing is Jodi just, like, she start to, like, just make you feel these euphoric feelings. And, you know, and I think I've said she just. She'd basically, like. I think. I believe she said that Paris Hilton was one of her clients at Provo Canyon, that the mayor of Salt Lake was one of her clients, that Elder Scott was, like, one of her close people that needed advice.

John Dehlin [01:56:15] This is Elder Richard G. Scott of the quorum of the 12.

Adam Paul Steed [01:56:18] You're in a church that you swear in the temple. The temple says, don't tell anyone what you swear in here or you'll go to hell. You swear in the temple that you'll follow these church leaders, that you'll practice absolute obedience with them. And God gave this absolute truth to these top leaders. And you're sitting there thinking, this guy believes this lady is who we need to turn to for help. You know, this is cool. Like, I could never shake hands with Elder Scott. I've always wanted to be seen by Elder Scott. This lady counsels Elder Scott. She counsels the top church leaders. We'll do whatever. You know, we were raised our whole life just to tell our sins. And then the bishops would tell us exactly what to do, kind of faulting, believing that would make, you know, after doing that over and over in, the little problems could still be there. Then it's like, well, this is it, you know, and she'd make you feel so energized, like, these great things. And she taught this doctrine that it didn't matter. I mean, she made it. She said, if you have to spend your time not thinking about something, the fact that you have to not think about it proves that you're an addict. In other words, all this resistance and white knuckling not to think about that magazine on the aisle at the grocery store. The fact that I have to not think about that means that I'm a sexual addict. And she said that it didn't matter. And this is interesting. She said it didn't matter if you had food issues as an addiction. It didn't matter if they were sexual issues. It didn't matter if you had sexual issues with, like, a lamp post, like, whatever kind of sexual issues There were. Or if it's because you read your scriptures too much, the fact that she said that the context of how you act out does not matter. The only thing that matters is the addiction in your head, and I'm going to help you fix this.

John Dehlin [01:58:18] And she needed to pathologize everyone and everything because that's good for her business model. And I should add a couple really crucial things for those who want to know the details. When a Mormon bishop refers a ward member or a couple to a Mormon recommended therapist. And by the way, everyone who's ever contacted me is a victim of Jody Hildebrand has told me that their Mormon bishop recommended them to Jody Hildebrandt. And connections, every single one. Sometimes the Mormon bishop will pay for that therapy. And Jesse Hildebrandt testified on Mormon Stories podcast, if you can call it testified. I do that Jesse processed the Mormon Church's payments to Jody. So Jesse testified that Jody was on the Mormon Church's bankroll. Right. But the other really crucial thing is many people don't know this. When a Mormon bishop agrees to pay for a ward member's therapy with an approved Mormon therapist, they sign a document that signs away their therapist client confidentiality, and they give their therapist and their bishop permission to communicate back and forth about anything that's said. And the very first thing you learn as a therapist is about patient or client confidentiality. And the very first thing you ever say in a therapeutic setting is, I need you to know that everything we say today is going to be confidential unless you report to me that you're gonna. That you've abused a child or, you know, a vulnerable person. Other than that, everything we say is in confidence because you need that therapy, client confidentiality to be able to feel safe and to be able to share. But in Mormonism, that gets erased.

Adam Paul Steed [02:00:21] So I've never. That's super scary to me because as a. As a survivor of sexual abuse and having so many victims talk to me, contact me, and talk to me about the sexual abuse that their therapist and their bishop covered up in others. They talk about how these people said these things. That's part of their trauma now. And to think that the church legal department would be contacting bishops and working on a victim, coming forward from the bishop perspective, side angle and through the therapy angle is just unimaginable.

John Dehlin [02:00:56] It's like the Scientology auditing, where they get you to confess confidential things to the auditor. You can see going clear or read the book going clear.

Adam Paul Steed [02:01:06] One of the biggest trigger words is to all the victims that I've ever talked to. Just use the atonement.

John Dehlin [02:01:13] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:01:13] Just forgive them.

John Dehlin [02:01:14] Yeah. In fact, to your, your abuser.

Adam Paul Steed [02:01:17] Yeah. To the victims that have talked to me, when they're telling their story, they're just like. And a bishop said, just use the atonement and forgive them. While some serial predator was still out there.

John Dehlin [02:01:27] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:01:27] I wanted to ask because this was marriage counseling, why was there a lot of talk about, like you, was that a part of the killing of the relationship or was there a lot of talk about your relationship, if that makes sense. There was just all this talk. No, no, no. It was a one way street with Jodi. She's a dogmatic, you know, Fidel Castro is probably not known for his listening skills or Hitler. You know, they don't spend a lot of time listening to everybody's issues. They teach people some doctrine or something that gives them euphoria. Jodi Sildebrandt, her classes consisted of empowering us. You know, it's like, oh, general authority talks to her in personal small issues. Now she's talking to us. We're super important. Mayor of Salt Lake or all these other important people. We're super important. And then, you know, Paris Hilton, we're super important. And then on the other hand, she just starts building this archaeotype and there's some dangerous tools she introduces. She calls it different things, but it's the same thing, whether it's distortion or delusion. She gets into a group and watch how she harnesses the power of peer pressure to change the way a person logically thinks about something. So a person logically thinks if, maybe if they masturbated, they're, that's it in the real world or pornography, they've done that before and it didn't destroy their world, so they know that it won't. Well, Jody gets in a group and she starts, you know, she turns around and says, you know, she makes a bridge to something that wouldn't be a real bridge in real life. Like she makes the bridge that, you know, if somebody looked at porn that they're going to be a child abuser or that if they did this, they're going to, you know, get AIDS and start sleeping with escorts and destroy their family or anything. She makes these bridges.

John Dehlin [02:03:16] She terrifies the wives.

Adam Paul Steed [02:03:17] Yeah. I call it, I call it sexual terrorism. And she makes these bridges for you. So you think, you know, normally you're like, no. But then she turns around and she gets people to tell little stories where they were denial with common things that aren't that important. And then she turns around and has someone tell a story. And then she says it'll be like this. And they're like, no, it couldn't make the connection. Aha. That's your delusion speaking. That's your addiction in your head speaking. And she gets everybody to agree. And then you start to feel like, is that really my delusion in my head it's all this peer pressure and this euphoric feeling and then, oh, finally you're coming through to understand the truth finally. And you sit there and they just stair step you into this, like literally this. She basically masturbates you out of your mind with the euphoria and the sexual terrorism until you're just like this super vulnerable person that literally thinks she goes back and forth in your head, back and forth until you're such a vulnerable person that you think that this lady's like God and she's going to tell you how you're going to act out and what's going to happen if you don't do everything she says. By doing this model, she totally removes that element of you actually saying what your problems are.100%. Jodi doesn't know anything about me.

John Dehlin [02:04:31] She never had an intake with you, is that right?

Adam Paul Steed [02:04:33] No. After going to Brigham Young University and accusing me of raping my daughter, of my one year old, of rape raping my wife and, and I mean you've got the notes there of being the most this complete predator, this you have ruining my entire existence of truth. And she goes off prolifically as her, you know, in the autocad office, them saying that this is Adam's therapist and she says this and this and this. You would think that after meeting with her as much as I did that she would have a huge case notes of my problems. We subpoenaed her. Her case notes were this long. They didn't describe any problems. He said that I was going there for marriage counseling and some sexual issues that we could work out. You know, there was nothing.

Group Therapy Structure and Accountability Practices

John Dehlin [02:05:33] So as you're going to these groups, can you talk about the structure of the groups? Were you assigned an accountability buddy? Did you have to describe yourself in terms of addiction, being an addict, sobriety? Talk about the structure of these groups.

Adam Paul Steed [02:05:47] So the huge deception was that we came in for marriage counseling and after eight weeks of light stuff, not heavy stuff. Jody didn't let heavy traumatizing stuff in there. She made it light and fun and energetic and used all these small examples of how addiction and denial and control and everything worked. Then we get separated into these groups, and we get separated into these groups. One thing I'm noticing is my wife and I is closer to me in the group than like we'd been in our marriage. But then once we got separated into groups that was all guys in one and all girls in the other. Then slowly my wife, like, quit having this fun with me. And then it turned to not liking me, and then it turned to being angry at me, and then it turned to be upset at me all the time. And I was like, well, she's three months pregnant. She's four months pregnant. She's five. This could be a chemical thing. I don't know why she's so mad.

John Dehlin [02:06:42] You know, what were your groups like? And then what do you know about what her groups were like?

Adam Paul Steed [02:06:46] So my group, I get in there with these guys. There's four guys in there, Mia. I'm one of them.

John Dehlin [02:06:52] And you're each paying how much money?

Adam Paul Steed [02:06:54] I was. I need to get the exact numbers. It was somewhere around $2,000 a month. I think what I was paying $500

John Dehlin [02:07:01] a person per week that Jody's raking in by having multiple groups.

Adam Paul Steed [02:07:06] Well, and she was, like, part of the stuff was she was wanting us to get into, like, two or three sessions, personal sessions each per week that didn't culminate. I mean, I only had, like, three personal sessions with Jodi after everything blew up, me trying to save my marriage and go talk to her.

John Dehlin [02:07:24] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [02:07:24] You know, she never was my personal therapist.

John Dehlin [02:07:27] But between you and your wife, thousands of dollars a month.

Adam Paul Steed [02:07:30] Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. And the thing was, we're sitting there in this group, and I'm in there, and, you know, I've been. Next thing I know this, when she's having us talk about how they're sexually acting out, this other guy in the group starts explaining that he's a voyeurist and he's got victims. And I didn't know what a voyeurist was. And then this other guy started explaining how he was an exhibitionist and he had victims, and I didn't know what an exhibitionist was. And there was another guy that talked about incest, that he had problems with incest. I did know what that was. I felt horrified. So I went home and I told my wife. I said, first of all, I went and I looked it up, and then I found out what voyeurism was and what exhibitionism was. And I realized I was in a group with three sexual predators. And me. And because I was a victim of Sexual abuse. I did not feel comfortable. It says, imagine if you put Elizabeth Smart in a room full of sexual predators for her therapy. And worse, said that she was one of them. And I didn't feel comfortable at all. And I told. I was like they said it was. Even if you read your scriptures too much or if you had to spend your time not thinking about any kind of small temptation or anything, that you were supposed to be in there. These people are sexual predators. There are people whose lives they've messed up. And I am not supposed to be in here. I am a victim of child abuse, a survivor. And I can't deal with this trauma of being around these people. I am out of here. That was my first red flag. I was done and my wife got desperate in this discussion called Jody. Jody called her in. She comes back to me and said that that was my sexual addiction. And I got both. Jodi was telling me and my wife was telling me that that was my sexual addiction, telling me that I was a victim of sexual abuse. And that because of that I was in denial. And it just started escalating from there. Like I tried to get out of that group. And they were like, you are the sexual addict. You aren't healthy enough because you're non healthy. In fact, it's in the contract, actual words. I've got the documents of them sending this contract that I needed to save my marriage. And our marriage wasn't in a condition of needing to be saved until this point. And then Jody was instructing Morwenna, my wife Morwenna, that because I was the sexual addict, because of all this stuff, she needed to break the relationship. And she started instructing her that we couldn't talk, so we could only talk in group. And through her, we couldn't talk together. And she followed it. And she was.

John Dehlin [02:10:22] You mean in private?

Adam Paul Steed [02:10:23] Yeah, we could talk in our home. That we had to just be in home. You've got the paper there.

John Dehlin [02:10:30] Do you want me to read it?

Adam Paul Steed [02:10:31] Yeah, yeah, go ahead. And this was apt.

John Dehlin [02:10:34] Before I read the paper, were you, I hear about sort of accountability buddies

Adam Paul Steed [02:10:40] or

John Dehlin [02:10:43] were you ever assigned an accountability buddy? Did you have to text or call someone two to three times a day?

Adam Paul Steed [02:10:49] They were trying to get me into an accountability buddy. They did put me with somebody. It's like they took this sudden uptick and now they wanted me to take this sexual anomalous class also. That was outside of her class. I think they were just trying to prepare me for a custody case, for a divorce that I didn't know, and they wanted to connect me into all these things so they could argue my problem was way bigger.

John Dehlin [02:11:12] Yeah. And just for people who are wanting to understand Jody's techniques, I apologize whenever I break away from Adam's story, but the people that have reported to me have said that they would join these groups. Jody wouldn't even be leading them. They'd be led by non mental health professionals. They'd be paying $500 a person per week, and they would be assigned accountability buddies where they would be told, you need to contact this person up to three times a day. If you. If you are tempted to masturbate, you needed to text or call your accountability buddy. And if you accidentally masturbate or look at porn, you need to tell your accountability buddy. And that way, once you came back to group, especially when you're in group with your spouses, the accountability buddies, if you. You didn't come clean about your, you know, your relapsing or falling off the wagon, your accountability buddy would make sure that your wife knew that you masturbated or looked at porn. And then the group in group would pressure the wife to inflict some sort of punishment on the offending spouse as a way to enact peer pressure to help drive a wedge in the marriage under Jody's, you know, belief that a marriage had to be destroyed to be fixed. So it sounds like maybe Jody's.

Adam Paul Steed [02:12:34] Yeah, she did give me an accountability buddy for, like, right there near the end. I was willing to do whatever they said, even though I. I felt it was all wrong just to save my marriage. You know, I did have an accountability buddy for, I think, a few weeks or something while this stuff was just. Just fissuring.

John Dehlin [02:12:51] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:12:51] You know, the thing is, like, when you grow up and you try so hard not to do anything wrong, you're. You're. You know, and people say they can't trust you because you masturbated before or you looked at pornography. What you can. What I could say is that I. Is that me?

John Dehlin [02:13:16] No, keep going.

Adam Paul Steed [02:13:17] Okay. What I could say is, is that I was always honest. Like, my word was so important to me. I was a fallen, perfect Mormon, but I knew that I always told the truth. And I was in session with Jody. I went to Jody in a private session after having this. You know, things just started to fall apart really bad. Right. In the last months before my wife left with our baby, three weeks after our baby was born, and Jody was upping the confrontational style and control through my wife over my life, and she was Coming home and having these huge arguments with me every time she came back from a session with Jody.

John Dehlin [02:13:59] What types of issues or arguments, if

Adam Paul Steed [02:14:04] you remember one, was that my wife asked me to give our baby a bath. So I gave her baby a bath. And at this point my wife would have no physical contact with me, no talking about anything and everything. She totally walks into the bathroom in her lingerie. And I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, she finally listened to me. We're going to have our normal life back and stuff. And she started teasing me and acting like she was going to hop in the tub with me and I'm holding our baby, our one year old baby. And I just was like, hey, you got to get the baby out of the tub. And I'm laughing, thinking it was funny. And she leaves with the baby and she comes back into the bathroom and looks at me and just looks at my private parts and then just looks at me in disgust and just turns her back and walks away. And I was just sitting there just like this emotional roller coaster feeling and I just was like really hurt. And I'm sitting in there just like, oh God, this is my life. And I'm just sitting there and she comes back into the bathroom and I didn't want to see her, so I just turned my back to her. Don't even want to look at her, you know, didn't want to fight with her, didn't want to argue, didn't want to use that feeling of feeling so rejected and hurt that way. And, and so another situation, she came home.

John Dehlin [02:15:21] Can I just state that's entrapment? It sounds like. It sounds like what she did after withholding any sexual intimacy from you for an extended period of time based on Jody Hildebrandt's recommendations. It almost sounds like she was instructed to tell you to bathe the child, then to come in with lingerie to arouse you, to then be able to accuse you of child abuse as then a way to be able to have more power and leverage over you. It sounds like entrapment to me. It sounds like you don't want to say that, but I. But that's what it sounds like.

Adam Paul Steed [02:15:58] I got a protective order. I went to court, my kids had been kidnapped. And I read in the protective order and it says that my husband was this victim of sexual abuse, so he doesn't have a healthy understanding of boundaries. And one time he asked me that I had to get the baby out of the tub, and when I came in, he tried hiding an erection.

John Dehlin [02:16:19] So she used that against you Later.

Adam Paul Steed [02:16:22] I read it and I thought. Whoever. Like, I thought this man would be a terrible person. And then I realized it. It was me. And my kids were taken away from.

John Dehlin [02:16:30] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:16:31] My. My. My baby and my.

John Dehlin [02:16:34] Sorry.

Adam Paul Steed [02:16:35] My. Like the most important thing in my life was taken away because of that. Like.

John Dehlin [02:16:41] Like we.

Adam Paul Steed [02:16:43] And anyway, I'm good. Just give a second.

Reading Documents Showing Marriage Breakdown

John Dehlin [02:16:46] Let me give you a second. What I'm going to do now with. And you've asked me to do this. I'm going to read two documents that you've asked me to read. So the first one is July 15, 2008, Morwenna's statement or contract, abdicating any responsibility to be Adam's wife. And, you know, I asked you if you knew what was going on between Morwenna and Jody in terms of either individual therapy or what was going on in these women's groups that Jody was engaging in to isolate wives from husbands, basically. But I think this kind of answers it. So is it okay if I read it?

Adam Paul Steed [02:17:24] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:25] Is that all right? Okay. So this is from Morwenna to you on July.

Adam Paul Steed [02:17:30] Want to insert, too? This is her first one. Later, she sent that to Jody and then Jody changed parts of it to include that I had to pay for therapy, that I couldn't leave therapy with Jody, that I couldn't go to any other therapist because I was violating, or that it was my addiction.

John Dehlin [02:17:47] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:17:47] So. So this. This was the original version.

John Dehlin [02:17:49] Okay. So I'll. I'll read it. So this is Morwenna to you, her husband, under the guidance of Jody Hildebrandt.

Adam Paul Steed [02:17:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:58] As of today, July 15, 2008, I, Morwena, am no longer willing to take upon me the responsibilities that come with being your spouse. I set the following boundaries in order to protect myself from expectations that are not being met in this relationship. I will no longer do these things for you as a wife. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, dishes, picking up your stuff after you, reminding you of any of your responsibilities or appointments, assisting you in your schoolwork, spending family time, sharing information, intimacy, sharing a bed, engaging in any kind of physical touch beyond the social acceptable boundaries of friends. I will consent to share our apartment as living space. I will consider it my responsibility to take care of myself and our two children. I will not consider it my duty to inform you of my daily activities or plans. So no evidence. You don't even get to know what she's doing. And this comes from LifeStar workbook number five, which was the sex addiction program that I guess Jody and the Mormon Church kind of designed together. I'm going to say the first time I heard about Jody Hildebrandt was with someone who came to me. I think I called him Terence in another episode. But he was sleeping on a mattress in his office because his wife under jo Jody's too lynch. He'd kicked him out of the bed. No hugging, no kissing, no talking. He's sleeping on a mattress in his bed. No sexual intimacy with for weeks or months at a time. So of course, being starved of all physical sexual intimacy, he relapses. His accountability buddy in these Jody Hildebrandt connections therapy groups call him out on it. And eventually he's kicked out of his own home again. No offenses other than he occasionally masturbated. And he unfortunately got caught in the crosshairs of Jody Hildebrand connections by the recommendation of his Mormon bishop.

Adam Paul Steed [02:20:09] Yeah, I was the. You know, two things come to my mind. This trip we had in Yellowstone where we brought some friends with us and they had a baby and they were from Brazil and they. They didn't have much money and I offered to use some of my money to help them come because they were exchange students. It was a real big thing. And I was going on this trip and it was really difficult to have my wife let me go. And this lady had a baby that was like a few months old. And I remember I couldn't feed these people because we couldn't find a place that fit the amount of money that my wife made me promise I would spend. It was way more expensive in Yellowstone. And she kept saying I was violating the boundaries of the relationship and that this didn't work. And I remember driving like four hours around Yellowstone trying to find a grocery store that was cheap enough so we could feed this lady while her baby was crying. And finally I got so upset, I said, I can't listen, I have to do this. And my wife was screaming at me. And I went to a grocery store and bought like $100 worth of, or not just whatever it was of food to feed this lady with her newborn baby that was crying. And they were just humiliated. It was so embarrassing. So it was starting to affect our relationship. The three days before, the three days before that, she left. Before my wife left me, the police were called in an argument and in this discussion. So the police were called and I can't remember exactly, I was with. The police were called and my wife said that there was abuse. And this was all in a police report. And the police said, well, what is the abuse? And she Said that I had violated the boundaries of the relationship and it didn't work for the marriage. And they said, well, how did he do that? And she said, and it's not fair, because a woman, and she's like, ready to have a baby in a few days, a few weeks probably isn't the best time for her to think straightly, you know, or. Or right afterwards. I mean, this is like a vulnerable time in someone's life. And she's just looked up and she was just like, he left his backpack on the couch. And that doesn't work for the relationship. And the police couldn't believe that that was the abuse they recalled on the phone. And they just. They were like, morwenna, this is not abuse. And the police called on me the next day by her again, and this time she changed it. And they said, was there abuse? And she said, well, he physically pushed against me. And they said, well, how did they do that? And she said, well, I was standing here in the door right here, and she stands right in the door. And they go, were you blocking him from being able to leave the apartment? And she said, well, yeah. And then they were like, did he hurt you? And she said, no. So that was there the next day. I. I don't know. I mean, I'm sorry. I lost.

John Dehlin [02:23:55] If. If you want, I'll read the next document you asked me to read. I'll give you a chance to kind of. Because I know. I. What I know from having worked with you for a few days is that this is all very re. Traumatizing because we're talking about your marriage, your children, your reputation, and really horrific,

Adam Paul Steed [02:24:15] my mental health beliefs, but also, like hundreds of.

John Dehlin [02:24:18] Of thousands. It ends up being hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and a destruction of your marriage. Alienation from your kids. Just so much horror. So lots of grace to you, lots of gratitude for your willingness to share. Let me read this document that your wife. This exchange between Morwenna, your wife, and Jody, the day after, you know, she. She informs you of this contract.

Adam Paul Steed [02:24:49] Oh, well, I remember my thought, just so that after two days, after two, the police, two days in a row, coming to our apartment in Wymount Terrace with all the little married couples and stuff, super embarrassing, super confusing. I had enough and I said, I'm not going to sleep on the living room floor anymore. I'm asleep in my bed. I paid for the house to pay for the apartment. So I. I went into my bedroom and I slept on my bed. And I said to my wife, if you don't want to sleep next to me? You don't have to. But I'm not going to sleep on the floor anymore. And when I'm reading these documents now, well, you'll get into them, that they say that I attempted to rape my wife by violating the boundaries that night.

John Dehlin [02:25:30] Right? Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:25:31] That's where. That's what they did with it.

John Dehlin [02:25:33] Okay, so this is July 16th, the day after, you know, Morwenna gives you this letter saying she'll no longer have any relationship with you other than a friendly one or tell you anything about her life. She writes to Jody, and this is email. Jody, I wrote up this contract yesterday afternoon after our meeting. It's still a work in progress, so I'm open for any suggestions. Thanks. Signed, Morwenna. Then Jody responds, same day. This is Jody Hildebrandt. This looks good. The more specific you can be, the better. But this looks good as a starting point. I will share this with him this evening if you would like. Let me know. Jody. And then the response from Morwenna is, it would be great if you could share with him. I have told him about it, but he hasn't seen it yet. And I. I don't know whether he will stop by before he meets with you. I have thought about other areas to make the list more specific, but I haven't come up with any yet. I will probably add things to the list as we go. Morwenna. And then Jody responds. Morwenna, I will do that. Call me if things don't go well. Jody. So, I mean, this is. This is absolutely therapist malpractice. The fact that the therapist is, is pushing your vulnerable, pregnant or newly having had a child wife to be cutting you off in every single possible way as a spouse in a legal married relationship and basically intentionally driving a wedge between you using her therapeutic influence and the power differential as a therapist over a client, it's malpractice.

Adam Paul Steed [02:27:25] In the other room, I have the specific contract where Jody helps her get the specific one. And then one of the specific requests is that for me to save my marriage is that I have to. Not that I can't withhold funds from my wife going to Jody and that I can't go to other therapists besides Jody, and that I have to go to Jodi.

John Dehlin [02:27:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what? And also, so not only is Jody ruining your marriage, she's priming your wife to start gathering evidence on you, to start viewing you as a sexual predator and to start gathering evidence that then can be used in an eventual divorce. And legal proceedings. I mean, it's just very clear. She's priming your wife to turn you into a felon, a convict, through false accusations. Yeah, I mean, that's what I see.

Adam Paul Steed [02:28:23] Yeah. Because she uses abstract language to get you to that point. And now she wants very specific stuff at this methodic moment in time.

John Dehlin [02:28:31] Yeah, yeah, we, you know, Maven is kind enough to. To put out a message. You know, these are. These are graphic and disturbing conversations. So we do want to encourage everyone who's viewing or listening to practice self care, to self care for yourself if you need to pause and come back or stop altogether if you want to. Just make sure and monitor who's in the room and act appropriately. Viewer and listener discretion advised. And we just. Again, we're sorry that we're having to talk about such disturbing things, but this is an epidemic within the Mormon people, and Jodian and Connections are just one of the purveyors. This is systemic. So this is not a Jody or Connections problem. This is a Mormon church problem. So we're sorry we have to do this. But anyway, thanks for that reminder.

Adam Paul Steed [02:29:24] Maven Jodi is a professional at manipulating people's subconscious. You know, she psychosexually manipulates people's subconscious by saying stuff that triggers them. Really qualitative, you know, damaging stories that trigger people. And then she comes in with these rescue solutions.

John Dehlin [02:29:51] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:29:52] And so it's one thing about the allegations and all that stuff is that they are all triggers. But when you. You compare them to a regular victim statement where they say an actual person did an actual thing, it's entirely different. It's. It's not the subconscious triggers. It's a real statement of real story. Yeah, but in this here, there's just tons of. Anyway, go. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [02:30:17] No, so. So the next part you asked me to read was from a letter. There's a point in this relationship where you write a letter to your in laws. Will you tell the names of your in laws really quick again?

Adam Paul Steed [02:30:30] Christian Kliweg. He was the area president of the third quorum of the 70. My wife was Morwenna Klyweg. I met her at BYU.

John Dehlin [02:30:39] And so you reach a point where you're so disturbed at what Jody's doing to your marriage that you write a letter, A very sincere, heartfelt letter. And I think the reason why you. You gave this to me to read is that it really captures what you were feeling at the time and your concerns with Jody's approach.

Adam Paul Steed [02:31:00] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:31:01] Are you. Are you okay if I read this? Yes, do you want me to read this?

Adam Paul Steed [02:31:04] It's all traumatizing for me, but I'll be over it in 20 minutes. The traumatic feelings just leave me after a little while. It's just. Like I said, it's just manipulates that part of your brain. But up here, I know the truth, and I know this truth needs to be out. So I want you to read this.

John Dehlin [02:31:19] So I. Yeah, so Adam asked me to read this, so I'll read it. But this is a letter he wrote to his. His. His in laws when things got really desperate. So. Dear Mama and Papa and Adam, please interrupt me. Pause me at any point if there's some explanation or further color you want to give.

Adam Paul Steed [02:31:40] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:31:40] Is that okay?

Adam Paul Steed [02:31:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:41] Or if you want to go take a break, calm down.

Adam Paul Steed [02:31:43] We're fine. I. I realized the nature of this truth is extremely sensitive, but it's a truth that has to be told for the victims out there to be healed.

John Dehlin [02:31:52] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:31:53] Okay. And it'll, you know, it's negative and it'll make people feel upset when they hear it, but I know that the freedom that we can get on the other side of that is why we're doing this.

John Dehlin [02:32:03] Yeah. Okay. Dear Mama and Papa, I'm not telling you this to be vindictive, and it is strictly personal and could hurt people if told. I don't know if you know this, and it is very sensitive. I wouldn't share it with you, but since I might lose my marriage, I feel that this would help you as parents, with your support for Morwenna. Morwenna has had multiple issues with masturbation with herself spanning across the time that we have been married, including once when she was in Holland staying with you guys while I was in America. She also shared with me about her struggles with this problem throughout her childhood and teenage years. That's interesting, because I wonder if Jody really focused on Morwenna's problem or just yours. I shouldn't call it a problem, right? But.

Adam Paul Steed [02:32:52] Well, yeah, I mean, normal human development.

John Dehlin [02:32:57] Exactly. Yeah. She told me of multiple stories of a terrible past that involved doing things with men that she shouldn't have done while none of them ever had sex with her or anything that I know of to that degree. She nevertheless has issues in this department. While dating, my wife exhibited very compulsive thinking about the evil intentions of the men she had dated. So it sounds like Marwaena was a victim herself.

Adam Paul Steed [02:33:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:24] The first day we met, she told me of a man, that if a man commits adultery, it. It is also the Wife's fault. While at byu, Morwenna even threw away. And for those who don't know Mormonism, the implication there is if a wife isn't available enough to her husband to have sex, then if he cheats on her, then it's partly the wife's fault for not being sexually available enough. Is that what you meant by that?

Adam Paul Steed [02:33:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:51] Yeah. While at byu, More. When he even threw away all of her nice makeup, shoes and clothing because she was worried about how it would affect men. More women. And this is. This is purity and modesty culture, where Mormon women are taught that if they dress in any way that could cause a man to think, whoa, that's attractive. That they're causing the man to have sinful thoughts. And then if the man acts out, the woman is an accomplice. There's even a Mormon apostle who once called it walking pornography. If a Mormon woman shows her shoulders or her knees or dresses in any way shows cleavage, you know, a Mormon apostle is on the record of calling that walking pornography. So Morwenna even threw away all of her nice makeup, shoes and clothing because she was worried about how it would affect men more When I had a preemptive fear and lack of trust in men before I ever came along. Now think about this last six, six months. Put yourself in my position. Imagine that you were put in a program where you were with three other people who had all committed a combination of sexual crimes involving exhibitionism, voyeurism and incest. Imagine that the counselor was telling you that you were just as bad as these people and that you no longer had the right to decide for yourself whether you wanted to continue in therapy because you are an addiction and that you have no right to question anything in the professional program. That you must quit thinking for yourself and do what you are told because you are the addict and they are the professionals. Imagine how helpless you would feel. How would you feel if the therapist convinced your spouse that you were the same as the incestuous, the voyeurist and the exhibitionist. How would you feel if the therapist had convinced your spouse to leave if you did not blindly follow the program? A therapist who earns fifteen hundred dollars a month from the family and was aggressively trying to increase the amount of therapy for a problem that did not qualify for the treatment? I've heard it said that when naive physiologists and philosophers find a hammer, suddenly the whole world becomes a nail. Maybe you meant psychologists. There. I believe Jody's program has found a solution to help criminals. But when that program is used the same way on a young couple without criminal history and only with sexual concerns whose problems are shared by many young members of the church. As the church is very well aware of. Jody's radical approach is very damaging and can destroy a marriage. It promotes losing trust with each other. It whoremongers fear and preemptive strikes towards spouses based off of no real evidence. For a counselor to promote separation is a very good tactic where physical or sexual abuse is occurring. For a counselor to superimpose this policy of separation on a couple who are trying to solve normal marriage problems, this can be very destructive to the couple's ability to work things out, especially if the counselor continues to work with Morwenna on a daily basis to further encourage her that separation is the only way we can resolve our problems.

Letter to In-Laws and Escalating Conflict

Adam Paul Steed [02:37:07] I just want to interrupt. That email is in a. Morwenna mailed that email to Jody asking for advice. And I think when Jody read it, she felt so threatened that she started to weaponize her attacks on me. If you look at the timetable on that, before that, she'd just been trying to get me back in and to exploit me. And in those other documents, you see there was a complete weaponization from this point forward.

John Dehlin [02:37:34] Yeah. Like all that legal stuff.

Adam Paul Steed [02:37:36] I could just see Jody reading that as I undressed her cult.

John Dehlin [02:37:40] Do you know if that bathroom bathtub incident would have happened after it all came after this. It all came after this letter. Yeah. I think that's crucial in the timing.

Adam Paul Steed [02:37:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:51] To further. To further encourage no more communication and growing distance between us. And the time period of separation keeps getting bigger and bigger. So you're talking about how Jody's driving a wedge in your marriage. While it is true that I and Morwenna have been going to bishop interviews twice a month for over a year, it is also true that both the stake president and the bishop have felt that we were both. Both worthy of a temple recommend. And. And they have encouraged us to go to the temple. So if there is a Mormon teaching of discernment, your bishop and stake president were allowing you to go to the temple regularly throughout this whole time?

Adam Paul Steed [02:38:28] Yeah. Until. Until right after the protective order hearing. And I ran into my stake president's office.

John Dehlin [02:38:36] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:38:37] Well, go ahead and keep reading. We'll go to that story.

John Dehlin [02:38:39] Who do you trust more? Are radical therapists Therapist or the priesthood leaders? I told my therapist at BYU that I was insecure about being at BYU's program because of my last therapist. Jody said, quote, your addiction is making the choice to go to BYU's. Counselor. Oh, wow. So Jody told you, quote, your addiction is making the choice to go to BYU's counseling. So Jody's mind. If you didn't like Jody's therapeutic approach, your desire to switch to a different therapist, that, by the way, was free because you were paying tuition to byu, that. That was your addiction talking to. Ever choose a therapist that wasn't Jody?

Adam Paul Steed [02:39:16] Yeah. And if you got those documents, I don't know when you want to read them about how Jody called the byu. We'll get there. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:39:23] We'll get there for sure. That's next. But this just really captures what you were feeling at the time.

Adam Paul Steed [02:39:29] Yeah, yeah. In your literal words, I don't change much. I just read that and I hadn't seen that for. Since.

John Dehlin [02:39:35] Yeah. My BYU therapist said that is absolutely. My BYU therapist said that is absolutely absurd. Your addiction would want you to get worse, not better. She also said that if a doctor says that you need to amputate your arm because the stakes are so high, you might want to check with several other doctors before you have the surgery. Meaning Morwenna has only one professional resource. Source. Jody, a highly controversial woman in her practice. A divorced single mother who was severely hurt by her ex husband, according to Jody. According to her ex husband probably has his own story.

Adam Paul Steed [02:40:10] I would rephrase that. Poor guy.

John Dehlin [02:40:12] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:40:13] Oh, God bless the man who married Jody Hildebrandt for at least two years.

John Dehlin [02:40:17] I've been told that she sought him to punish him legally for the next 10 years after they divorced after a year and a half and two children.

Adam Paul Steed [02:40:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:26] Yeah. Meaning more. Let's see. Meaning more when it has only one professional resource. Jody, a highly controversial woman in a practice. A divorced single mother who is severely hurt by her ex husband and doesn't trust a man to tell the truth if the whole world depended on it. A divorced single mom can be a fantastic therapist if she operates ethically. So we don't want to make it sound like therapists can't be good under those circumstances.

Adam Paul Steed [02:40:53] Thank you for adding that. Again. This was me at a different time in my life when I'm still very Mormon in that culture, of course. But that's authentic.

John Dehlin [02:41:02] Yeah. A woman who believes the only way a man can have incentives to change is if he's going to lose everything. This is Jody, a woman who constantly works with exhibitionists, voyeurist, and people who practice incest. I knew none of these things when we started the program. Our bishop who was going to have Jody speak in our Sunday school two weeks ago, because we had asked him to several months back. Because we used to like her so much. Our bishop, because of the large amounts of students with sexual concerns, agreed, but now has canceled her coming. I ended up in Jody's group by mistake. I stayed because the first day Jody said, quote, quote, even if you spend your time not thinking about bad things, the fact that you have to not think about bad things means you are an addict. You mentioned that earlier and she said, quote, even if you have the problem only once a year or less, so you're masturbating once a year or less, the fact that you couldn't not have it means you're an addict. So there's no way working with Jody that you're not an addict.

Adam Paul Steed [02:42:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:09] Yeah. And because every time that I questioned what she taught or looked for further other resources as a professional, she would say that doing so, quote, was my addiction. And since she was the professional, I trusted her, learning about addiction in the program was great. It was when my wife began to follow Jody's instructions for getting me, quote, out of denial that we began to have real problems in our marriage. Jody instructed my wife in methods that were highly destructive towards our relationship health based off of her professional method of treating all clients the same. She encouraged Morwenna to break trust with me through teaching her that I had problem problems which were as severe as the crimes of other group members and I shouldn't be listened to because I was sick. I don't feel safe in Jody's group and I don't feel safe about having my wife there at BYU. My new therapist, Dr. Nielsen, one of the leaders of the department, assured me over and over that I would not have to worry about voyeurist and exhibitionist and incest at my new group in byu, because any such behavior would have the person kicked out of the university immediately. I should add that in the Mormon Church, incest or exhibitionism or voyeurism is not an immediate excommunicable offense, while being legally, legally same sex married in the Mormon Church is an immediate excommunicable offense. I just have to throw that in. She said my group, which finally starts this Thursday evening, would have other students just like myself who were in similar situations of sexual concerns. The therapist, by the way, the BYU Counseling and Psychological Services, or caps, as I understand it to this day, is a highly ethical, high quality place to go to if you're a BYU student where you can feel safe attending. So I'm so glad you eventually want

Adam Paul Steed [02:43:56] to mention I really, really Liked Diane Nielsen, who I went to see when this thing with Jody was going on. I really liked her until I couldn't go to her anymore.

John Dehlin [02:44:06] Yeah, right.

Adam Paul Steed [02:44:08] Well, because Jody gets involved with the ladies. Over. Over Diane.

John Dehlin [02:44:14] Yeah, with. With the honor code department. She said my group, which finally starts this Thursday evening, would have other students just like myself who are in similar situations of sexual concerns. The fact that like endless BYU students are going to therapy over masturbation during this time of their life is in and of itself a month long podcast of episodes about how damaging it is for the Mormon Church to pathologize healthy normative behavior for college students. Because BYU have entire therapy practices and support groups filled up with masturbating college students. It's completely ridiculous when we know that there's a severe anxiety and depression and OCD and eating disorder epidemic and suicidality facing youth and young adults. These people are being tormented over normal behavior, these BYU students. Anyway, the therapist department also recently wrote an article in the BYU newspaper, the Daily Herald that states that over 90% of the men at BYU have some sort of struggle with pornography. 90%. By Jody's standard, 90% of men from BYU are akin to incests, voyeurists and exhibitionists and should be separated from their wives and children. I don't feel safe with Jody's group or her tactics. She scares me. I'm also afraid because I have proof that Jody and Morwenna are making extensive contact. Since Morwenna ran away and since I have not been able to talk with Morena, I don't know what is going on. So by this point, your wife has abandoned you, has deserted you?

Adam Paul Steed [02:45:49] Yeah, she disappeared with our baby. You know, it was so weird. She came up to me and she's like, I love you, you're such a good guy. We're going to work things out. She said that to me and I thought, oh, wow. And I just went to school, was working on my computer and then I noticed nobody was there. And you know, throughout the day and then I just, everyone was. I couldn't get ahold of her. I couldn't find her.

John Dehlin [02:46:10] So this is after your second baby was born or first?

Adam Paul Steed [02:46:12] Yeah, it was three weeks after our second baby was born and my wife with this crazy therapist is gone with our one year old and our three week old baby. And I just like, I filed a police report after a few days because I thought they'd been kidnapped or something. I didn't know why. I couldn't reach her, I couldn't contact her. I was trying to email her. Nothing worked.

John Dehlin [02:46:37] Yeah, I don't know what is going on. All Morwena has done in the last eight days is answered three phone calls. The last that lasted less than a total of seven minutes. Together I kept track and she hung up on all three. And in one of her two emails, she set conditions for me to come back, which demanded that she continue seeing Jody and that I get there too. And that as an addict, I don't have the right to refuse. I showed a copy of Jody's correspondence with Morwenna to four different counselors at BYU who are well versed in the ethics of professional therapy. I have also sent them to my bishop and also to the owner of the LifeStar network that Jodi is a franchise in that Mormon bishops referred to incessantly in all cases, especially with the counselors at byu. I've been told over and over again that I need to file an official complaint at all places. I have been recommended over and over to immediately go to some attorneys for legal help and press civil charges against Jody. Several professionals from the therapy department at BYU have shown me that Jody is violating ethics of the profession on several accounts. My dad, who has two degrees in psychology, has had an in depth conversation with Jody and he could not believe her unethical and non family approach that she was using. Papa, if you'd like to talk to my father, he could tell you what he has learned about it. This is his phone number. I could also sign a form so you could talk with the BYU therapist if you would like. So you're writing to this Mormon area Authority, one of the top 200 top leaders in the Mormon Church. You're offering a chance for him to talk to your dad or to licensed, reputable BYU therapists. Did this area Authority, your ex father in law ever call your dad or any of these ethical therapists?

Adam Paul Steed [02:48:23] He wrote me back and said he'd meet up with me because he took emergency flu to America. He never met up with me. When you look in the documents, Jody had him write some letter that talks about. I mean, it was just advertising for Jody's company.

John Dehlin [02:48:39] Yeah, yeah. And. And I just, I have to also note, you know, that, that you having been a whistleblower against the Mormon Church and against the scout program, you know,

Adam Paul Steed [02:48:55] well, who does, who does Christian Hillam or who does Christian Clyway go to his religious father talk about that is the man who called him to be an area 70 elder helam.

John Dehlin [02:49:06] So Elder Hillam oversees the scouting.

Adam Paul Steed [02:49:08] Elder Hillam was at One point over Europe. And he called. I mean, Christian shared these special experiences of having his calling election made sure and all this stuff. This is with Elder Helam and Elder Helam is the person who Christopher Christian talks to to figure anything out, anything at all. And so he came over here. He's not going to come visit me. He's visiting Elder Hillam and remind us

John Dehlin [02:49:36] Hillam's connection to the Boy Scouts for those who joined late.

Adam Paul Steed [02:49:39] So I didn't know this the whole time I was a whistleblower for Scouting. And then I go through this terrible situation where this just. Elder Hillam's family is trying to stop us from getting married. Then he tries to. To stop in the temple in Idaho Falls. Did I tell that story yet? So my wife's ex wife, she's in Haifa. We're so excited. She calls home to announce we're getting married and her parents just lombard her with that. The Helams are at their house right now and that they've talked about how terrible of a person I am. And they're so glad that she's not going to marry me. And she just calls me in tears, not knowing what to do. She never told them we were engaged. We ended up getting married in spite of this at the temple in Idaho Falls. We went to get married. And now Morwenna's family traveled all across the world. I liked a lot of people in her family. All this money and time, all my family and everybody knew me was there. We're having this temple wedding and elder Groberg is 45 minutes late to the wedding. We don't know what's going on. Later, when all this stuff goes down, this woman comes to my dad, who was the secretary for Elder Groberg, and she said, this has been on my conscious, I just have to tell you. There was just this infamous yelling in the temple where Elder Groberg had Elder Helam on the phone and everybody could hear it. And Elder Helam was saying, you cannot let this marriage happen. That man is unworthy. He's like, what do I do? And he's like, just end it and make everybody go home. And Elder Groberg defended and said, look, this is, you know, this is my. Oh, they talked about the Scouting thing. He said, he's the kid at scouting. He did this, he did this, he did this. And Elder Groberg, Elder Groberg said, and just this point of frustration said, this is my temple, my jurisdiction or whatever. I felt that these people could be married and I'm marrying him. And then he hung up the phone on Elder Hillam. That's how we got married. Elder Hillam is with Christian Kliweg when they come here. Absolutely. I've seen emails where they were together

John Dehlin [02:51:51] and remind us what Hillam's involvement was in Idaho with the Boy Scouts.

Adam Paul Steed [02:51:54] Just to remind people, I just want to say one more thing is Elder Hillam was in the courtroom when they did this bizarre bathtub protective order against me. He was sitting there, I think Commissioner Patton announced that he was there announcing a high up church leader was there. And he was there through all this stuff. And then just moving forward in the story after I had tried for years to get allowed to be back into BYU after they threw me out and all this stuff and how anyone I dated it would end as soon as they went to a bishop through the church. Well, suddenly all that quits we moving forward some more. We find out Elder Helam died a few months before all that quit moving forward some more. My mom called me at 3am in the morning and said I can't believe this. Wake up, wake up, you have to hear this. I was looking at Elder Hillam's obituary and in the obituary because I couldn't see this anywhere online. This former president of the first quorum of the 70 in his obituary said he was the president of Grand Teton Scout Council, the same place where I had turned in all the serial pedophiles as a whistleblower.

John Dehlin [02:53:08] So the, you know, I've heard about victim blaming and victim shaming and retribution, but the fact that the man that oversaw the Boy Scout Council and camp that you were a whistleblower at continues through ecclesiastical means to follow you behind the scenes and haunt you and harass you and malign you and defame you every step along the way.

Adam Paul Steed [02:53:34] I have a 500 pages honor code file in my name that I subpoenaed from Brigham Young University where those people worked in every way to just to stop anyone from going with me with my kids because I had to have someone 21 years old or older. They took one girl that helped me. They called her in, they asked her all about sexual child abuse that happened to her as a kid. They must have only known that maybe through church files or something she got interrogated about all of this stuff. Then she was accused of having an adulterous affair with me and put on probation at BYU and later this honor code office in their records when they're talking to my ex wife Morwenna, they have to educate her because they had her clarify about adultery. And they said, you know, that's when people have sex. And she said, well, then it was just spiritually or it was emotionally. And they said, well, you know, in other words, after they found out that we didn't have an adulterous affair from the person who made the allegation, they never contacted that poor girl or her family to fix what they had done. The honor code office took Seth Motahina Mena Mazad, one of my other best friends. He had made a testimony, a witness statement about a time where he saw my ex wife Morwenna throw a seashell that was about this big, the size of a cinder block at me in our apartment. He was just walking over and I was holding our baby, our tiny baby. And I turned and it just barely missed me and it broke on the wall. It was a huge conch shell. And he'd written a statement about that. And immediately after he wrote that statement for this case, the honor code office called him in and accused him of being a sexual addict. And there was a picture of him. He was from Iran. His dad was the diplomat of the UN for Iran. And there was a picture of him kissing his cousin on the fridge. It was a traditional picture. And they accused him of being homosexual. And he was also a cook. He grew up in Austria and he cooked with wine. And they accused him of hiding an alcoholic problem and said that if he stayed, got near me, they would kick him out of the university. There was a girl named Deveney Brown. The first girl was, well, I won't tell her name because I don't want to out that she was a victim of abuse. But the next girl, Devony Brown, in the honor code office, they talk about how they're going to get her next, but then they're like, wait, scratch that. We can't put her, get her in trouble. This nice returned missionary that grew up in school with me, they're like, she's already graduated, so don't go after her. There were five different people that they went after in crazy ways. I was at BYU and the police came. The BYU police man came and put me in a room, it was. And he sat me down and he asked me in depth about the child abuse that happened to me as a kid for like two hours, two or three hours we were in there. And then after that he asked me if I had child abuse or child pornography on my computer. And I told him absolutely not. And then he left. And I just remember walking out of there wondering what the just happened.

John Dehlin [02:56:59] That was BYU Police, right?

Adam Paul Steed [02:57:00] Yeah. Yeah. What just happened to me? Yeah, Like, I felt so filthy and so gross after that. I mean, you know, and, yeah, it just.

John Dehlin [02:57:18] Adam, I wonder if it's okay. And this is highly traumatizing stuff, and I, I want to also give you time to kind of breathe and regroup, you know? So, again, thank you so much for what you're willing to share. Thanks to everyone who's viewing and listening. You're getting a lot of support from people who are horrified, but also just endless comments about your courage and your resilience that you've survived, let alone that you're here today to tell your story. So I want you to know the love is definitely coming in from our viewers and listeners. We've got 10,600 live stream people viewing and listening. Thanks to everyone who's showing the love to Adam. Adam, you may want to go back and see the comments later because you'll feel, I think you'll feel a lot of love and support for the difficult work that you're doing right now.

Adam Paul Steed [02:58:13] Yeah. Tell those people thank you. I needed to know that I wasn't alone in this a long time ago. Like, I thought I was crazy by the time. I mean, after 100 layers on top of you, you know, and another crazy

John Dehlin [02:58:31] story really quick, while we're at this apex of the interview. And there's more. I did this with Jesse, and I want to do this with you. Do you have a Venmo account or a PayPal account or some way that people can.

Adam Paul Steed [02:58:45] Oh, man.

John Dehlin [02:58:45] Show you financial support?

Adam Paul Steed [02:58:48] I won't take a penny. I won't take a penny. I've said it to Jesse. She needs it.

John Dehlin [02:58:55] They need it. Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [02:58:56] Yeah. When it's on this level, then how

John Dehlin [02:58:59] can people email you or express their love or gratitude?

Adam Paul Steed [02:59:02] I said it to my parents. My parents. My dad lost his retirement. They don't have any retirement. He was a CES leader for the Mormon Church, and he lost his retirement for speaking up, up on this issue to protect me. You know, send it to them. But I don't know. I just still feel so much guilt and shame. I, I.

John Dehlin [02:59:23] What's. Is there a way you want people. Is there where people can contact you if they want to support your parents?

Adam Paul Steed [02:59:27] I'll put it Venmo. But that money that I put will be evenly distributed with every victim that comes forward. That's it. I won't take it.

John Dehlin [02:59:38] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [02:59:39] I'm not gonna do it. I just.

John Dehlin [02:59:40] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [02:59:41] I just. Okay. I just have a rule. I have A rule for myself that when you tell the truth about something that's on such level that it has such a powerful effect on everybody's lives that I just, I just won't take. I used to work in the, to help represent the victims in the Syrian war that were being framed as isis. And they'd always ask me, why are you helping us? Why are you helping us? And I would report their stories to the world press. When they're seeing their families died and killed, they don't want to give their story to somebody that's making money. That might be part of a political reason, that level of trust. I didn't dare take any of the money, so I just worked for free.

John Dehlin [03:00:27] Is there an email people could reach you at if they want to support your parents or express gratitude to you?

Adam Paul Steed [03:00:34] Yeah. Adam Paul0405gmail.com Somebody write that down.

John Dehlin [03:00:43] Say it one more time and then I'm going to share it on the screen. Adam Paul.

Adam Paul Steed [03:00:48] Adam Paul0405mail.com okay, and I'm just going

John Dehlin [03:00:55] to ask viewers and listeners, please reach out to Adam and express your gratitude in love. If you want to find a way to support his parents who have suffered greatly, maybe you can reach out to Adam and then he can be a, you know, be an intermediary as well. But, but thank you for your poise and generosity, Adam. All right, really, if we can shift gears a tiny bit, just back to the narrative of the story. So your, your wife is estranged from you. Jody's driven that wedge. You think you're going to BYU to get help, to get support. You finally have some ethical therapists. You feel like BYU is, you know, you've escaped Jody's clutches by fighting an ethical therapist. How does, how does Jody end up affecting your, your status as a student at byu? Can you talk about how she even comes into play as far as you know? And I've got several documents I can read.

Adam Paul Steed [03:02:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:02:04] That are evidence. But like, how does Jody follow you into your BYU status and end up getting you kicked out of byu, which ends up causing her to lose her license, by the way.

Adam Paul Steed [03:02:14] I need to make one more statement. This is more. Before we move into that block, there's a real critical thing on this last one. One of the big arguments with my ex wife right before she left, she kept talking about boundaries and addictions and I kept trying to get her out of this abstract language to say a concrete thing that I had done. And finally she had no way of explaining any real concrete things. And finally she said, well, Jody's been telling me this whole time that you've been confessing in LifeStar in your group to the guise of all these sexual things that you've been doing. And I think my ex wife was telling me the truth when she said that. And it shocked me because I wasn't doing these things and I was reporting that I wasn't acting out in this group. And I went to Jody and I was just like. I was just like, Jodi, did you. You know, I went to a one on one session, I sat there and I went with her and Jody, Jody said that. I said, did you tell my wife that? I was telling people that I was doing all these things and it was still an abstract language. It was acting out. They didn't say how sexually acting out. And she said, no, I didn't say that because she'd been telling me, good job, good job, you're doing great. And I said, jody, did you tell my wife this? And I just heard from her that she told me that Jody did. And Jody said, no, I didn't. I confronted her like five, six times in a row. And finally she goes, well, I may have said that. Well, you were, weren't you? I said no. And then I just sat back. Just unbelievable that my wife got angrier and angrier without being able to communicate. She couldn't even talk to me while Jody's lying to her. Making a scenario where that trust that I had built, that even if I had made a mistake with masturbation and pornography according to the Mormon Church and told my wife, I knew I was always honest about it. And Jody removed that honesty connection that we had by deceiving one group, the guys and the group, like separating us, separating our language, communication, everything. And then teaching my wife a false narrative that I was. That made me look like a complete liar that couldn't be trusted. So yes, that happened. And I also just want to say that. Are we going to talk about the protective order here or later?

John Dehlin [03:04:58] Yeah, but I should we talk about. Because that comes after BYU honor code office gets involved.

Adam Paul Steed [03:05:03] Right?

John Dehlin [03:05:03] Yeah, I just kind of want to follow the chronology.

Adam Paul Steed [03:05:05] So go back to that, that part now. I just needed to get that piece in because a lot of the victims had the same thing happen to them.

John Dehlin [03:05:11] Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you're. You're now not going to Jody estranged from your wife, and you're visiting a therapist at byu. How does Jody in the honor code office.

Adam Paul Steed [03:05:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:05:22] Get involved with you?

Adam Paul Steed [03:05:24] So I didn't know while I was Going through all this hell. What was going on? It was later when we subpoenaed the Honor Code Office records. I had no idea how involved Jody Hildebrand was.

John Dehlin [03:05:36] Try and tell us what's going on behind the scenes.

Adam Paul Steed [03:05:39] So. Yeah. So can you read from the document? Later, we subpoenaed the BYU Counseling records, and it's kind of the smaller, more block print on those that.

John Dehlin [03:05:51] Okay, yeah. So here's the first document. This is Morwenna to you. And I don't know. This is chronologically in order, but I don't know if this is the one you want me to read. But this is Morwenna to you.

Adam Paul Steed [03:06:04] I was looking.

John Dehlin [03:06:05] September 9, 2008, I was looking for the.

Adam Paul Steed [03:06:09] I had three documents at the BYU Honor Code Office records.

John Dehlin [03:06:13] Which one did you want me to read?

Adam Paul Steed [03:06:14] And then I. So we subpoenaed the BYU Honor Code Office records to learn what BYU Honor Code Office was doing.

John Dehlin [03:06:20] Oh, you want me to read the phone witness statement now?

Adam Paul Steed [03:06:22] But we also subpoenaed BYU Counseling so that we could look at those records. And it popped up in the BYU Counseling records where they do real notes about, you know, when they interview me. But right near the end, the BYU Counseling department, before they said that I couldn't come back to them, they canceled my support. There's a note in there where they describe a phone call with Jody Hildebrandt and Jody. And if you can just read what Jody Hildebrandt says about me.

John Dehlin [03:06:54] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [03:06:55] It's near the bottom, the bottom paragraph, like, halfway through. Near the bottom of the page?

John Dehlin [03:06:59] Yeah. Is it okay if I read a tiny bit more than that?

Adam Paul Steed [03:07:02] Yeah. Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [03:07:02] Okay. So this is a phone witness statement dated 3-11-09. And it's entitled Jody Hildebrandt. So this is someone at BYU reporting what Jody told BYU about you. And it's signed by Edward Moran. Does that sound right?

Adam Paul Steed [03:07:21] Oh, here.

John Dehlin [03:07:22] Can you see me, the Honor Code Office representative? So this is.

Adam Paul Steed [03:07:27] That's one set. Now there's another one. That's just one pit. Yeah, that one right there. Now look at the bottom of that paragraph. Halfway through. Where. Where is.

John Dehlin [03:07:34] Okay, okay. Sorry. We've got a lot of documents we're trying to share. Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [03:07:38] Where it says Jody on the bottom paragraph, halfway through. These are the things she was saying that made it so that BYU would stop me from getting counseling at BYU Counseling.

John Dehlin [03:07:46] Oh, got it. Got it. Okay, I may read a tiny bit more, but here goes. This is. I think it's December 2, 2008. And this is Brigham Young University Counseling and Career center list of clinical visits for Adam Paul Steed.

Adam Paul Steed [03:08:10] And I want you to know that there's a whole file of them talking about each one of our visits where I was talking about Jody and everything and the trauma and the stress. But then there's this right at the end of the file where they record in their writings the phone call where Jody Hildebrandt contacts them to talk about me. So Jody Hildebrandt is contacting my therapist department at byu, where I'm going to therapy instead of her, and she's sabotaging it so I can no longer go to therapy there.

John Dehlin [03:08:42] Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to read maybe a little bit more. But it basically says Adam and his wife Morwen and their two children were there with Adam's brother. The police officer described how there was yelling and wanted us to intervene to help them calm down. I took Adam into my office with his 18 month old daughter and Morwenna went in Deborah McClendon's office with their infant. Adam said, I'll pause.

Adam Paul Steed [03:09:06] I hadn't seen my children for like, since their mom disappeared. And I randomly saw them at byu. My daughter came running up and hugging me and my ex started screaming, somebody, that man's taking my child. And it made a scene. And then we got put into office buildings at byu. They said they wouldn't take my child from me or our children from us. And then they were. These are their notes about it. And okay, suddenly they have notes about Jody Hildebrandt being in there telling them who I am.

John Dehlin [03:09:35] Right. So Adam said that it was a miracle that he ran into his family whom he hadn't seen for 14 days. He felt hope that he would now be able to talk with Morwenna and help her come to her senses. He felt that a therapist had brainwashed her into splitting up the marriage. Deborah and myself were on phone contact with one another to get a sense of where the spouse was. Morena did not want to meet with Adam when he requested to meet with her alone. He then wanted to meet with her and the therapist. She refused. He then made a request to talk with her on the phone. Morena said she was not interested in talking about resolving the marriage because she'd made up her mind it was over. She also informed us that a temporary restraining order was being delivered by a police officer. Adam started spiraling down and became quite upset. I had Deborah come and get his daughter to take to her mother. So now Jody's encouraging Morwenna to file a Restraining order against you.

Protective Orders and BYU Honor Code Involvement

Adam Paul Steed [03:10:31] I was sitting there with my baby, who's hugging me and crying. She hasn't seen me. And next thing I know, I got served a protective order. And I'll never forget her screaming, yelling, daddy, no. Oh, Daddy, no. Just screaming as this lady, I don't know, pulled her out of my hands. And then they hand me this restraining order against me.

John Dehlin [03:10:48] Yeah. When the police officer arrived, Adam had calmed down and seemed to feel some resolve to, quote, have his day in court, which was scheduled for October 2. The police officer explained the restraining order to Adam that he was to have no contact with his wife until the court date on October 2, 2008. And then. This is Deborah McClendon's notes from February. September 12, 2008. More. Wena reported her husband, Adam, was delusional, controlling and had violent tendencies. She reported a couple of incidents that she reported in her restraining order, though none of these were directly abusive to her person. Yet she reported a very scary night when he stalked her around the apartment and she fell. He might rape her.

Adam Paul Steed [03:11:34] Yeah, she felt that I might. That's it. And if you look at later, when Jody's giving Morwenna letters to write in the letters to solicit more women into the program, now I'm the child rapist and I'm the person that raped her and she's the victim of rape. And they're in the letters. They've evolved.

John Dehlin [03:11:50] And again, it's like feelings are truth.

Adam Paul Steed [03:11:53] Yeah. Yeah. We're responsible for our actions, not someone else's feelings.

John Dehlin [03:11:57] And by the way, rape is real and assault is real and the sexual assault is real. And women face disproportionately egregious levels of assault and rape. So this is not to say don't believe it's victims.

Adam Paul Steed [03:12:11] Yeah, it's true. It's hiding behind the triggers that these people got away with murder.

John Dehlin [03:12:17] Yeah. So continuing, Morwenna was also worried that her husband liked to take baths with. With their daughter. And one time she went in to find him with the partial erection. Now, you've already told that story. Yeah, that was a. That by your report, that was entrapment. That was a setup that.

Adam Paul Steed [03:12:35] More.

John Dehlin [03:12:35] When I had told you to bathe, your kid came in with lingerie, immediately

Adam Paul Steed [03:12:39] got the baby out of the tub.

John Dehlin [03:12:41] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [03:12:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:12:43] More when it was concerned. So thereafter, when he wanted to take baths with her, Morwenna ultimately always sat in the bathroom with them. She also reported that Adam had threatened her and her therapist threatened her.

Adam Paul Steed [03:12:58] It's all abstract language in a Criminal case. You're like, what did he say?

John Dehlin [03:13:04] Did you threaten Jody?

Adam Paul Steed [03:13:06] No.

John Dehlin [03:13:06] I mean, I'm sure you. You had every right to be very upset at Jody.

Adam Paul Steed [03:13:09] No, no, no, I, you know, last time I saw Jody was at the custody case, like third, you know, all those years back. I'm reading now that she has a safe room in her house in St. George to protect her from me, that I'm the stalker that she has. Like, when she went to Doppel, she said that, you know, she interrupted the hearings twice saying there was this dangerous stalker after her trying to create an argument that there's a reason why she violated all these things was because her life was in danger. But she never made a police report. She says 19 times this stalker came. No police report. I'm only guessing she's talking about me. And here's this lady confronting men and coaching who knows countless women through criminal hearings. And she's a therapist that specializes. This. She's acting naive to making a police report. So, yeah, that's the thing I'm trying to explain the psycho, violent manipulation, which is like psychosexual manipulation is where you use words like, like, I'm scared, I'm a mom, I'm with the baby, I'm this, I'm that and that. And you get, you know, he didn't know boundaries. This is unsafe. You say a whole story without actually saying a real testimony of something someone actually did and happened, and you get the same results in the court, the same results that you wanted without using the court or its due process.

John Dehlin [03:14:30] Yeah, yeah. Morwenna was able to contact her lawyer to find out the status of the restraining order based on the current crisis at byu, which found them with the BYU police and in our therapy offices. Her lawyer went to the courthouse to try to get it signed. He was successful. Anybody can get a restraining order because a judge not is not going to at least a temporary restraining order because a judge doesn't want to, you know, be blamed for any violent act that happens. That's real. Domestic violence is real. It's significant, but it's. Anyone can get a restraining order with no real evidence.

Adam Paul Steed [03:15:10] Yeah. Yeah. And it was. And the weird thing, it was like so long until the court. I couldn't see my kids for like another like month until this hearing or something like that. It took forever to have the first hearing. And in it, Elder Helam and Jodi Hildebrandt were sitting in there together with my ex wife's family.

John Dehlin [03:15:26] So basically, Jody's getting Morwenna to weaponize the criminal justice system, you know, against you as a. As a loving dad.

Adam Paul Steed [03:15:33] Yeah. In fact, in the Honor Code Office ones, which we'll also read. So this is one set. We'll read the others. You'll see how she even. Well, go ahead.

John Dehlin [03:15:43] We'll get there. Okay. As we waited for him to arrive with police to serve Adam the restraining order, she was able to get a hold of her therapist. A therapist she and Adam had seen together for about six months. She asked me to talk with her to hear a more objective report. Jody Hildebrandt from the LifeStar program in Salt Lake. Jody confirmed what Morwenna had reported, indicating that Adam had been manic for several weeks. And that all got worse as Morwenna sought to assert herself in the relationship. So, you know, that's putting it very mildly. Jody also strongly asserted that she feared the daughter was not safe with Adam and was being abused. She reports Adam being psychologically unstable. She also indicated that Adam had a delusional fixation on her as a therapist, being the Antichrist. So Jody is telling BYU that you felt Jody was the Antichrist?

Adam Paul Steed [03:16:53] Yeah. Sounds like a good movie line.

John Dehlin [03:17:00] What else did you want to say about that report?

Honor Code Office Weaponized Against Adam

Adam Paul Steed [03:17:03] Well, let's move to the Honor Code Office report. So when. When Jody and Morwenna and I assume Elder Helam weaponized the Honor Code Office, I don't think the Honor Code Office guys ever knew that I would subpoena their records. And in some ways, Ed Morin was a moron because he sat there and talked openly about everything they were doing. So these files are incredibly incriminating. But I went through the 500 page file and what I gave you in your hand right there is. There's a couple pages there where Ed Morin talks about his communication with Jody Hildebrandt. And then he writes down what she says to him in those files. And those are all preserved. They're right there in your hand. And one thing that's interesting about those files, and we'll get into them, in fact, let's read them first and then we can talk about them.

John Dehlin [03:18:08] Okay. So which thing do you want me to read? I want to make sure we read.

Adam Paul Steed [03:18:14] It's about two or three pages of Ed Morin's notes about Jody Hildebrandt, and he's. Ed Morin's in the Honor Code Office.

John Dehlin [03:18:22] Okay. It's this three page document.

Adam Paul Steed [03:18:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:25] Okay. You want me to read it?

Adam Paul Steed [03:18:26] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:18:26] Okay, so. So this is Edward Moran, signed March 13, 2009.

Adam Paul Steed [03:18:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:35] On March 11, 2009. Jody Hildebrandt returned the phone call and was interviewed via phone by Edward L. Morin. M R I N Jody's number is blank. Jody was advised that Morwenna had signed a waiver allowing BYU and Jody to exchange confidential information. Jody was aware that Adam had not signed a waiver. Jody noted that she decided to call the honor code office back once morewenna was in her office so that Morwenna could hear everything that was said between Jody and byu. Jody provided the following information. The text in bold reflects the information provided by Morwenna during the interview with Jody. So Jody is literally calling BYU trying to get you in trouble, trying to get you expelled, correct?

Adam Paul Steed [03:19:24] Yeah. She read. She. You don't. You don't realize this, but like it's the simple people that scare extremists. And you know, since you read that letter I sent to my father in law and she read it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:41] Yeah. All right. Jody advised that she met Morwenna about this time last year. When Morwenna first came in, she explained that she wanted some help with their marriage relationship. At first, the story was the common theme of a wife struggling to understand her husband's problem with masturbation and porn. However, Jody quickly became alarmed that because of this disconnect that Morwenna would describe, Morwenna had been convinced that Adam by Adam, that he was not doing anything wrong. That is just the way men are more. Wena had come to believe that it was normal and acceptable for men to view pornography and masturbate. As Jody progressed in counseling with Morwenna, Morwenna began to awaken to what was acceptable behavior and how confused she had been and how off track Adam was. Adam had been masterful in keeping Moena in a state of confusion. Jody stated should say distortion. Jody stated that there were several occasions when Morwenna had said. So that is really messed up.

Adam Paul Steed [03:20:42] Question mark.

John Dehlin [03:20:43] Question mark. So that is really messed up.

Adam Paul Steed [03:20:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:20:46] Jody explained that Morwenna felt too threatened to comprehend or connect with the seriousness of some situations. One example is Adam bathing with their infant daughter. Another example was when Adam held their infant daughter out over the third floor balcony and laughed. Do you have. Do you have something to say about that? That was a weird accusation.

Adam Paul Steed [03:21:06] Yeah, yeah. My buddy Seth on the balcony next to us. I have my baby. We had read in the news about Michael Jackson and I just looked at him. I was like, just like that. Joking. Balcony is way up here. Never hold my baby in a million years over the balcony. Okay.

John Dehlin [03:21:23] So that was a total false.

Adam Paul Steed [03:21:25] Allegation it was just.

John Dehlin [03:21:26] And the context was.

Adam Paul Steed [03:21:28] Was the recent Michael Jackson when the bishop who. Yeah. It had. I would never, ever, ever. You're standing on a balcony with the baby and that's all over the news.

John Dehlin [03:21:38] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [03:21:39] Or something. And you're just. But absolutely. 100 wouldn't hold my baby.

John Dehlin [03:21:43] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [03:21:43] Near.

John Dehlin [03:21:44] So that never happened by. Your report explained that one day Adam took their 10 month old daughter and held her out over the balcony floor. Adam and his friend Syed, who was also present, just laughed about it. Adam thought it was a funny joke. Morwena was startled by it and did not know what to say. Jessica Whitaker, a neighbor, witnessed it. Jessica confronted Adam and told him she was going to report him to dcfs. Jessica was very upset and let Adam know about it.

Adam Paul Steed [03:22:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:22:10] Morwenna added that Syed is Adam's best friend and also has a porn problem. He has a serious sexual addiction, which means, you know, at minimum, he thinks about women once a year. According to Jody, Saad does drink alcohol. And she has also seen pictures of Syed French kissing a man. Syed is also a BYU student. Pictures of Syed French kissing a man as a BYU student?

Adam Paul Steed [03:22:37] Yeah. Syed was from Iran. His dad was a diplomat for the un and he has a big picture in traditional clothes kissing his cousin. It's not French kissing. It's just traditional in Iran.

John Dehlin [03:22:48] So a culturally appropriate expressive of friendship.

Adam Paul Steed [03:22:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:22:53] Jody's pathologizing as sexual perversion or whatever.

Adam Paul Steed [03:22:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:22:57] Yeah. And of course he drinks alcohol.

Adam Paul Steed [03:23:01] Cooking wine, you know, he. He didn't drink alcohol. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:23:06] Cyan's wife is Sarah. Adam has told Morwenna that he had an emotional relationship with Sarah. It was if he. It was if he felt more connected to Sarah than he did with Morwenna. Adam has taken Sarah shopping before. Morwenna will provide last name and phone number of Syed and his wife. So they're alleging you had an inappropriate relationship with Sarah?

Adam Paul Steed [03:23:30] Yeah. There was a time when we were married where my wife always said I was a blah blah guy and nobody wanted to listen to me. And I had a creative writing project where I wrote a fiction story and Sarah read it and she was like, that's amazing. And she gave me all this validation, just talking as a casual conversation. And I just felt like, wow, My wife never validates me like that. So I told her, I said, hey, look, I just felt this real strong feeling when somebody really cared about my stuff. Let's just not invite them over for a while. I don't want to have a feeling that's not for my marriage. For my wife. And she was totally cool with it and laughed and said she had a crush on another guy in our ward. And we just handle things and you know, that's what we did. Because I was 100% bent on being totally faithful in my marriage that even one filling I told my wife right away and we just laughed about it and make it so it wouldn't become a problem.

John Dehlin [03:24:20] So did you have an inappropriate relationship with Sarah?

Adam Paul Steed [03:24:22] 100%. No.

John Dehlin [03:24:23] Okay. But Jody's throw, by the way, throwing Syed and Sarah under the bus while she's who are also BYU students.

Adam Paul Steed [03:24:33] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:24:34] Okay. Jody stated that as More when his understanding grew, the more threatened Adam felt. As Adam felt increasingly threatened by more when his increased understanding, the threat and conflict between Adam and Morwenna increased. Jody explained that Morwenna would never be able to be healthy being married to Adam because it would threaten Adam, as he had already demonstrated his unwillingness to change. So Jody's reporting this to the BYU Honor Code office, correct?

Adam Paul Steed [03:25:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:25:01] Jody stated that she has seen more when to confront Adam on some issues, when she would confront him, or when it was reasonable and controlled. However, Adam's response was over the top and alarming. This was a confirmation that Adam tried to control his wife by his own extreme behavior. These are the buzzwords you're talking about, right?

Adam Paul Steed [03:25:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:25:19] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [03:25:19] A lot of descriptive words. Narcissist, over the top, alarming, scared, frightened, worried, you know, angry. And a lot of abstract words like violations, boundaries.

John Dehlin [03:25:36] Anyway, Jody stated that as Adam began to see that separation between him might be forthcoming, Adam's behavior directed at Jody began to alarm Jody. There was one incident when Jody and Adam were in Jody's office where Jody felt physically threatened by Adam. Did you physically threaten Jody in her office, Adam?

Adam Paul Steed [03:25:55] Not in a million years. And actually, I think that there was probably honesty to that, now that I think about it, looking back, that when she heard somebody find out that they had discovered that she'd been lying to both the wife and the husband, she probably felt an incredible emotional response that somebody had caught her in her lie. Now, I think she's referring to the time that I confronted her until she finally she agreed to it. Because I only met in her office like two or three times and she lied.

John Dehlin [03:26:22] And you caught her in a lie?

Adam Paul Steed [03:26:23] Yeah. When I that what we talked about earlier, where finally she said, well, you weren't acting out. Well, maybe I made a mistake. She's sitting across at her desk. I'm there. I would have never known there had been any kind of Physical, like, even, like, since there was another one.

John Dehlin [03:26:42] She falsely accused you of something you never reported to her, probably confusing you with another client.

Adam Paul Steed [03:26:47] I've been civil my whole life in discussions with people. And,

John Dehlin [03:26:52] yeah, there's.

Adam Paul Steed [03:26:53] There's. There's one incident where I met with Jodi just right before that, too, where I was telling her how heartbroken I was with what's happening with the kids in Morwenna. And I remember being in agonizing pain, like, feeling it, like, intensely, like. And I remember looking over at Jody and she was smiling and her cheeks were, like, blushing, and she just looked this, like, filling. And I remember that. And I remember confronting her about. Verbally confronting her about the. But never in my life would I ever in a million years turn to. I don't even name call. I try to point out the action because I think name calling brands, people, and it's not productive.

John Dehlin [03:27:58] During the meeting, she positioned herself. This is Jody by the door. So that she could escape if she had to. That was a first for Jody. She had never felt physically threatened by a client in her office before. Shortly after that event, Morwenna called and was very frightened. So you have intimidated Jody Hildebrandt, experienced therapist, more than any other clients she's ever had in her history, according to this report. Yeah, but you did. You didn't physically intimidate or threaten her. Or did you?

Adam Paul Steed [03:28:30] Like I said, if you're a sociopath and you're hiding a huge lie and someone confronts you on it, you might think they're the scariest person there is.

John Dehlin [03:28:37] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [03:28:38] You know, it's like I look back and I think that way now that I see what you know, now that I know who Jody is. But, yeah, asking me why I walked out of the meeting. No, not in any way, shape or form. I grew up in a family where my dad said that we had four brothers and sometimes we'd fight, and then we had two sisters afterwards. And my dad said if we ever got in a fight with a sister, if we ever hit our sister, we would be grounded forever. And, you know, we used to stand around the dinner table when the women, my mom and my sisters would come in and we would have to stay standed up till all the women in our house were seated. And we were always taught to get the door every time. That's where I come from. And there's no place for violence or scaring or intimidation whatsoever. That's me.

John Dehlin [03:29:32] However, the threat of someone physically threatening you is taken very seriously by both BYU and by police departments. Right.

Adam Paul Steed [03:29:39] I just kind of see this thing. Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Destroying my life. But I kind of just see this thing. When Jody's threatened that she attacks people, you know, when she's abusing someone, she attacks people of abusing. It's just this form of manipulation that is very predictable.

John Dehlin [03:29:59] Yeah. Morwena called. Adam Morena called because Adam had threatened he was going to rape her. What?

Adam Paul Steed [03:30:06] Yeah, that story's evolved, you know. Now I'm now paying for your apartment and deciding that you didn't want to be like this other guy and sleep on the living room floor without a bed.

John Dehlin [03:30:22] This was you saying, I'm going to sleep in my own bed.

Adam Paul Steed [03:30:25] You got to understand, this is Jody saying things to incriminate me, then me saying this is maybe what she meant. As I take my side of the story.

John Dehlin [03:30:37] Right.

Adam Paul Steed [03:30:37] How these things connect and what her motives were, I don't understand everything. But you know that last night, which is what I believe they're talking about, when I forced myself into my bedroom to sleep on my bed, that's the end of the story. And trust me, in the height of the conflict, the last thing anyone in their right mind would be thinking about is having a sexual experience.

John Dehlin [03:31:05] Yeah. When you're traumatized, you're basically saying I

Adam Paul Steed [03:31:08] just was tired of being treated like a. Like a non human being.

John Dehlin [03:31:11] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [03:31:12] Forced to sleep on the kid the floor because of my sexual addictions, forced to go to classes with sexual predators and forced to them trying to make. Make me a sexual predator.

John Dehlin [03:31:23] Yeah, you should say sexual predator in air quotes because it's just so outrageous in air quotes. Yeah, because it's just such outrageous that you were labeled that way. Jody was concerned for Morwenna's safety and told Morwenna it was time for her to leave Adam. So that's unethical. Jody is telling a client that they need to leave their spouse. Like that's outrageous. I mean, get the police involved if there's assault. Allow a client to arrive at that decision. But to be telling a client what they need to do, that's unethical in my view. She explained to Morwenna the steps she should take to leave Adam. Over the next three hours, Morwenna took the steps suggested by Jody. First, she packed a bag and then took it out to the car. After a while, she did other things to prepare the children and herself to leave. While this was going on, Adam was writing a 10 page letter to Morwena's parents. We read some of that previously. Adam had no idea Morwenna was preparing to leave him. Jody stated that from the time of Moena's first call until more WENA finally called to say that she had left and taken the children was about three hours. During that time, Jody was very afraid for Morwenna. Jody noted that she would not be surprised at anything Adam might do to Morwenna to stop her from leaving. He is the most threatening, scary person Jody has dealt with as a therapist.

Adam Paul Steed [03:32:47] I guess that's my new claim to fame. The most threatening person in Jody Hildebrandt's life.

John Dehlin [03:32:54] Yeah, I think you are. Now I will be along with Jesse

Adam Paul Steed [03:32:58] because I have the truth and Jesse. Absolutely Jesse and so many more people that will come forward.

John Dehlin [03:33:04] Yeah. Jody stated that Adam is extremely manipulative. He clearly does not see how extreme and abnormal and disconnected he is with the rest of society. He is a. He is very pathological, narcissistic and dangerous. He is clearly a predator. So now you're a predator.

Adam Paul Steed [03:33:26] Yeah, I had to tell this story now because she's doing that with those poor little children.

John Dehlin [03:33:34] Talk about.

Adam Paul Steed [03:33:35] She's telling. She's saying that Ruby Frank's little kids are sexual predators. And. And once again, it's just another way that Jody works to hide her crimes.

John Dehlin [03:33:44] Is Ruby saying that or is Jody saying that or are they both saying that first?

Adam Paul Steed [03:33:47] Jody yelled it when the police arrested her. You know, she's smart, right? She's been through the legal stuff, coaching women how to do this forever. Her attorneys don't make a statement, she won't make a statement. She gets arrested and then she says, don't let any other children be around those children ever. Which infers sexual abuse when you look at tiny little kids that aren't violent. So I mean, here's this person found red handed, guilty of child abuse and the whole world's listening to her because they are subconsciously manipulated by Jody Hildebrandt. And just Jody wants to create a situation where she's done this terrible crime, but she wants to create a situation where people see an a reason why she had no other choice but to do this crime. When you go onto Jody Hildebrandt.com somebody had put on this. And I read this like last year. I'd never seen it. But Jodi Hildebrandt, when she was punished by Doppel, she went through two court hearings. And the weirdest thing in these court hearings, you're just sitting there reading this court document where she's supposed to get in trouble for this. Having a dual relationship with my wife and sharing My medical records. And suddenly she's talking about how there's this dangerous stalker out there and she's acting frightened of him. I'm reading this last year about an event from all those years ago, I think 2012, and I'm like, I bet she's got a stalker after her, after all the lives she's destroyed. I'm not thinking she's talking about me. I didn't realize she was probably creating an argument in that courtroom, which worked mostly, that the reason I had to violate all these rules and show how dangerous this guy was because my life was in danger. And by showing everyone how scared she was, she was manipulating these people to have compassion on her outrageous behavior. That totally was unethical. And she must have had a victory because on that first time, she just introduces this information. The courts didn't ask her for it. It's just like, why are we talking about stalkers? This is a court hearing about Jodi. She. She must have had a victory in how she convinced those people because it evolved. And in her second hearing, she mentions in this frightened way of how scared she is that this stalker has come after her like 19 times. And you're sitting there like, wait, is she talking about me, the guy that got her in trouble with Doppel to make the people in that room that are judges think that she broke these violations of orders of medical records because her life was in danger. You know, I hear now that she has a safe room because of me being such a danger to her. The same safe room that she abused those poor little children in. And I'm sure when I was looking at it, I mean, to me it was obvious that Jody got in trouble with a dual relationship with my wife. So they're calling Ruby Frank her business partner. But it's obvious that Ruby Frank is her client, is going to her as a therapist. It's obvious to me that multi marketing level therapist Jodi Hildebrandt lusted after Ruby Frank's position ofPower in YouTube and wanted it for herself. Broke, broken Ruby Frank to pieces, and then had Ruby give it to Jodi. And with money and power, just so she could build her thing. She probably had struggles getting good ratings and building it really big because disappearing are the extreme thinkers about the issues. But it's obvious to me that Ruby Frank was an incredibly vulnerable, messed up person who probably wasn't a good person in the first place, probably had control issues, probably some of them were sociopathic, but that Jody weaponized her and became Yoda for her. Just this Person should do whatever. I mean. I mean, you look at this hearing, how it's coming out, and of course, both women in their pictures of their mug shots, they're looking up like saints, so it doesn't trigger people that they're criminals when they get out. You know, they're coordinating this. Of course, both women show they fight fear with fear. Like there's terrible allegations. And they both show how scared they are. They both show they're scared and they have medical issues. And first, it's Jody who says these children are, you know, basically says that they're sexually abusive. So, you know, desperate reasons for why a parent would try to duct tape some kids. And then later, you know, Jody. And she usually doesn't have herself say the statements, which was unusual about these records I have. She usually has the sick clients say the radical statements for her. But, you know, then later, Ruby Frank's sitting there in the courtroom and she's. And now she's saying these terrible things about this child. It's totally coordinated. It's totally. Jody's the ringleader. She's been through. She's coached women through this process probably hundred times, hundreds maybe, for all we know. And she knows exactly how to manipulate this. And maybe. Here's just a quick moment. Can you grab that one document where she coaches my ex wife? The word for word one. It's a little square. It's about this big. No, no, it's an email. It's from Jody Hildebrandt to my ex wife. That's it right there, I think.

John Dehlin [03:39:29] Okay. And. And so this is from Jody Hildebrandt to Morwenna Claywick.

Adam Paul Steed [03:39:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:39:36] Okay. Jody writes, of course I will be thinking and praying for you.

Adam Paul Steed [03:39:42] And just, Just pause. I'm. I'm at ACAFS. The context. I'm at ACAFS. I can't be alone with my.

John Dehlin [03:39:48] Explain what that means and how it

Adam Paul Steed [03:39:49] got to that point after the Honor Code office allegations hit the custody courtroom. That.

John Dehlin [03:39:56] Can we just. Just because we're jumping forward. Can I ask you just to fill in the timeline really quick? Just really quick so that this is more meaningful.

Adam Paul Steed [03:40:04] Okay. But understand the importance of this document after we talked about these kids.

John Dehlin [03:40:09] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [03:40:09] Okay, we'll come back to that.

John Dehlin [03:40:11] Oh, I've got it in my hand. It'll be next. I just want to get people to the point where I read this document. So. So you're at byu, Jody. Oh, let me finish reading what Jody wrote.

Adam Paul Steed [03:40:22] Okay, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:22] And then. Then we'll come to that. Okay. Okay. Jody stated that based upon her actions with Adam's father, he is also aggressive and threatening. Okay, so your dad helped you with the Boy Scout case in Idaho, right?

Adam Paul Steed [03:40:35] Yeah, yeah. Great dad. Great dad. People, in your comments, if you know my father, write about my father, what you know, who you know. This person is Paul Steed.

John Dehlin [03:40:45] Paul Steed. So Jody's not going to go after him. And if our theory is right, that somehow the church was potentially using Jody to malign you and your dad as a punishment for what you did with the Boy Scouts.

Adam Paul Steed [03:40:58] I think they went after my dad. My dad's the one that helps. He's the brilliance behind getting the statute of limitations changed in the state of Idaho. He's the person that the church attorneys, Kirk and McConkie were talking to. He just relentlessly brought all the victims cases up and brought it up. He lobbied the Senate in Idaho. I mean, they had a five year statute of limitations for criminal sexual child abuse, for civil sexual child abuse. A rapist had a 50 year statute, but a child, five years. And my dad had so much resistance. Read the Boy Scouts Scouts Honors series by Peter Zuckerman and the Idaho Falls Post Register. It won the Scripps Award, like the runner up for a Pulitzer Prize just for covering it. It was so much resistance to changing the sexual abuse laws in Idaho. My dad did that. I mean, on a bigger picture, there's a lot of signs, like, think about the irony. I take on a case against scouting finally later, when I find out about all this stuff, and they use the psych evaluation of my mental health, showing how bad the abuse was to me. They use that as the document to take me away from my children in the civil case, divorce with custody, to show that I'm suicidal and unhealthy and angry.

John Dehlin [03:42:19] And this psych evaluation for your Boy Scout abuse.

Adam Paul Steed [03:42:22] Yeah, think about it. A victim comes forward, tells the truth about the hell and the trauma. Maybe he's a decent person, but this is really traumatic. And then they use that punishment.

John Dehlin [03:42:31] They do. But the attorneys for.

Adam Paul Steed [03:42:35] For more women, they turned around. I mean, my past life, I speak up as a whistleblower, and they take the evaluation from the report to show that I was abused when I had a Scouting case against Boy Scouts America a few months later, they're using that as character assassination, as me not being fit to be around my children and to being a sexual addict with Jody Hildebrandt. So they're taking lines out of this and then they're trying to recreate them in real life with sets of Allegations that correlate with different lines out of context in a report. I mean, on the bigger picture. A profound lesson to all victims of sexual abuse that come forward. Your actions to come forward will be what people will use to destroy your life and take you down. They'll take your children away from you. There was nothing in that brownsmith report. We even asked the lady to write to the courts to show that there was nothing in there, that I was a danger to the children because they had so messed up the way they took it out of context with that. You know, they had a protective order for sensitive records. They had taken it out of context so prolifically. When the lady that wrote the report, she said, absolutely, I will. And she wrote that there was a. There's nothing that she found alarming about me with my family or children at all. Cynthia brownsmith is called the brownsmith Report. So Jodi wasn't just sharing my med. Her false records of me like that. She never had any of me. She was distorting other records in a distorted way to create a criminal profile,

John Dehlin [03:44:15] and she was trying to malign your debt. So I'm so sorry. Jody stated that based upon her interactions with Adam's father, he is also aggressive and threatening. Jody had a conversation with Mr. Steed when Adam and Morwenna were beginning divorce proceedings. At that time, Jody had already stopped counseling Adam. Adam's dad was also aggressive and threatening on the phone with Jody because he viewed Jody's role in counseling as contributing to the breakup of the marriage. That's outrageous. Sorry. Sarcasm. Finally, Jody stopped Adam's father and stated that Adam was a sexual addict and he was the cause of the destruction of the marriage. Mr. Steed became upset and stated that Adam, quote, royalty in Idaho. So they're mocking your courageous role with your dad as. As protecting victims of sexual abuse.

Adam Paul Steed [03:45:08] Hundreds of millions of dollars of litigation went through because the laws we changed changed. Thousands of lives were affected by victims getting justice for the first time.

John Dehlin [03:45:18] Now Jody is mocking the courage of you and your dad, calling you, quote, royalty in Idaho, close quote, for what he has done to get a predator off the streets. She responded that his son is a, quote, garden variety addict. Mr. Steed hung up. Mr. Steed has since threatened to sue JoJo and the LifeStar program that Jody uses to counsel with couples to help overcome the problem of porn addiction. Jody later received a call from a therapist from somewhere in Utah Valley. The therapist called to say they had talked with Adam. It's an unnamed therapist. The therapist had called to say they had talked with Adam and wanted Jody's perspective on what Adam had been saying about Jody and his problems. Jody told the therapist to be careful because Adam would go after them if he did not like what he was told. Just like Adam had gone after Jody. The therapist called back later and said Adam had been told to go elsewhere. Jody warned that anyone who crosses Adam will be attacked in some fashion and added that Adam is a predator and a threat that BYU needs to be aware of. She repeatedly referred to to Adam as pathological. So that's what your former therapist, violating Jody Hildebrandt. Jody Hildebrandt, violating client patient confidentiality, tells your BYU Honor Code office in an attempt to smear you and get you kicked out of byu.

Adam Paul Steed [03:46:50] You know, sharing medical records. Let's equate that to like speeding in a car. So when they say the Doppel thing shows that, you know, that Jody was guilty of sharing my medical records for a porn problem, okay, that's like a small thing. Jody was guilty of using the speeding car to try to kill me. It wasn't that she just used him. It's that she used them as a weapon to destroy everything in my life. And she was sitting in the courtroom next to Elder Hilon as these protective orders came out and the allegations about child abuse came out in the non statement sense of a real allegation, but in the sense of an abstract fear based psycho sexual manipulation story that didn't actually say what I did or what happened to a victim. And I went to court maybe like 12 or 15 times with more and more crazy allegations like this. I didn't even know. I was so scared of the protective order and everything they had done to me and the four felony charges they filed against me. I guess that's coming up next.

John Dehlin [03:48:05] Yeah, yeah, we're getting there.

Adam Paul Steed [03:48:07] I didn't even know where my ex lived. I was so scared. I didn't even know where she lived.

John Dehlin [03:48:12] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [03:48:12] And I was going to court being told that I was breaking through her window at night.

John Dehlin [03:48:17] Yeah, yeah, we'll get there. To close this letter from Edward Morin, Honor Code Office, Representative Morwena stated that her family had also received threatening emails and Adam had also threatened lawsuits against Morwenna and her family. Adam claims that Bishop Olson.

Adam Paul Steed [03:48:35] Pause real quick in the emails. There's one more email in the other room. I told them I didn't want to do it, but if she didn't bring the kids back, that I. I had a school. I had a class with the A lady that was a professor. And she told me about pkp. I forget the abbreviation, but it was this kidnapping thing that if people kidnap your children, you can file it. And I said. I just said, please, let's just talk. I don't want to do this, but at some point this is going to come up. So that was my threatening lawsuits against her family. Yeah, but lawsuits.

John Dehlin [03:49:10] Yeah. Right. All of a sudden it's multiple. Right.

Adam Paul Steed [03:49:13] Well, and lawsuits being the guy that sued Scouting.

John Dehlin [03:49:17] Right.

Adam Paul Steed [03:49:18] You know, it's. It's sending this language that you need to protect the BYU institution from somebody that does lawsuits.

John Dehlin [03:49:26] Yeah, yeah. Which I'm sure the church wanted to do. The church. Last thing that Mormon Church wanted was you to come to Utah and start messing with the statute of limitations for sexual victims and children in Utah. Right.

Adam Paul Steed [03:49:39] I think the Mormon Church was blindsided by the ability my dad had with my story and us working together to change the statute of limitations in one congressional hearing. I think they. I mean, there were all these traps to make it impossible. There was a guy over the Senate who wouldn't even let it on the board or let it be, like, talked about. And my dad was in the newspaper showing it in a way that was so prolific that it went through because of their fear of what the public would do if they didn't do it. Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:50:16] Adam claims that Bishop Olson has encouraged Adam to sue Morwenna. Is that true? Did your bishop encourage you to sue Morwenna? Was your bishop on your side at one point?

Adam Paul Steed [03:50:25] I think this was a. Bishop Olson is a complex character because on one hand he sent me to Jody and then later in the story he hung me.

John Dehlin [03:50:36] He what?

Adam Paul Steed [03:50:36] He left about the protective order thing. That'll come out where he wouldn't go to court to testify because the church office called him or the church attorneys had called him and told him not to testify. We'll get there. But it's interesting, I think that line right there was character assassination on Bishop Olson at that point, because Bishop Olson would be the person that could go to court and testify that he told me to talk, to give the stroller and the card and the books to my ex during a child exchange. Because the protective order said, and this is another real bizarre thing now that I'll look him back, the protective order said I couldn't talk to her, except for through an attorney or an ecclesiastical leader. So when a bishop calls me in and tells me my ex wife still loves me and he just met with her and she's saying that she still loves me and that she's asked for me to give her a few things. I'm thinking he's the class ecclesiastical leader and we can have contact to do these things through him. And so I think that, you know, because the. I think that that line right there where they suddenly have this weird line in there that talks about Bishop Adam being on my side, I think that was going to be just like a pre laid character assassination if he came forward and testified that he had done this. But they didn't need to worry about that if that was the case because he never did come forward. He said he would testify, but then. And we'll get into that in the next story. What happened?

John Dehlin [03:52:10] All right. Morwenna will provide copies of all documents and emails she has on this matter. Morwenna noted that Adam had recently violated the protective order again, and yet had convinced the police that Adam needed to be defended from a vindictive wife.

Adam Paul Steed [03:52:24] Oh, wow, look at that. So put it in the time frame. She was just getting ready to serve me this huge amount of felonies. And she had just gotten off the phone with the bishop, telling, agreeing with him that it was okay for me to give her these things. And now she was in the Honor Code office saying a statement that would disqualify the bishop as a witness. And I might have to pull the mic up.

John Dehlin [03:52:46] Pull the mic up. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead.

Adam Paul Steed [03:52:48] Oh, no, we might have to go soon for deadline line.

John Dehlin [03:52:51] Okay, no problem.

Adam Paul Steed [03:52:52] That's okay.

John Dehlin [03:52:52] Thanks for joining us. I'm sorry we didn't get you in more.

Adam Paul Steed [03:52:54] No, that's okay.

John Dehlin [03:52:55] Amanda, thanks for coming. Yeah. Okay, we'll. You guys just go ahead and break things down. We'll just keep going with the interview.

Adam Paul Steed [03:53:03] Thanks.

John Dehlin [03:53:04] Good luck with the coverage, Amanda. Tune in to Channel 2 News for Amanda's coverage of. Of the story. Okay. It closes by saying Jody observed that over. Over the past year she has witnessed Morwenna go from an extremely emotional, abused, neglected, sickened state to a healthy woman. So Josie Jody saves Morwenna from the mental health. From bad mental health things. At this stage, Morwenna is not seeking revenge against Adam. She merely wishes to provide information to BYU and then let the matter go if her efforts result in. In protecting someone else. That would be good. And then it's signed. I certify the above information is correct. Honor Code Office Representative Ed Edward Morin. All right. That's the letter.

Adam Paul Steed [03:53:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:53:54] So that's what Jody. That's all the stuff Jody said to him about you?

Adam Paul Steed [03:53:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:54:00] Yeah. Is it? Should we go next to the Restraining order. Because I think that's.

Adam Paul Steed [03:54:05] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:54:06] That's how you end up with four felony charges against you.

Adam Paul Steed [03:54:08] The legal document that we've got.

John Dehlin [03:54:13] So can you talk about what was going on there and how it happened?

Adam Paul Steed [03:54:16] Yeah. So, Yeah. While my ex wife and Jody are coaching this whole thing out. And this is interesting because I have had several other people share with me that the exact same thing happened to them in the sense that they went to Jody, they tried to get out, and then suddenly there were protective order. A crazy civil case divorce with a protective order, and then suddenly there were protective order violations that criminalized them.

John Dehlin [03:54:57] Yeah. So if anyone tries to get out of Jody, Jodi Hildebrandt's therapy and scheme of extorting thousands of dollars a month from the couples. If you try and get out of that therapeutic relationship with Jody Hildebrandt, she tells the wife to fire a straining order on the husband and aliens.

Adam Paul Steed [03:55:17] She didn't just tell him. She coaches them through on how to do it and how to.

John Dehlin [03:55:22] Yeah, there's no way you're the only victim. Anyway, keep going.

Court Proceedings and Legal Fallout

Adam Paul Steed [03:55:26] Okay, so, Bishop, so now I'm served as a protective order at that BYU setting. A temporary. It's like two weeks later, I get an official one in court. And at that point there's this protective order in place. Some time goes by, it's super tough on our family. I have to pick the kids up at the police station, have someone that's 21 years old or older with me. Now, those people that start coming with me, the honor code starts calling them in and threatening them that they can't be near me. And that's where those honor code files where there's all these different people that the honor code interviews about sexual abuse that happened to them as a kid and all this stuff. And then it gaslights them, accuses them of having an affair, and puts them on probation of the one girl. And I just wanted to do. I had my kids with me, and I just wanted a safe place for them. And I took my close friends and eventually I ran out of close friends to do this with. I mean, they're still my friends, but I started inviting friends at school. Hey, can you help me with this? I just have to do this. The honeycode office was going after these people. People, you know. So during that time, my bishop calls in, calls me, an elder or elder Bishop Olson, and he says to me, I just met with her, your wife, Morwenna, she still loves you. She totally thinks we can work this stuff out. You need to really work to let her know that you care about her still and that you love and that we can fix this thing. And he said, she needs a stroller. And he mentioned which one it was like an $800 stroller. And she needs her journals back, which would have been very incriminating in a court to show what those had said. And she, you know. And, you know, I thought, I remember crying when I left, oh, maybe this will get fixed still. And I asked him, I said, are you sure it's okay? Because the protective order says you're the ecclesiastical leader. We contact each other and said, go to the police station, give her these things. He called her, she said it was okay. I go to the police station with these items, I give them to her. I first asked her, is it okay if I give these to her and we talk? And she said, yeah, it's okay. I talked to the bishop, everything's fine. And she just smiled. And I really felt that she was telling the truth. I gave her these things and I smiled, and I was really nice to her. And then out of nowhere, she just turns and accused me that I was a homosexual, just randomly. And I just looked shocked. And then she acted like she just looked at me like this and went and hopped in the car. And she left our baby's door open when she got in the car. The door's open, the car seat's there. I'm just shocked because that was a huge trigger for me in my psych evaluation report that she'd been reading and that Jody had been reading and that they'd been sharing with everyone. And so, yeah, if you feel me right in that moment, I probably looked disturbed, but not angry or upset at anyone. And then I noticed that she's driving away with the door open to our baby. And I just looked over and I said, wait, hold on. And I waved her. I said, you left the door open? And she goes, oh, okay. And I said, I'll just shut this door. So I shut the door and I just waved to the kids goodbye. And that's what happened. And three or four days later, when I went to pick up the kids for something, I got subpoenaed, like a half inch page of papers. And those papers said that I had four felony charges against me and they had exhibits in it. And one of them was a picture of a card that was like, hope you get better. Her picture of her journals, a book by Elder Holland that said broken things to men. The bishop had talked to me about getting her that. And yeah, I had four felony charges. And this itself is an illegal document, because breaking a protective order is not a felony in the state of Utah. It's only a felony if you are already a felon. And I had absolutely no criminal record whatsoever. And So I had four felonies. And it said 20 years in prison that I could get. And I was terrified when I read this. And, you know, I went. I went to the bishop, and the bishop said that. The bishop said that. That he would absolutely testify. And he was shocked and acted like it was just so crazy. And then later, the bishop called me in, and, you know, so it was just crazy. I was so. I mean, now I'm a criminal. I mean, I'm being charged as a criminal. And I remember going to my stake president on a Sunday. I was so worried. And I went into his office, and I had these files of Jody Hildebrandt's files like, this big in my hand. And I said. I said, you got to see. You got to help my family. You got to see these files. And he turned to me and he goes, a woman doesn't just run away from her husband unless there's something. And I looked at him, and I was just shocked. I said, what are you talking about? And he just looked at me, and I said, are you talking about, like, physical violence or sexual abuse? And he goes, aha. Just the fact that you said that makes me know that you're guilty of those things. And I said, look, you've got to look at these files. This is a culture. You've got to read these. You will see what I'm talking about. I had this huge thing of files, and he looked at me, and he said, that's your addiction talking. When he said that, I knew Jody had got to him, and it was my stake president. I just remember, like, I could hardly breathe. I trusted and believed in this person. And I said. I begged him, please, please look at these files. And he said he absolutely refused to. And then I told him, well, next time you get up at stake conference and you testify that you get on your hands and your knees and you cry for every family out here. You remember that when we needed the help the most, you wouldn't even look. You wouldn't even help. And then he yelled at me to get out of his office. He goes, get out. Just get out. And I left. And my bishop calls me in right after that, and they removed my temple recommend. And I said, why? And he goes, you called the stake president names? I said, I didn't call them. Names. And I told him exactly what happened. And my bishop said, well, I don't agree with him, but I have to take your temple recommend. So they took my temple recommend away. And my bishop called me in and he said, I can't go to court to testify for you. The church legal team called and they said that they won't allow me to go to court. So I disagree with it. I know you were doing what he said, but I can't. So I got hung. Now, I had criminal charges against me for felonies, which then I looked up. In the state of Utah, if you break a protective order, it's four misdemeanors. But they had felonies against me, which is illegal to make a document that says four felonies against somebody for protective order violation. And so then I have finals at byu, and I'm in school. And I'm in school at byu, and I'm late for. I remember I had finals and I'm late for one of the criminal court hearings by, like, 30 minutes. And I. I get there and. They arrested me and they. They put me in chains, and they said that because it was felonies, I couldn't get off on bail. And they arrested me, and then they said that the judge went on vacation. So I was in jail for a long time for.

John Dehlin [04:04:07] It was a month, right?

Adam Paul Steed [04:04:08] Yeah. Well, originally, I put 14 days in my post. I was writing about this, but I actually saw in the records, it said seven days. I just.

John Dehlin [04:04:17] Somewhere between a week and two weeks. You're in jail.

Adam Paul Steed [04:04:18] Yeah. So I got out of jail. And as soon as I got out of jail, I got a letter from byu, from Steve Baker, saying that I was kicked out of the university and that a return was. Yeah. And you've got one of those letters there.

John Dehlin [04:04:38] Yeah. There's a few things we can read, and you can guide me as to which ones to read. But I think it's just, we have to say, just like the bathtub incident, it seems pretty clear that Morwenna was coached by Jody not just to file the restraining order, but to entrap you, to create the appearance of you violating the restraining order so that then you could be convicted of or charged with multiple felonies, so that then it could be said you were, you know, you were an accused felon. Right.

Adam Paul Steed [04:05:12] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you knew. This is why when Jody and Ruby both are accusing these children of being child abusers or sexual abusive, this is why I don't trust them.

John Dehlin [04:05:31] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:05:32] Not at all. Why would we Listen to Ted Bundy give advice.

John Dehlin [04:05:37] Right.

Adam Paul Steed [04:05:37] His thoughts got him where he's at. Why would someone that's punitive, that likes people's pain, why would we listen to them? That kid was a whistleblower. That kid is an extraordinary hero and he's being punished severely for it by this abuse.

John Dehlin [04:05:57] Yeah. So there's a couple, there's a couple things that I think we, we are supposed to read. One is this. One is this letter that you asked me to remember to talk about, which is a letter from Jody to Morwenna about Jody coaching morwenna around ACAF.

Adam Paul Steed [04:06:24] ACAFs.

John Dehlin [04:06:24] ACAF. Do you want to give context and then I'll read?

Adam Paul Steed [04:06:27] Yeah. So after the system of having a 21 year old or older be with me, with my kids had failed, Commissioner Patton said we don't want all this crazy stuff happening at the honor code office at byu. He makes sense of all this stuff. They're like, let's send Adam to acafs, which is way more strict. You have like a counselor that you pay $40 an hour to be with your kids. I lost so much of my children's life by being stuck at this place. Were only people who go there and my thoughts were people who had to have this because they were dangerous people. And I'm sitting there in this incriminated place and I mean it was crazy. The judge said, well, in my experience, women, you know, she wouldn't. The other spouse won't pay for it so you can't see them. So you have to pay everything. And we'll pay it back later after we have the findings of the case. I never got paid back and I'm going to this place, acafs. And one of the emails Morwen is writing Jodi, and she's just like super angry because I cut my kids hair. I just cut their hair. I was trying to live a normal life and I was like, hey, let's cut your hair. My dad cut my kid's hair or our hair when we were growing up. So I cut the hair. Morwenna receives this. She writes about that when she got there, I was with the kids and it was in the hall. I'm supposed to be there at 7, but I got there at 7, 10, I was 10 minutes late. And anyway, she writes this whole page to Jody about how this was me being a psycho, in fact, how this was my addiction acting out to show power over her as a mom that I had cut these kids hair. And she just goes off on all this stuff and then how the, you know, people won't understand the sociopathy behind me cutting the kid's hair. And then on the next page of the email.

John Dehlin [04:08:17] Wait, should I read this?

Adam Paul Steed [04:08:18] Yeah. Then Jody writes her back. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:08:20] Okay. Oh, okay. Got it. Okay. So this is Jody writing Morwenna October 27, 2009, coaching her how to manipulate ACAFs. Is that right?

Adam Paul Steed [04:08:31] Yeah. So when you look at you at Ruby Frank and you think, I wonder if Jody's coached this lady in a finessed way. Here's evidence of how Jody coaches her client victims.

John Dehlin [04:08:43] So Jody writes, of course I will be thinking and praying for you. And you are right. There really is nothing you can do about the haircutting thing. And the people around you will not see it as anything other than a haircut. But you know better. If you say anything, he will flip it around and you will look unreasonable. Now, with that being said, you can talk to the powers that be about him standing out in the waiting area with the children presented as an inquiry, not an anger. Say something like, quote, now help me understand the rules. I was under the impression that we are not to have any contact. And Adam was supposed to leave at 7pm he was standing in the foyer last meeting. And isn't that breaking the. The order? So she's coaching her how to be super manipulative, even in her tone.

Adam Paul Steed [04:09:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:09:34] Even in her delivery. Let me finish.

Adam Paul Steed [04:09:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:09:36] And then Jody says to Morwenna, give acafs the right thinking, because they are not going to come up with those thoughts themselves. It is difficult when you begin to see what is really going on, to be patient with those who don't. Be direct and clear and act inquisitive, not angry or defensive. Make them think that they came up with the idea themselves. Keep me informed about Wednesday, Jody. Yeah, that's dark. Anything you want to say?

Adam Paul Steed [04:10:17] My wife wrote her back. In the next email, she goes, those suckers. They totally fell for it. And then when I was picking up my kids at acafs, they no longer let me do, like, three fourths of the things that my kids and I routinely did. They pulled me aside and they. They said that they had to put me in way more strict observation.

John Dehlin [04:10:42] Yeah, we've got a couple other notes regarding either Ed Morin or Steve Baker, and I'm not exactly sure where they fit in the story. So do you want to tell me?

Adam Paul Steed [04:10:55] So it's interesting that in the BYU Honor Code office, they have rules that they can't contact bishops. In a set of notes there, the one in your Left hand, read the second. My. My ex wife was going to. Bishop Rife was her bishop.

John Dehlin [04:11:16] Okay, so this is. This is Honor Code Office case notes by Ed Morin again.

Adam Paul Steed [04:11:21] Yeah. Jody literally weaponizes the Honor Code Office to weaponize Morwenna's bishop to weaponize my bishop to get to me.

John Dehlin [04:11:39] So this is Honor Code Office, BYU Honor Code Office. Ed Morin making notes about Bishop Steve Reiff, who was more. When his bishop, after she left. Adam, March 13, 2009, talked with Bishop Steve Rife by phone, home phone. I provided the last known bishop. I provided the last known bishop as Bishop Kevin Santiago, but noted that Adam may have moved on. He made it clear that he will verify that Adam is in that ward before he provides specifics. Bishop Reif noted that he will not make any reference to byu, nor that Morwenna has reported Adam to byu. I think I need to read that sentence again because tell me if that's right. This is Bishop Reif making sure to say he's going to mislead or deceive.

Adam Paul Steed [04:12:34] Yeah. He's not going to let. He's not going to let them know that the Honor Code Office and Jody Hildebrand had talked to him. He can make sure that this new bishop doesn't know that.

John Dehlin [04:12:45] Yeah. So Bishop Reif noted that he will not make any reference to byu, nor that Morwenna has reported Adam to byu. So this is basically the church, Bishop Reif, the Honor Code Office, Jody, all conspiring to break their own rules and to deceive people about it. Is that right?

Adam Paul Steed [04:13:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [04:13:10] He will stick with the issue of his concern that Adam's bishop be aware of Adam apparently dating even though he is still married. And just to touch base, as Morwenna and Adam are still married. Anything you want to say about that?

Adam Paul Steed [04:13:29] When you leave somebody and you act like they're the worst person in the

John Dehlin [04:13:33] world,

Adam Paul Steed [04:13:36] why are you going around telling people you're still married and you have this temple marriage and telling those people you're ruining the marriage by them being close to this person? It's just bizarre how they wanted to isolate me. They wanted to have all these bishops on board. So that my bishop called me and he said I couldn't home teach and I couldn't have a calling. And then he called me in and said, people can't home teach me, so I'm going to church. The only thing they couldn't do is kick me out of church. They took my temple recommend away and through four years they just said, I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable. I said, did the church list me as something? Is this you praying? I couldn't figure it out. Anyway, this is a good example of how covertly the church used bishop leaders to do something that would affect a civil case and that they knew that they were doing breaking the rules, but they did it anyway. And it's also a good example of how people in an institution often when you use psychosexual manipulation or psycho violent manipulation, they leave their rules to go do something. That's why Jodi needs psychosexual violence in this court case now to try to create a context of where they were innocent in abusing these children. Yeah, but. And there are also. So you've got. What's the other document you got?

John Dehlin [04:15:08] So there's Steve Baker, Ed Morin and Steve Baker notes. And there's more in protective order.

Adam Paul Steed [04:15:15] Oh, to add the amount of control they were allowing Jody Hildebrand and Morwenna and the church leaders to do. To me, if you read that. That first one that you just showed me.

John Dehlin [04:15:28] Steve Baker.

Adam Paul Steed [04:15:29] Yeah, like the third paragraph down. So now that there's. You want to read that one? It's about this thick of a paragraph.

John Dehlin [04:15:38] Okay. There may be two. So I'll start 3-9-09.

Adam Paul Steed [04:15:41] Steve preference? Normally the Honor Code office isn't allowed to share private records of what they're doing with other students. If you report someone, they're not going to come back and tell you all about that interview and tell you it's a privacy issue.

John Dehlin [04:15:57] Okay. And you've already said this, but I just. I'm trying to manage too many things. Who's Steve Baker again?

Adam Paul Steed [04:16:02] He's the director of the Honor Code office.

John Dehlin [04:16:04] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [04:16:05] Ed Morin works for him in the Honor Code office.

John Dehlin [04:16:07] Okay, so this is Ed Moran making notes about a conversation with his own boss.

Adam Paul Steed [04:16:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:16:11] Okay, I'm start with this might be too early, but I'm starting with 3-9-09. Steve stated he had talked with legal. Steve cleared talking with the therapist and Morwena's ecclesiastical leaders. Steve was given a complete copy of the file, stamped copy, to forward on to BYU Legal department. Note. It has been agreed by Stephen Baker that because of the circumstances in this case, and including four felony charges pending against Adam, that Morwenna should be notified before we make any effort to notify Adam. She should be notified once an appointment has been set with Adam. And she should also be notified after an interview has been conducted with Adam. That commitment has been Conveyed to Morwenna. Is that the part you want me to read or the part after that?

Adam Paul Steed [04:17:00] Yeah, because now you've got these people out there that the Honor Code office now just broke confidentiality. And now they're going to notify her, call her, tell her how I was, where I was, when I was, what happened, that they're now, because this is a serious case, they're going to break those. Those confidentialities.

John Dehlin [04:17:24] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:17:24] So, you know, so. So now Jody and her are coordinating how, you know, they have more access to hurt me with.

John Dehlin [04:17:34] So they're violating the confidentiality back towards your. Your, you know, estranged wife, basically.

Adam Paul Steed [04:17:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:17:39] Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then there's the protective order.

Adam Paul Steed [04:17:44] Yeah, you can read the top part. I've got the legal document on the table. That's the summary of it. If you read just right in the top.

John Dehlin [04:17:50] So it says 2-25-09. A visit to 4th District Court revealed that Adam is facing four felony charges. Each is a third degree degree for violation of a protective order, domestic violence enhancement. That lists the dates of the offenses. And it's got the dates. But I mean, were you threatening your wife? Were you physical with your wife? Were you.

Adam Paul Steed [04:18:12] No, no, no. I have absolutely zero domestic violence record. I've never threatened or done anything like that to anybody in my entire life. And just the fact that document is illegal because in Utah law, domestic violence charges or protective order char. If you. In Utah at the time, if you violated a protective order, it was domestic violence. My attorney said even if you gave her a card, that's the same as if you punched somebody. That's what I learned after the fact that this was domestic violence for the rest of your life. And here I've never had anything and I have four counts against me at the same time. And one of them's a picture of a card, another's a picture of a book, a Xerox copy and one of Xerox copy of a journal. And it says that there's four felony charges against me. That's an illegal document. You can't make four felony charges against somebody for breaking a protective order for the first time. They're only felonies if the person's already a felon. I have no criminal history. And see, because they made it felonies. When I missed court by 30 minutes for my BYU finals, I went to jail without bail. And Jody and Morwenna let the Honor Code office know while I was in jail that I was there for abuse and domestic violence. Yeah, you know, all that. It would have Helped tremendous, tremendously if the bishop who said that I could give those things to him actually kept his word and showed up and told the truth like a bishop should tell the truth. To tell the truth, I spent like $30,000 a year or something of agony and time without a witness whittling that down into me being a plea bargain where I plead guilty to an attempt to protect. An attempt to break a protective order, which was a class B misdemeanor. I think that's what it was. And I had to pay a fine. No jail time, just a fine. But to criminalize me because of this was just absurd.

John Dehlin [04:20:33] Yeah. Well, we can. Maybe we can move to the final dismissal letter you got. Unless you want me to. You had given me this document, if you recognize it.

Adam Paul Steed [04:20:44] Yeah, I want to talk about that final dismissal.

John Dehlin [04:20:49] Are we gonna read this note or not? Or do we move on?

Adam Paul Steed [04:20:52] I wanna be sensitive with that one because that might have the name of a girl that was sexually abused that the honor code office called in who was helping me with my kids.

John Dehlin [04:21:02] Well, I won't read any names of that.

Adam Paul Steed [04:21:04] Okay. Yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [04:21:06] What part did you want me to read, and what's the context of it?

Adam Paul Steed [04:21:09] This is just somebody that had been helping me with my kids. My ex wife saw her and got really upset and started writing. Jody, I can't stand it. I was having. You know, I was. She was upset and angry that I was with another girl and looked like I was normal instead of being tortured, you know, that landed her in the honor code office. And these are the honor code office records about what they did to this poor girl.

John Dehlin [04:21:34] Okay, so this is another BYU student.

Adam Paul Steed [04:21:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:21:37] Who gets looped into this.

Adam Paul Steed [04:21:39] She got put on probation and told that she could never see me again, otherwise she'd be kicked out of the university her senior year.

John Dehlin [04:21:45] And was this someone you developed feelings

Adam Paul Steed [04:21:46] for or like at the time when you come out of this terrible divorce?

John Dehlin [04:21:51] So you had been divorced by this time?

Adam Paul Steed [04:21:52] No, we were still in the divorce. I was at byu. There's a protective order against me.

John Dehlin [04:21:57] I'm alone.

Adam Paul Steed [04:21:57] I have to. To be with my kids. This person starts helping me with my kids. And, you know, we didn't have a sexual relationship. We had a. She was helping me with my kids, but I liked her. And it was just like. I remember after I met her, I was sleeping, like, two days, two hours a night on adrenaline, just worried. And after I met her, I slept for eight hours the next day. And I just felt like normal to be treated like a. A human Being again. And it just was so helpful and so protective, I think to my feelings of validation as a person and you know, to, you know, they want to isolate you and make you alone when they do this crazy stuff to you. So this just made my ex beloved. And she had written Jodi about how irate she was about this lady girl helping. Whole crazy emails about how this, I'm choosing this girl because she looks like her. That's what my ex wife's saying, that this girl looks like her. They don't look like each other, that I'm, you know, that she's a victim and that they've got to stop this and they've got to do something. And immediately, right after that came the allegations. Yet another set of spooky allegations where they tried to make it look like my daughter had been hurt on a visit. When she came, when she came with me, I was with people the whole time. There was no possible way in the world that anything could have happened. And Jody, see, Jody is guilty of the child abuse that happened with Ruby Frank's kids, you know, a client and Frankie's kids. And Jody coaching Ruby Frank with this child abuse situation. Jody's also guilty of coaching my ex wife, Morwenna Cliveweg, of another child abuse situation. Because when the psych evaluator of our custody case looked at the notes I showed of the emails between Jody and Morwenna and they saw the. When they saw the graphically disturbing nature of a little girl coming home from a visit with her dad, a one year old or something, and being flipped upside down, your clothes pulled off and your legs spread and photographs made and crazy spooky stuff like we've been reading, being said all about it and then pointing at her saying daddy pee pee, daddy pee pee, trying to get her to say it and them talking about this, that when the psych evaluator looked at that evidence, she had to call the police and file sexual child abuse against my ex wife for doing that. And again, there was no criminal report, there was no police report. There was just spooky, crazy, bizarre crazy stuff.

John Dehlin [04:24:47] So if I'm understanding right, they're trying to get your child, they're trying to force them into a fake allegation.

Adam Paul Steed [04:24:56] She wasn't verbal yet, she was just kind of verbal. She was way too small. Small. I'm, I'm completely with people that are watching me 247 and you know, when they saw this girl with me and my ex got so upset and telling Jody, we got to do something, we got to do something more. We can't do this. They turn around and do this to our baby.

John Dehlin [04:25:16] Try and manufacture evidence they sexually abused my daughter to try and paint you as a sexual predator.

Adam Paul Steed [04:25:22] To try to peg me as a sexual predator. Yeah, that's. That's. That's what they did.

John Dehlin [04:25:27] Okay. I'm so sorry.

Adam Paul Steed [04:25:29] I'm sorry if this is triggering for anybody listening.

John Dehlin [04:25:32] Yeah. So. March 3, 2009. These are case notes. Morwenna called. Adam and the girl are together a lot. Her name is Blank. She is Blank. Morwenna's therapist is aware of this, and it suggested that Morwenna drop one liners in front of Blank in hopes that Blank might do some serious thinking. What does that mean?

Adam Paul Steed [04:26:02] Jody's coaching Morwena how to confront the girl that's with me at the police station when we pick the kids up.

John Dehlin [04:26:09] Okay. Blank has been without him three times per week to pick up the kids during the past two weeks. Last Friday, when Morwenna was at the. At the police station to drop off the children, Blank walked into the room to pick up the baby. Adam was standing in the doorway. Morwena made the comment to Blank. Gee, I always wondered what it was like to date a married guy. Close quote. Adam overheard the comment and became very angry and yelled at her. She felt threatened and scared. The ladies behind the desk in the police station came forward and Adam left. The girl came back a short time later and tried to get Morwenna to open up about why she was not still married to Adam and he was such a wonderful guy. Morwenna noted that Blank is naive and apparently a good girl, and she wants to believe in Adam. Morwena sees a lot of herself in Blank. Adam came back into the room again and asked Blank to leave again. Adam called the police officer himself, since he knew that Morwenna was going to report him at court yesterday, Morwena sat a few rows behind Adam and Blank. Though Adam did not put his arm around Blank, they were clearly a couple, as per their body language. Adam's mother was there. And that's all I have from that note. I don't have a second page to that note.

Adam Paul Steed [04:27:26] There's a whole pile back there.

John Dehlin [04:27:28] But you're saying ultimately, this woman. What happened to this woman?

Adam Paul Steed [04:27:31] Right afterwards, Ed Moore in the honor code office calls her in, asks her this huge interview about sexual abuse that happened to her as a kid, completely traumatized her, then turned around.

John Dehlin [04:27:42] How do you know about that?

Adam Paul Steed [04:27:43] Because she told me after it happened to her.

John Dehlin [04:27:45] Oh, okay.

Adam Paul Steed [04:27:46] She'd been in there for hours.

John Dehlin [04:27:47] Okay. No. How did she know about her abuse?

Adam Paul Steed [04:27:52] Ed Morin's just. Anyone that Jody and Morwenna are telling for him to bring into the Honor Code Office, they're targeting and bringing in.

John Dehlin [04:28:00] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [04:28:00] And, you know, they. They basically read the records. They basically ask for all this stuff. And then, well, she told me about it, and then they just gaslighted her, acting her like she was hiding, like a sexual addiction and that she was committing adultery. And they had so shamed her with the trauma of abuse that they got her to commit that she would never see me again. They'd made her feel like she was having adultery with me just for being my friend and liking me, you know? And. And they had got her to commit. They put her on her probation and said that if she ever saw me again, that they would kick her out of school. She was, like, a 4.0 student in the nursing program at Brigham Young University.

John Dehlin [04:28:49] Yeah, that's terrible. She's victimized as well.

Adam Paul Steed [04:28:53] Yeah. Yeah, she had a real downturn after that. That really hurt her.

John Dehlin [04:28:59] All right, well, this culminates in October 13, 2009. A letter to you by Stephen M. Baker, Director of the Honor Code Office. Dear Adam, University records indicate that you are no longer a student at byu. In addition, we have discussed with you reports alleging you have violated the Honor Code. Although you have no current rights or privileges associated with student status at byu, this letter is to inform inform you that a hold has been placed on your record that will prevent you from being admitted or registering for any future classes at BYU or any other church educational system school. You may not enroll in or be enrolled in any class, take any course or class from byu, or perform or participate in any BYU activity. As a representative of byu, you are not eligible to live in a BYU contract housing or to be employed by the university. Should you seek to have this hold lifted, you will first be required to demonstrate to the Honor Code Office that you have resolved the behavioral issues we addressed with you.

Adam Paul Steed [04:29:59] Oh, hold on, Steve. I just pulled that one out of my Honor Code Office files. They actually made an even later version of that letter. That's the official one. So this one, when they were talking back and forth about sending me my dismissal letter, they made several versions, and I just grabbed the last one. I thought it was the final one. Okay, it's the final one says that a return to the university is highly unlikely, and they don't give me any hope of ever coming back. So this one says, I just caught that, because in the one that they dismissed me with. Said that basically I could never come back.

John Dehlin [04:30:39] Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Well, that signed Stephen M. Baker, director of the Honor Code Office.

Adam Paul Steed [04:30:46] And he's basically.

John Dehlin [04:30:47] Yeah, he says, I regret this has become necessary, Adam, but wish you the best as you pursue your life goals. How did that feel? That at least he wished you your best as you, you know, pursued your life goals. That was nice.

Adam Paul Steed [04:31:01] What life goals? You just took away from a guy that wanted to go to medical school that was pre law and international pre med and honors at BYU his junior year. And. And, you know, kicked me out of school and further incriminating me with all this stuff that they were doing.

John Dehlin [04:31:21] How much total in legal expenses did you spend on this case with your wife and the divorce and everything?

Adam Paul Steed [04:31:27] I think it was probably around $250,000.

John Dehlin [04:31:30] And where did that money come from? You don't have to say.

Adam Paul Steed [04:31:35] No, no, I did. A lot of tons of people in Utah county saw me painting curb addresses in front of their houses. I did money like that to come up with my ACAFS money just to paint people's curb addresses. I did have some money from the settlement, the scouting settlement that was used into it, but a lot less than

John Dehlin [04:32:00] you would have had because the Mormon Church discouraged you from seeking care.

Adam Paul Steed [04:32:05] I had a punitive damage case. The first punitive damage case in that area. The other one was for 20 million. Settled for $20 million. I can't disclose how much I got in the settlement, but let's just say that it wasn't even remotely. Remotely comparable.

John Dehlin [04:32:25] And since the Mormon Church was your abuser, your abuser was. Had a calling by the Mormon Church. You know, the Mormon Church sponsored the scout troop program. What's that?

Adam Paul Steed [04:32:38] He was in the seminary program to be a seminary teacher.

John Dehlin [04:32:40] So in spite of all those conflicts of interest in the Mormon Church's involvement in your sexual abuse and in your Boy Scout troop, the Mormon Church is using its influence over you as you believe that it's the one true church, to discourage you from seeking, you know, a full settlement.

Adam Paul Steed [04:32:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:32:58] With the Boy Scouts.

Adam Paul Steed [04:32:58] So. So, yeah. And they just. They destroyed it. We had punitive damage, and the Area 70 talked to my father and we got a special apostolic blessing of. I mean, I still remember the words. It was so important to me of what it meant. But then we walked away from a punitive damage case.

John Dehlin [04:33:19] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:33:19] Through their counseling.

John Dehlin [04:33:21] Right.

Adam Paul Steed [04:33:22] And they told us not to, and so we didn't, you know, and so

John Dehlin [04:33:27] you didn't have that. The point is, you didn't have that money later when you could have used it to defend yourself against.

Adam Paul Steed [04:33:34] I had a very small amount of money and I didn't know how to use money very well. And so I invested it in some stock market stuff that just completely fell apart in 2008 when the, when it crash happened. And it was more of an aggressive of investment and I lost my money. And so suddenly I'm just overwhelmed with high attorney fees and I don't have money. I end up owing money for years and years. I still owe people money from this that I've still been just slowly paying over a huge amount of time.

John Dehlin [04:34:10] I want those of you who want to support Adam saying he's not going to take any money. We've shared his email address here. I'll share it again. I want persistent people that want to help Adam to reach out privately and try to persuade him to take your financial support. We were really overwhelmed by the number of people that reached out to support Jesse with their story. I'm sharing Adam Paul's email right now. It is adampaul0405mail.com I hope some of you who are moved by today's story who want to support Adam even though he's saying you won't accept your money. I hope that some of you will reach out to him and find a way to financially support him and frankly, his parents. Maybe we'll do a GoFundMe. But at least please know Adam's email and consider finding a way to support him really quickly. So you're kicked out of byu, your education is ruined. What ends up happening to these felony accusations or whatever? Just so that people know they were all about the stalking order. They weren't about any actual allegations of actual abuse.

Adam Paul Steed [04:35:29] Yeah. So this other side note, this crazy side story. So my ex ghost, I mean she's used hundreds of thousands of dollars of her parents money. They had a big retirement through ikea, they lived in Europe. You know, they had enough money to help each kid get a house. That money's gone with Doug Thayer in Prova or who lives in Orem and

John Dehlin [04:35:52] that's an attorney they used. Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [04:35:54] At that point, her parents didn't want to send more money to this thing. And he was an aggressive litigation attorney doing family law.

John Dehlin [04:36:06] And I wonder if he's got connections to Curt McConkie or the Mormon Church.

Adam Paul Steed [04:36:10] Like I'm really curious and you know, we need to open up that part of the story too because.

John Dehlin [04:36:16] So your ex wife's attorney was a Mormon Bishop Doug Thayer.

Adam Paul Steed [04:36:21] Yeah. And here's the crazy thing. So this case is just, you know, they just accused me of everything. And I'm going to court over and over and I'm paying for it every time. And, you know, in the beginning, Doug Thayer accused me. When he read the bathtub scene, he said I belonged in prison. When he read my psych evaluation, he highlighted the part that said I was scared of what would happen around children. And I'm saying this wrong. There's a part where I talked about the fear that I had of people seeing me around kids because I lived in southeast Idaho and people came up to me as a kid. And this is in a real private, sensitive report with a professional doctor. And one of the fears I had is people treating me different than the rest of the kids because they knew I had been a victim. They'd come up and said, well, that thing that happened to you at scouting, are you okay to be around kids? That was super traumatic for me. So there's a part in there that says I was scared of what would happen when I'm around kids. Talking in direct context in that report about the fear of people coming up and doing that to me, Doug Thayer highlights that and yells in the courtroom, See, he's the child abuser. Look, he's scared of what will happen when kids are around. He doesn't explain the context. He made me look like a child abuser. You know, he's out there, just this litigative attorney screaming about how dangerous I am after he had milked my ex's parents for all the money they had and got into the deposition, his last string effort. Everything had been thrown out of court by specialists who talked to me and looked at this. The psycho evaluator said that I had a little ADD and I was this, but a very caring father and that he didn't worry at all about me with the kids. And then they said, and then the psych evaluator said that Morwenna was a complex and sophisticated manipulator. And she absolutely talked about how bizarre this Jody lady was. That was in our psych evaluation we get into under oath near the end of this terrible three and a half year process. Doug Thayer, when he's doing my deposition. And by the way, Jody's offering in the emails, Jody's telling Morwenna and they're meeting up so Jody can coach Morwenna on how to do her deposition, which is totally illegal. But in the emails.

John Dehlin [04:38:52] Sorry, the attorney for your ex wife who's a bishop.

Adam Paul Steed [04:38:59] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's the same thought, but. But the bishop or Doug Thayer. So they put a special master over our case to, like, babysit the case between court and to tell us what to do. And it's a really big burden to have one. And like, in California, 80% of the time that they had a special master on a case, the special master would find evidence of abuse. In Utah, it was only 15% of the time. So all these people in this area were suffering from this burden. Well, the special master was Claire Chadwick. And Doug Thayer gets in court, and it's in the transcripts. Oh, yeah, she just lives in my neighborhood. That doesn't mean I know her very well. Whatever he says, laughing and stuff. And the judge agrees to choose Claire Chadwick as the special master over the case. This is important because we went into a settlement or we made our Maryland Moody Browns. We did our discussion back and forth as we. As we came to the terms. And they had a document originally saying that I would have no rights as a father, that I didn't have custody, that I wouldn't this, that, and all this stuff. And I would just have minimal visitation, that the mom would have full legal custody. And so we have, like, a bill for like, 13 hours at Marilyn Moody's Brown as we get to this agreement where it says that mom has full physical custody. But then there was appendage that there's a special master in the case. And she's in there with us and she's saying, I will do this, I will do this. And, you know, they said if Adam does this and does this, then he can have an extra 12 days a month. So it's the same thing as joint custody. So I signed the document that doesn't look like I have custody, but in it, it said I had joint legal custody, but it didn't look like I had joint physical custody because it had this appendage where let them have the win, be a peacemaker. I do what they ask me in this document. My kids and I have a normal life. Finally, it's over. So I do this stuff. I go to the parenting class. They said I do fantastic. They write a letter. I go to a psychologist. They said I had to go for the psychologist. Dr. White said I didn't need to keep going after two or three sessions. He said I had a lot of trauma from the experience, but I was really healthy and stuff. And then I went to psychiatrist. They wrote that I didn't need all this, any medication, that I was fine. So I Didn't need to be forced to take medication. I had written up that I would take medication if a psychiatrist said it. So I basically graduated out of the stuff. They had to slowly introduce my life back in the. And Claire Chadwick, it comes out in this, as we're finishing this stuff. She's not doing her part, the special master. She's not going to the court, she's not reporting it, she's not showing that it's gone through. And then she tells me that Bishop Thayer, her bishop, she talks to me about her conversations with him and she's repenting. This conversation took place while she was in his office in a repentance session. Bishop Thayer had a complete position of authority over her as he was talking about this court case. And I met back with her again. I've got all the emails and the messages back and forth trying to understand why she is doing what she's supposed to do to get this to a judge and correct this document. And then the last time I talked to Claire, she looked at me and she started crying and said, I can't, he's too powerful. He's just too powerful. And then Claire sent a letter to the judge revoking herself from our case, dismissing herself from our case as a special master. So I didn't have my rights restored through the progression that would happen because Bishop Thayer, who lied in court by not dismissing that he was her bishop, used her, sabotaged the whole thing through intimidation of some sort, probably her own sexual sins. She fell apart. I never got it. But then like within two months, my ex wife calls, starts treating me like I'm normal again and just dropping the kids off me. So I didn't need to go fight in court to fix it if I had my rights. She just started bringing them back. She even started bragging that I was her glorified baby daddy and that I'd babysit whenever she wanted. She started traveling all over the country. Last minute California, last minute Mayweather fight, last minute New York, some rich guy giving her Tiffany jewelry. She was just gone all the time. And it evolved in a situation where then I had the kids like 80% of the time for a couple of years and we just lived like normal, peaceful life. My ex wife treated me like I was completely normal and everything was peaceful until 2015 when I went to help refugees and I was gone for a little while and the kids lived in my house and the school was right next to it and the church was down. I came home because I heard my ex wife was taking the kids out of the house. My parents had come watch them. And when I got home, she was acting like she did all those years before, where I was unsafe and unfit. I filed something to keep the kids safe from being pulled out of the home. I didn't think her life was really stable. And suddenly I went to the court to get my divorce decree. And lo and behold, Doug Thayer, all those years before, in Marilyn Moody Brown's meeting, when they were printing off the final settlement agreement, he said, there's a problem with this document printing. Don't worry. Just sign this cover sheet. We'll get it printed. That's the last I know of that. And when I subpoenaed this in 2015, this divorce decree, it was the same decree that he had sent to us before we had mediation. And it said that I'd signed and basically signed my rights away. I had no legal custody, no physical custody. I had no rights as a father. And I wanted desperately to get my kids into counseling because their mom pulled them out of the house, and I couldn't do anything. I didn't even have medical rights over my kids. And to this day, like, my son broke his wrist, like, a month ago. And I went to the hospital to see. He called me, and I went to the hospital to see if he was okay. My ex showed up, and the hospital ordered me out of the emergency room and put me behind a desk over in a corner with my daughter. And then they would not let us see the medical records to know if my son was okay. I mean, my son, just yesterday, he and I were out having tons of fun together. But I can't find out if my son's okay, if there's a medical disaster, because she pulls up these documents that show that she has full custody over my kids. When I moved 2015, shortly after that, when she moved up to James Moss Elementary School, I had to move out of my house. And I came up there to find a new place to live, to be close to the kids. And one day we picked up the. I picked my kids up, and this little boy wanted to come with him, so we called his parents. And so we went and we went to this cool fish tank place. And they liked it. It was saltwater fish tank out in the salt flats, like an ocean fish in the great salt plains. And like a warm fauna place. And we could see these fish. It was fantastic. And I get phone calls from the school therapists at James Moss Elementary School that I need to return this kid. And they started talking about how I was sexually abusive, and I wasn't safe around kids. And that Morwenna had brought these documents showing that I had lost custody of my children. And, I mean, it just got worse. I went home, brought the kid home to his mom, and she said, this is irate crazy. I never said anything about this. The therapist, I confronted her, she mentioned about it. I recorded it. Then later, she denied she did anything like that. The principal was helping her. I mean, it was a sabotage. As a parent, I'm like. Like, there was a day that our family dog died and my kids were totally beyond themselves. Normally, Morwenna doesn't care from spending time with the kids. We live together a big part of the time. But then I went to the school when the dog died, and Morwenna found out and she called the police. And the police escorted me off the school because my kids were in tears, crying. I mean, my daughter literally ran out of the school crying and came to my arms. And then they called the police and said that if I came near the school, I'd be arrested. This is my daughter, who I live with and take care of. Another time, I went on a family. The field trip at James Moss Elementary School to the aquarium. Salt place or the aquarium in Salt Lake. They came on the bus. So I'm just chatting with parents there with my kids, and they escorted me off of the bus, and they said that I had to drive my own car, that I wasn't safe around the kids, and I had to drive my own car. Then I could be at the field trip.

John Dehlin [04:47:54] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:47:54] My kid's watching this.

John Dehlin [04:47:55] Yeah. And I'm so sorry for the way you have been treated and abused as a father who is just trying to take care of your kids. And it just sounds like you were continually harassed and, you know, demeaned when all you wanted to do was show up and support your kids.

Adam Paul Steed [04:48:16] That's what happened. Because I chose Jody Hildebrandt. I chose to go to her after my bishop asked me to.

John Dehlin [04:48:21] Yeah. Just to make sure people understand, just. Can you summarize what happened with those four felony accusations?

Hildebrandt Loses Her License

Adam Paul Steed [04:48:28] Yeah, they all got. After. They all got thrown out of court, except for I had to do a plea bargain to an attempt to break a protective order. It's not domestic violence. It was a fee. No court, jail time. It was just a fee. I. I paid a few hundred dollars and it was over.

John Dehlin [04:48:46] So that's the only thing you've ever been, you know, found guilty of.

Adam Paul Steed [04:48:50] Yeah, but that. That was after.

John Dehlin [04:48:52] Yeah, after the.

Adam Paul Steed [04:48:54] That was after all the Damage to the court case because of the felonies in my BYU and the rumors.

John Dehlin [04:48:59] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:48:59] Of child abuse because he's a felon. Went everywhere.

John Dehlin [04:49:03] How did. Talk quickly about how you ended up taking Jody's license away or having Jody's license taken away. Can you just tell us that story really quick?

Adam Paul Steed [04:49:12] Yeah. Jody was getting ready to go full board into the. The custody civil case. And by the way, folks, I'm just pause for a second. When you have tons and tons of allegations in a civil courtroom about child abuse, but nobody makes criminal allegations to the police, that's all the red flags of somebody manipulating the system. You know, Jody got away with it this whole time. You know, you know, just outrageous stuff. There's a stalker 19 times, no police report. You know, she just creates the qualitative psycho, violent manipulation in a room and gets it. That's what she's proficient at.

John Dehlin [04:49:50] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:49:51] You know, my ex wife had learned like 10 or 11 languages. She's proficient at using other people's antics and languages to communicate.

John Dehlin [04:49:59] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:50:00] And.

John Dehlin [04:50:01] But I'm sorry, how'd you get Jody's license taken away? Just tell us that story.

Adam Paul Steed [04:50:06] It's just like Jody Hillebrand's gonna come testify to a judge what kind of parent I am. Hell no. Hell no. And it's just like she's gonna take my kids away from me. This lunatic cult lady. Hell no. So, you know, it was just this huge fight to find out how to save my children and me. And we had all these legal documents, and then we had all these emails of what a therapist was doing that was completely unethical. Just completely unethical. So we turned them into Doppel.

John Dehlin [04:50:43] This is the licensing agency in Utah for therapists and other professionals.

Adam Paul Steed [04:50:48] Yeah. Yeah, we turned him into Doppel. And it's unfortunate that some of the most incriminating things on. Of those documents we have on Jody didn't come through the right channels of the emails, through the right subpoenaed form, the right way, because then they were disqualified from being used in the case. And I'll never forget when Doppel, when we needed to go pick up the huge files that we had, that Doppel was like, my dad said, hey, I want you to come here. And I came in and there were like all these people standing at their desks just looking at me. And one guy just looked at me and he gave me a hug, and he goes, I'm so sorry we failed you. Because they had only got Jody for having a dual relationship and for sharing medical records. But they had seen all of the stuff that we're sharing, some of it today. They'd seen the stuff I still haven't showed the most sensitive materials I've never showed. And I'm not going to show the pictures of my daughter when they're doing this to her and their descriptions and them using the same kind of talk as they're just, you know.

John Dehlin [04:52:06] Oh. Because the word on the street is that she lost her license for violating your confidentiality. But it's much more than that.

Adam Paul Steed [04:52:14] Oh, she did so much more. Doppel people that day told me she was guilty of multiple criminal offenses, but the only reason she had the best

John Dehlin [04:52:23] criminal offenses, not just criminal licenses, criminal offenses.

Adam Paul Steed [04:52:27] And they said she absolutely would have lost her license and been guilty of criminal offenses. But she had such powerful attorneys. She had the attorneys from the University of Utah that represented the whole school. And they said that because these emails didn't come through the right source, they weren't able to be used.

John Dehlin [04:52:44] And by the way, it was the Mormon Church that was. According to Jesse Hildebrand, it was the Mormon Church that was her biggest client, shoveling money to her to pay for the bishop referrals to her for the sex addiction stuff. So in effect, her lawyers to protect her were funded in part largely by the Mormon Church.

Adam Paul Steed [04:53:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:53:10] Yeah. So. So ultimately, though, she was. Her license was taken away, correct?

Adam Paul Steed [04:53:18] Yeah, her license was taken away. But I was so overwhelmed. I had no money. I couldn't go back to school. I couldn't get a job because I had to take care of two kids all the time.

John Dehlin [04:53:29] How long was her license. How long was their license suspended for?

Adam Paul Steed [04:53:33] When I. When I found out, that's all they did.

John Dehlin [04:53:35] What was it? How much?

Adam Paul Steed [04:53:37] They put her on parole. I think she was probation. Probation. I think it was for a couple years. It's on Jody hildebrandt.com if you look in the sections, they have all the legal stuff. But when I found out, I was like, I got to tell the press about this lady. So I went to. I called Salt Lake Tribune and talked to. It was either Heather or Rachel. And I gave that story that came out that's been in the news. I was funny, A reporter asked me about that, and they said, how do we know that's you? And I gave them the phone number to the reporter and I said, call her and ask. We'll put her on a group conference call and I'll divulge who I am.

John Dehlin [04:54:15] Yeah. So I mean, on the one hand, it's a miracle that she faced any punishment at all, given how much of Utah is controlled by a powerful Mormon, you know, church leadership and members. On the other hand, you know, a year or two of a license suspension where she's still allowed to practice as a life coach, by the way. So it doesn't mean she stopped working. She just changed how she described her services and started describing her services as life coaching. And she just. Business as usual. Probably made more money.

Adam Paul Steed [04:54:51] Oh, she has.

John Dehlin [04:54:51] Than she was making before.

Adam Paul Steed [04:54:53] Yeah. She had so many victims. When I was in jail because of those felony charges where I'd missed the hearing and because they were. Well, we've explained that. I met a guy, and he told me the exact same story and that he had broke a protective order. He told me with this crazy therapist, and he just couldn't believe it. And how he separated him from his wife and how they had different stories and how it led to a huge fight, and now he was in trouble for. I was just listening to this. It was like. And I just said, oh, my gosh. This. He said, now he's in trouble for a protective order violation because he went to a storage unit where he grabbed something, and now he's in jail and. And they have a custody case, and he's worried losing. I'm just sitting there listening to this.

John Dehlin [04:55:32] Do you know if it was Jody?

Adam Paul Steed [04:55:33] I said to him, oh, my gosh. You got to hear my story. And we just looked at each other. I said, is your therapist named Jody? And he's like, yeah. And I was like. We just sat there. We're like, oh, my gosh. We gave each other hugs because it was just like we thought we were alone in this. And, you know, and suddenly it was like an exact duplicate.

John Dehlin [04:55:49] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [04:55:49] And I met another guy when I was painting curb addresses that told me the same story, the same thing. It had all the same ab. Except for. Normally a story's like ab. This complex story was like, you know, to get to L, you had A, B, C, D, F, G, H, E, J, K, L. I mean, but it was the exact same sequence, the same order. It was the same systematic stuff. So, yeah, I did feel a responsibility to tell the public about Jody. That is why I did an anonymous Salt Lake Tribune article about Jody.

John Dehlin [04:56:22] Yeah. And just reading a few things from the article, she was punished. She was on probation for 18 months, not even two years. And it said she had to meet 22 conditions or she would lose her license then. This is funny. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said Wednesday that Hildebrand is no longer on LDS family services referral list due to the case. I guarantee you over the past five years, Mormon bishops have still been referring Mormon church members to Jody Hildebrand.

Adam Paul Steed [04:56:56] Play them like a flute. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:56:58] So whatever the church said in this statement, Mormon bishops, absolutely. They continue to refer their clients to Jody Hilton.

Adam Paul Steed [04:57:07] My father did multiple reports to the LDS social family services until they knew that if they kept her, they would get in huge trouble. That's the reason they changed that for just whenever.

John Dehlin [04:57:18] Yeah. It was only after your dad really interviewed you?

Adam Paul Steed [04:57:21] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:57:23] Yeah. Yeah. Did it feel good to see her have some consequence?

Adam Paul Steed [04:57:31] So I woke up at like 4am I don't know why I woke up at 4am I have a 3 month old little baby boy and my wife's next to me. We got married a year ago and I flipped on my phone to see the news and I read about eight passengers and this crazy therapist. And then when I read about them being in jail and then I read Jody Hillebrant name, I just, my eyes popped out of my head. I literally got on my phone at this early hour. I never called my mom that time in the morning. And I called her. I was like, mom, mom, you're not going to believe this. She's like, what is it? Why are you waking us up? Is there an emergency? Is something wrong? I was like, mom, Mom. Jody Hildebrandt, she's arrested for child abuse. And you know, I just couldn't even believe it. I got up. I just. I just can't tell you. Like, I was scared of my own name because of that lady. I've lived my life in fear. Everywhere I've gone because of that lady and putting my name out there and connecting me. And I just couldn't believe this. This monster who had overwhelmed and destroyed my life and now the world. Once I saw what happened, I knew the world will not let go of this until they know every detail. And I could see finally the energy it would take to tell the truth crime about what happened to me and my family. Because different than like a person that goes out and shoots somebody, there's like two variables between the crime and the person. Jody created a world of like hundreds of variables. And so people just get lost within the psychosexual triggers and nobody can ever find it. The beginning product and the end product is the crime. And now I finally knew that the world would help us. We weren't alone anymore. Everyone in the world would be finding this story out. And I also knew how important it was. I just Got thinking and thinking how important it was the world knew the truth. So that Brian Knappenberger, I think I mentioned this, he. He's a Netflix producer that did my Sundance movie about coming forward and scouting the church in the fourth estate. Brian's the one that just said when he worked with all these victims, he said, courage or courage is contagious. And I love that because it is contagious. And I just felt like, I mean, if you guys think I'm traumatized in this interview, if you compared the trauma today compared to the last 15 years of my life from this, you would find that this is, you know, in every way, this is where change finally is going to happen and where I feel the peace will be here. And there are. So. I know that I got lucky. I have all these documents on Jody. I'm so thankful my father helped in that whole process to capture all of that. There's probably hundreds and hundreds of victims who don't have the documents. And I didn't want to share anything personal that hurt my family or my children or me. But I also know that if we tell the truth and the world grasp it finally, that the world will change.

John Dehlin [05:01:03] Beautifully said. Really quickly. I'm just going to restate that. Several major national and international news media outlets have reached out to me. If any of you are also victims of Jody Hildebrandt or, you know, connections, they want to talk to you. So email me@mormonstoriesmail.com I will put you in touch with these reporters. And, you know, there's concern that Jody Hildebrandt will have good enough attorneys to escape prosecution.

Adam Paul Steed [05:01:42] I think that if you close your eyes to this, you're naive and just dumb. Like, I mean, they're already advertising to get public opinion on their side by saying that these, you know, yelling out that these children are sexual predators. They're already.

John Dehlin [05:02:02] Both are in the hospital now. They're both Ruby and Jody are now

Adam Paul Steed [05:02:05] in a hospital that you should. You show fear to deflect people's anger. You know, that's. That's Jody and, you know, she did that in the doppel stuff.

John Dehlin [05:02:18] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [05:02:19] Some fearful, some stalker. I hadn't even seen her in 14 years when I read the document last year. Yeah, you know, so. So, yeah, I think it's. It's. I was reading what some criminal lawyers or legal advisors, I read in the press, and they said that when a judge is considering the sentencing, it's really important the circumstances in the community and to learn more about, like, what this means and who these people have hurt and the way that they've hurt. And. And Jody wants to speed up the process because. And that's what their legal team's trying to do so they can speed it up before the world starts to see these layers of manipulation for what they really are and graduate through this complex process that takes time. And then find out how many victims and how much damage this sycophant created in this world

John Dehlin [05:03:17] really quickly. Do you want to tell the final ending about? You may have already mentioned this, but because it's at the end about Hillam and you heard the BYU office with Dan Charman. Yeah.

Long-Term Consequences and Path Forward

Adam Paul Steed [05:03:34] It's a real winner. Been trying for three years, showing the Honor Code office records to BYU for three years. Every semester. I thought I could still go to school, so I'd start class every semester, tell them the registration was being hauled up. I'd go through the whole thing. We get to the first. I couldn't do the first test because I wasn't in the system. And then I'd have to be like, oh, better luck next semester. I was trying to fit in and live my life. And during that time, I was just actively trying to get back into byu. Finally, my dad organizes the honor code files with the emails. Puts together such a compelling argument of how damning BYU is for this situation that, I mean, it's just completely damning. The ethics. And I drop them off in the president's office at byu. And Jan Sharman, the vice president, calls me in personally. So finally, somebody's listening, and she says, we can do this the legal way, with attorneys, and then we can't talk, or we can talk through this, and I'll help you. So I'm just like, you know, let's talk through this. I just want to get back to school and just be able to move forward. We get talking, and she lets me know that part of my stip conditions, my emails to them, was that they had to fire Ed Morin from the Honor Code office, get these dangerous people out of there. And she lets me know that she said it in terms like this. I've removed Ed from that office. We've transferred him to a different job where he can't hurt anybody with this stuff or work with people in this manner. She goes, but we're not going to publicly say that or anything because we don't want that to happen. We don't want to hurt byu. And I'm agreeing. And part of the talk, I said, well, if I sue the university, I said, would the settlement be Tithing. And she said, yeah, it would be tithing.

John Dehlin [05:05:34] Oh, now all of a sudden it is tithing instead of investing.

Adam Paul Steed [05:05:37] I didn't know that this was the richest church in the world with like, hundreds of billions of dollars. I'm, like, barely living rent to rent, working on tractors in people's yards so that my kids can sit in the tractor with me because I don't have money for a babysitter. And I have like $100,000, $150,000 of attorney fees. I still hadn't paid it that way. Point. And I mean. And I'm sitting there

John Dehlin [05:06:05] and you asked her if tithing.

Adam Paul Steed [05:06:06] Yeah, she told me that it would be tithing money, used to pay it. And I told her I didn't want. Probably what I'm doing right now where I'm too righteous to get help. Yeah. And the thing is, I didn't want to take tithing money that I thought was to help women, the sick, the afflicted. You know, I thought, okay, I'm good enough. I'm strong enough. I don't need this. And she said she'd take care of me. She called me in like two more times, like an hour at a time to make sure everything was okay and get this all ready and said I could come back to school. I'm thinking I got a full ride scholarship. They're going to pay for room and board. They're probably going to give me a cash settlement to help me because they understand. I showed in the documents just the part of my custody case, attorney fees, for how the honor code stuff had to be discussed, how much that affected the case, all the stuff that was separate from what would have been a normal divorce, the thousands and thousands, like $40,000 of attorney fees wrapped around the honor code stuff or something like that that I had to pay and not the time I lost with my kids or anything. I'm thinking they're going to help me gets ready for school. I'm still living paycheck to paycheck. I can't. I can't afford my tuition. So I got my Temple recommend. Suddenly they give it to me, and I can't afford tuition. So I just couldn't go to school. So I finally could go, and then I couldn't afford it, so I didn't have a babysitter. And now the kids were. I loved them. I won't say they were dumped on me, but I didn't have any way to take care of these two little kids other than just to stay home and take care of him.

John Dehlin [05:07:45] And this was all tied to Hillam's passing, Is that correct?

Adam Paul Steed [05:07:48] Well, this stuff all suddenly changed, and I made leg way that I could suddenly get back into school and get a temple recommend Just shortly after elder Hillam passed away.

John Dehlin [05:07:57] And again, he was the Mormon general authority, president of the LDS Church, presidency of the 70, certainly one of the top 20 most powerful Mormon leaders in the world. He was over the boy scout, you know, camp. He was over boy scouting in Idaho. He was the one that tried to malign and defame you all the way along.

Adam Paul Steed [05:08:20] Well, I didn't. I didn't. In my young mind, I'm going to scouts, I find, you know, I knew about Brad souls as predator, who I also was introduced to at church in my neighborhood. You know, I turn him in and Brad Allen, who's, let's see, I mixed the jobs up. There's Brad Allen and Kim Hansen. Brad Allen's the liaison for scouting for the entire Mormon church. There is maybe one third of the scouting members for the whole world were Mormon. And Brad Allen is on the phone with me, talking me into a scenario where I won't tell my parents and I won't tell anybody about Brad stoells finding out what evidence there was of the child abuse, promising me that he'll work with this and take care of it and get me to feel that if I talk about this, no one will send their kids to scouting. I'll ruin all this stuff, and it'll all be my fault. So then the week goes on, and I'm out there gathering all these kids to stop this serial predator from hurting them. And I'm 14, and it was dangerous doing what we were doing, Trying to come and get them to come forward and help them realize it, and then band them together and to talk. And, you know, then I'm back in there telling Elias Lopez, this doesn't work. He's the camp director, the predator's second in charge of camp. And then the phone calls graduate to Kim Hansen, who's over, like, the whole area. And Kim Hansen is the one that really sealed the deal, Making me promise never to tell my parents. And then he said he would fix it. And they didn't, though, and more kids were sexually abused. And I kept fighting against it, and they were still being sexually abused. Finally, I was like, this isn't last talk. He said, does this work for you? And I said, no, I'm hanging up and I'm calling the police. And I hung up And I called 911, right? And then the Police came.

John Dehlin [05:10:16] So bringing this back to Hillam, though.

Adam Paul Steed [05:10:18] Well, so I was looking at it early on. My dad and I were like, yeah, the scouting guys, they're all Mormon, but they're professionals. And scouting is the guilty one. The church isn't. They're just trying to blame it on the church. So we didn't go after the church. So I didn't know that Elder Helam was the president of the Grand Teton Scout Council. I didn't even know. But in the council where the records show that they send Brad to Bishop instead of the police when he was caught with sexual abuse before this ever happened to me. And then he's back working these things graduate right up to the church leadership in the area. But President Helam was also the president of the Scout Council, the Grand Tetong Scout Council. I mean, it was just way too much power in those people's hands. As long as it was church leaders talking, they didn't have to report to the public because of the Bishop Penton and Slough. They'd send a person as their punishment to a bishop. A pedophile. A pedophile.

John Dehlin [05:11:21] And you. And you. I think you mentioned earlier that mysteriously Hillam showed up at your court trials later on.

Adam Paul Steed [05:11:29] In one article, after it started to snowball out of control, they said there were more child abusers at the southeast Idaho area than there were in the epicenter of the Catholic Church scandal.

John Dehlin [05:11:40] Yeah, you mentioned that. But Hillam showed up at your court trials way later.

Adam Paul Steed [05:11:46] Yeah, he showed up with the protective order case. He's sitting next to Jody Hildebrandt. They are in the group figuring out the next move.

John Dehlin [05:11:54] Right. So any idea why they would wait till he passes away to then let you know that you can come back to BYU and that they want to be nice to you? I guess you'd be speculating.

Adam Paul Steed [05:12:05] It's all speculation. All I know is that. And about like, BYU became nice to me. My ex wife became nice to me. Elder, you know, after. After a period of time for her. It took a few years of transition. I think the babysitting came faster, but it all just transitioned. And yeah, it's after Elder Helam died, so I don't know.

John Dehlin [05:12:34] So you weren't. Were you able to sue BYU or the Mormon Church? Did they take care of you in any way financially? No. Even though they acknowledged.

Adam Paul Steed [05:12:42] They said they would. They didn't.

John Dehlin [05:12:44] Okay.

Adam Paul Steed [05:12:44] Not a penny.

John Dehlin [05:12:45] Okay. And they. And again, this BYU vice president discouraged you from suing the church by telling you it would be tithing that you would be taking away from the church. And I just want to add, for those who aren't Mormon and don't know the joke that I made earlier recently, the Mormon Church is being sued by David Nielsen, former investor for the Mormon Church through Ensign Peak. And James Huntsman, a prominent Mormon, is suing the Mormon Church for misleading members, saying that no tithing. Gordon B. Hinckley stating publicly that no tithing was used to pay for this $2 billion shopping mall, City Creek Mall. The Mormon Church is trying to argue that Hinckley wasn't lying, that it wasn't tithing that was used to bail out beneficial life and to subsidize a commercial shopping mall. It was the investments on the tithing. And so no harm, no foul. They're not using tithing for business dealings. They're using investments on the tithing. And I'm just noting the irony that when the church wants to pay for a commercial shopping mall or bail out a failed insurance company, it's not tithing it's using. But if Adam Paul Steed wants to get some sort of compensation for the pain the Mormon Church and BYU caused to destroy his life, well, you know, don't sue the church, Adam Paul Steed, because it's sacred tithing funds that you would be suing. That's outrageous, and it's egregious. Really quickly, I do believe that. Let's say, Jody Hildebrandt, first of all. Again, email me@mormonstoriesmail.com if you want to speak to reporters. I think police officers and investigators would probably also appreciate any information that could be used to help build a case against Jody Hildebrandt legally. So email me@mormonstoriesmail.com and I'm happy to put you in touch with anyone I can to help justice be served. Please contact me. But, you know, it is very possible that Jody Hildebrandt could walk, but let's just say she's put, you know, behind bars for the rest of her life or for a really long time. I don't think that means this problem is over within Mormonism. There is a deeper problem here that has nothing to do with Jody Hildebrandt or connections or lifestyle. It, you know, and so I. Do you want to speak to that problem? Because I think reporters dealing with Jody Hildebrand is dealing with the small smoke in some case, not the actual fire. So do you want to address the systemic problem?

Adam Paul Steed [05:15:24] Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of us who have been members of the church think that maybe just recently the church Leaders took a dive, but the gospel was true.

John Dehlin [05:15:35] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [05:15:36] And it's interesting because when I started, I stayed active in church through all of this. And I finally went and helped some refugees. I remember we were in Lesbos, Greece. Me and a Spanish guy and a British guy had just had our boat chased by smugglers. They had guns, and we had merely got away from them. The boat blew up. We were almost killed. And we were out saving people. Babies were dying, kids, people were dying. Their bodies were floating up on the beach. This was where we were. I saw the bodies. I saw the people notion. I helped swim out to different boats and navigate them. And I was in this situation where people were throwing up because we just almost got killed. And this guy, like, there's this little food place on the beach. And this guy, one guy got a drink and another guy started smoking a joint. And I didn't do those things. I still don't do those things. But I just stopped and I thought, there's no way God's going to judge that person. Like they're an evil person. When they just risked their whole life to go out and save those kids just because they smoked or because they did a joint. There's no way. God's not going to send that person to heaven. And I thought, you know, come out how rich the church was. And I heard that the. I don't know if it's true, but the Provo Temple restoration was like half a billion dollars or something.

John Dehlin [05:17:13] Well, the Mormon Church is estimated to be worth $250 billion today.

Adam Paul Steed [05:17:17] Well, and I'm sitting there learning about corruption out there because I'm asking all the refugees that show up, how much did you pay for your crossing? And I noticed this pattern that they pay like $1,000 to pass seven miles. It's like Utah Lake. But I noticed that every time a boat goes down and people die and there's death on the water. Now instead of shopping around to tons of different smugglers, everybody just pays money to the first person they get to. And they pay like four or five thousand dollars a passage. And I realize that if there's a certain amount of death on the water, these people earn a huge amount of money. And if there isn't. And that's called psycho violent manipulation. And it totally changes people. They don't shop around, they just pay it and they go. And that's where I got exposed to that. And then I started doing research and I started to realize that the boats that were sinking, it was weird. It wasn't making sense. They knew there were two boats from the Greeks that would go out and try to save people that were police boats. And they'd wait till just the right time. They would wait till the water was just stormy. They would load it with just too many people. And then they'd take the. These rafts, they take these boats, the plywood, they turn it sideways so the little splinters would pop the middle part. And then it wouldn't go anywhere and get stuck in the middle of this area. And people would die of hypothermia. And they would do it in several. Right at the same time so that people die. They needed some people to die so that they could boost this market price up and get it rolling. And I mean, it was. At first it seemed like it was all scattered, but there was like billions of dollars of these smugglers working on people's manipulation on them to profit this market as good as they could. And then I realized that there was all this pressure to. I remember doing the math, there was all this pressure to not send people through because there was this. The US had spent $4 billion sent to Turkey or something to those leaders there. And Stephanie, they couldn't have as many people to go through, but to get the same amount of money that those smugglers needed, because they didn't have as much people. They needed people that paid a certain amount of price. And I did the math, and there was a certain amount of death that got that amount of people through paying that amount of price. In other words, there was a bureaucracy that had an appetite of a certain amount and it needed to manipulate things to meet what it needed.

John Dehlin [05:19:46] And you're saying you started to see

Adam Paul Steed [05:19:49] that I'm sitting there, activity in the Mormon Church. And I don't know why these thoughts are coming in my head, but I'm seeing the details and I'm doing the math and I'm just out there on the beach.

John Dehlin [05:19:58] So summarize for us how you tie that to the Mormon Church just because we've kept you here five hours and 22 minutes.

Adam Paul Steed [05:20:04] Well, I just sat there and I turned around and I thought, here's this huge amount of money they have. They've been remodeling churches way too fast. They've been building temples way too fast. They're way too expensive. How could you turn tithing money into something you could profit off of? If you owned the companies, if your families and friends owned the companies that the church used to do this, to build these temple like places that were extraordinarily expensive, you could take tithing and turn it into money in your hand. And I'm sitting there looking at that, and the church does this huge pr. Ann Bernard, new York Times. She's telling me, wow, your church is really doing a lot for refugees. There's this huge PR thing. It looks like that they send one of the apostles over to this camp. My dad talks to them and stuff, and they write a $10 million check or something to the Red Cross. And the thing is, the Red Cross wasn't helping all the refugees. They had, like a supply place in town, and they never helped them. None of the refugees could reach them. It was all the. The volunteers showing up. And it was this horrible situation where people were dying. And we're just kind of looking at this, and the church is just talking in all of its PR of how it's donating this one check or whatever, and it says help. And they advertise us. Me and my sister are even in the conference videos. And then they did it a second time without even asking our permission. It made it look like this huge amount of help they were doing for refugees. And my brain just started looking at stuff and looking at stuff, and I just started to come up with all these questions. Why is the auditing system not allowed for members to look at? Why is it possible we donate money to the church and then they give goods out in di. And then they keep the money, but they count the goods as a value and they give it out? Like, I just started to have all these questions, and at some point I just couldn't, like, you know, I remember I came home from this crazy situation that was traumatic where 17 kids died that I felt guilty for, that I could have saved in the ocean. And I had a lot of trauma from that. And I come home and the guy over PR for the Mormon Church calls me on the telephone. And I had made contacts with refugees that were real political prisoners, and I had taken all their Facebook. And now there were all these war crimes. And seeing the people in real life, I realized how human they were and how they needed a voice. All this, you know, ISIS suicide bomber or propaganda. What doesn't make sense when you're standing in a field full of women and children and husbands and people in real life, then that's not them at all. It's some far off, abstract idea. I'm with these people. And anyway, I took a lot of Facebook stuff and they started connecting me into the war. And then for two and a half years, I started gathering their information and giving it to the world press, so they'd create a voice for these people that were in war zones. And I had just done a whole bunch of research where I had learned about the psycho violent manipulation that was framing this holocaust of being like an ISIS thing. And I had reported to the New York Times like an eight hour phone call giving all my evidence from it. And after that, in the next news article that came out, they said that an ISIS propaganda leader had been killed by a US missile. It wasn't radical Islamist or something. That religion was manipulated against people. And then the rest of the world started saying that, and they introduced ISIS propaganda as an issue instead of manipulating these people's religion against them. I had just done that with the New York Times. And the PR for the church calls up and tells me, oh, well, the money to help refugees. When the apostle said that helping refugees was more important than any calling in the church, he met refugees in Utah, not people that haven't been vented for ISIS for like, so many years. And that's when I quit the church. I just walked away slowly. I didn't do any. No one really knew. I just sat there and thought, Christ wanted to help the sick and the afflicted. And here's the richest church in the world with a PR campaign to look like they're helping all these people, people around the world, and really, you know, they could use that money to help so many people. And I think about this, I don't know if it's just me, but I'm like, we all vote to sustain leaders in the church. Are we a government? Do we have voting power? Or is it just a fake government to make it look like we're supporting a cult? Because if we have voting power, I have no doubt in my mind that if all the members of the church voted on it, that money would be taken away from the leaders and used to help the sick and afflicted and the poor. I don't know if that's a legal thing, but, you know, I just look at it and I'm just like, anyway, that's where I drop the microphone, if it's possible to drop.

Church's Role in Pathologizing Sexuality

John Dehlin [05:24:52] Yeah, and what about just the church pathologizing normative sexual behavior and, you know, making it a sin next to murder, which creates the cottage industry of a sex addiction therapist, not to mention the entire Mormon church addiction recovery program that Jody built on top of. What about the Mormon church pathologizing and demonizing, you know, masturbation? Healthy, normative, infrequent masturbation.

Adam Paul Steed [05:25:21] You know, I look at that, and I'm sitting there thinking about that. My opinion, the tithing corridor of the Mormon Church, the people who pay the most tithing, which I don't know if they care about anymore because there's so much interest now, they earn just off that fortune. But the tithing corridor was, I figured, because like I went through divorce and breakup and everything and financial ruin, I figured these people aren't paying the tithing, it's married couples. And then I kind of thought, well, it's probably where they build all the church seminary buildings, like the main i15 corridor, where the main church is that they really care about. And then I kind of noticed the church says they're all the same church, but I kind of noticed a double standard of what worthiness meant for your callings. And people who were in the church outside of the i15 corridor, where I think all the tithing was coming from, you know, someone who had a smoking problem the bishop could know about, as long as he's trying and didn't smoke at church, he had a calling. But out here, if you masturbated or looked at porn, you were unworthy. I got thinking about, what's that thing where they made alcohol legal? Prohibition, prohibitions. And they talked about some church leader that went out to work with the leaders and came back and got the church out of debt. Some young church leader, he later became a prophet. And I sit there and think that when you take something that people struggle with, like coffee, something small, that's likely they'll just keep doing it, like masturbation or pornography. And you just create this thing over and over with people in their shame cycle that you can harness. And you don't recognize it personally, but when you look at it with statistics departments and a huge level of millions of people, you can harness power from that. And then I started looking at the church handbook, how this book got really big and fat right when the church got really wealthy. And in there, there's instructions for a bishop right after someone talks about sexual trauma that they come in saying, do you still support your church leaders? Do you still, you know, do you swear this? I mean, do you support this? That's what it is. You're swearing basically when you're saying that you do, you know, and will you pay tithing? You know, will you follow Christ? You know? And I got thinking about the timing of. I've worked with all these victims and what I've learned is when a victim comes forward, they're in a super traumatic moment. I'll be in A traumatic moment for a while after I've had this discussion that they'll just listen to whoever tells them what to do and they'll feel this strong feeling. And I thought, did the church statistics department see that inserting, getting people to swear into this stuff right after they had an issue was a really powerful formation to increase activity and tithing and money. And I got thinking about how at the same time all these conference talks came out about porn and all this kind of stuff with these people. And I started wondering if when you slip and you mess up and you go to a bishop and he supports and loves you, if that doesn't increase your tithing and increase your activity, and on a little level, microeconomics, that doesn't matter. But macroeconomics, could that make you billions and billions of dollars, clearly, to take that moment. And there's no ethical reason that once a victim comes forward, you take your own profiteering. That's the moment where you help put them back together with what they're able to. You know, that's about them and healing them. But this is what we made it about, was this system. So I do have some major concerns for the Mormon Church. I have major concerns for, for, you know, that seems like institutionalized profiteering that came from keeping around a super hypersexual form of worthiness. But it fed. What's sad is these victims in this environment fed straight into the clutches of Jody Hildebrandt.

John Dehlin [05:29:19] Yeah. And until the Mormon Church fixes this rhetoric that is not supported by mental health professionals, more Jody Hildebrandts are going to keep. They're already existing. People are telling me, John, Jody Hildebrand's not the only one. There's other groups, there's other therapists all along the Wasatch front, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, California. They're all over the place. And if you think that you're going to solve this problem, journalists, whoever, if you think that you're going to solve this problem just by cutting off one head of the hydraulic, other heads are going to grow back. The Mormon Church systemically has to solve this problem by stopping to pathologize normative human behavior.

Adam Paul Steed [05:30:02] Yeah, I literally think that the reason the church is against homosexual, one of the reasons is because if they allow, because Christ teaches to show love and understanding. And in the scriptures of the Mormons, it says, after everything, you're judged by the condition of your heart. That should have been the end. But I think the reason that they're so against that is because if they allow that, then they can't get people in trouble for masturbating and pornography. It could be just a sexual preference, a choice of belief or sexuality. You know, they lose this whole thing.

John Dehlin [05:30:37] It's possible.

Adam Paul Steed [05:30:38] I want to finish on one thing. My dad, Paul Steed, seminary teacher, studier of scriptures, he pointed out to me, you know, because people sit there and they think, well, this is a new thing. The church didn't have these problems in the past. And he said, you know, something that really has bothered me and this also kind of really concreted me not going to church anymore because I went for a long time after Elder Helam died. They called me into the nursery. My calling, my bishop wanted to know that they didn't fear me being around kids anymore. And they called me into the nursery.

John Dehlin [05:31:16] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [05:31:17] And I mean, When my dad pulled me aside and he said, this is so interesting, and I know that many of you listening to me have tried to figure out what to do with your faith and your belief when you get lost after being separated from something that you put every. Everything into. And he said to me, look at this doctrine and covenants, the scriptures about Christ. And then look at the New Testament. And in the New Testament, people that are sick and afflicted with infirmities, Christ always shows them love. He's always saying, you know, he's showing this compassionate side of love and encouraging people to work on their struggles, but he's showing love. But he's furiously angry at the publicans and the hypocrites, the people that manipulate these beliefs against people to control them or hurt them. Those are the people he yells at to get out of the temple. And what's interesting is all these scriptures show that with infirmities, he shows people love. But then in the Doctrine and Covenants, it's the reverse. They are showing all these scriptures where they're just saying that Emma Smith will be damned to hell forever if she doesn't accept her husband, husband having more wives and all this kind of stuff. And so. And so if he does this sexual sin, it's eternal damnation. And this one, it's eternal damnation. And then they turn around and show this loving, kind, understanding God that forgives the church leaders back then for their infirmities. Yeah, that's exactly the opposite of the New Testament. You can go through the whole Doctrine and Covenants and you'll see that argument. So from the beginning, they were creating an environment where church leaders would be forgiven, where pedophiles would be forgiven, or covering them up would be forgiven. But infirmities and normal sexual sins and normal situations would have eternal consequences.

John Dehlin [05:33:22] Yeah. It's absolutely a fact that a normative, masturbating young man or, you know, is treated worse than a pedophile in the Mormon Church. Yeah, it's factual. Or a healthy, gay, married man, legally married, is treated worse than a pedophile in the Mormon Church. Full stop. No question. The fact that they believed you had a history of child abuse and put you in the nursery is a perfect. I'm glad they put you in the nursery.

Adam Paul Steed [05:33:48] But how, you know, I went for church an extra two years because of that extra calling, because I was so traumatized about the victims that had been killed in the ocean and they had these little kids in there and I. I had my own kids. And. Yeah, I just, it just made me heal.

John Dehlin [05:34:05] Yeah. Well, really quickly, last question. Do you believe. Do you believe. You don't know this, but do you believe that the Mormon Church, possibly you used Jody Hildebrandt to retaliate against you and your dad for whistleblowing on Boy Scout sexual abuse in Idaho and having the laws changed in Idaho? Do you believe there's a connection between what Jody did to you and what you did as a whistleblower against the Boy Scouts?

Adam Paul Steed [05:34:40] Is your left arm connected to your right arm just because you can't see the body? I mean, I 1000% believe. 1000. 1000. 1000% believe.

John Dehlin [05:34:54] Yeah. And that's another systemic problem. Just the whole legal issues and the power and the money of the church and how in Utah it wields so much power, NBYU and the honor code like we covered so much. I am going to post right now Adam's email one last time. It is adampaul0405mail.com Many of you I know will want to step up to support Adam financially. Please email him. Please be persistent. Hopefully he'll set up a Venmo or give you his Zelle account. Maven's been talking about potentially people donating through Zelle or Venmo to that email address. And then you can open up a Zelle or a Venmo account synced up with that email. I know you don't want to receive any money for this, but I think there's people who have money to give who want to thank you for your courage, just like they did with Jesse Hildebrandt. But regardless of that email, if you want to support Adam and thank him for his work monetarily, again, the Email address is adampaul0405mail.com. Please be relentless until you're able to provide Adam with some support and maybe his parents. And again, please, like this episode. Right now, we still have 9,500 people joining us, even though it's clear, even though we're five hours and 39 minutes in wait.

Adam Paul Steed [05:36:28] This is live.

John Dehlin [05:36:29] This is all live. That's good. Please like this episode. Episode. Please subscribe to the Mormon Stories podcast feed. Please share it. Not for me, not for Mormon Stories podcast, but for the cause of Adam Paul Steed, for. For Jesse Hildebrandt, for all the victims. Please do all you can to make this social media known and seen far and wide so the algorithms will carry this to the far ends of the earth so that justice will be served.

Adam Paul Steed [05:37:01] I want to just leave on an optimistic note to victims everywhere.

John Dehlin [05:37:05] Yeah. People want to know, how are you now?

Adam Paul Steed [05:37:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's end with that. Yeah, yeah, let's. Let's do that. I always have a rule when somebody comes forward, the way, you know, they're having, like, traumatic talk, they'll be talking to you, and it'll be. It'll become like a monologue instead of a conversation. Back and forth.

John Dehlin [05:37:21] Yeah.

Adam Paul Steed [05:37:21] And that's how you can tell there's trauma. Trauma comes out. And in, like, monologues of some. Another way you can tell they have in PTSD is that they're talking about the past. And right now, some situation, the past. And soon, you can't tell the difference between the past and the present. So you're dealing with the person with ptsd. Possibly it's your spouse, the person you love, Maybe it's your child, maybe it's your parent, maybe it's your brother or sister. And so these people want to alienate us and make us alone, these predators. So don't help them out by hearing the story. And because the person isn't following the normal social stuff that you just kind of shun them and walk off, or even if you want to stay, but you just have to leave instantly because your job's calling. You know, these are terrible. PTSD comes out in the craziest times. Maybe you have to shut that conversation because you're walking across the street and you can't stay, you know, because you're on a bicycle or something. Who knows? But the point is that when a person shares this kind of sensitive material, they need you to not ask them tons of questions that would traumatize them about it, but they need your validation, and they need you to be close. It's really traumatic to have somebody Just tear away right at that moment. So something that really helps them. If they're your spouse, give them a hug, just love them, be close to them. But talk about other stuff that's light, make it fun, laugh about other stuff so that when this moment happens, the person doesn't just get reinforced negative fear, but instead they see that they're normal and they see that they're fun. Anyway, I always believed in telling the truth the whole way through my life. I've always been accused of saying too much, but this is my truth. And lo and behold, the truth is finally working out for me. And I want to give hope to people that think that they're undateable after all their trauma or that they can't have a super happy marriage because of all their trauma or girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever friend. That they can't have a successful life. And a year ago, someone knocked on my door a little year and a half ago. It's beautiful. Egyptian Syrian doctor who thought my apartment. She didn't knock on the door she thought was her Airbnb. And she opened the door, she saw me and the kids and she slammed the door shut. And yeah, that's my wife now. And she's super happy and she's. She's got her feet on the ground. She grounds me whenever I have trauma, just in two seconds. And she means the world to me and I love her so much. And. And now we have this beautiful little baby boy. In fact, I took a bath with my baby boy this morning with my wife. And it was fantastic. It was intimate and beautiful. And so to the long line of predators in my life who thought they could steal that from me, well, they can. Nor can fear and victims feel that they have no innocence. Find your innocence again. Find good friends and good people and find love and find meaning. And meaning comes from being needed for something that no one else can do. Each one of us is unique and we have an identity that we can do something that no one else can do. Only when you figure out what that really is. Like John here, he's got a great gift to help us heal with our community. Only when you're doing that gift that you really have do you feel real meaning. That time where you feel like you're your real self. And I promise every victim out there that you will go through a lot of negative feelings and trauma and a lot of people will just try to push it out the window. Embrace it. Pull your triggers so much that they no longer work. Stand up with your chin high, knowing it'll cause a hurricane for a while, but afterwards, you're going to live in a free world, not in bars and cages with triggers everywhere. I have a complete different philosophy. That truth leads us to freedom, not complete and utter control.

Reflections, Closing Thoughts, and Farewell

John Dehlin [05:41:29] I just have to say, number one, that was beautiful. Number two, like, it's like your real personality just came out. The light came into your eyes. The trauma is real. It's you, too. But, like, it's so fun to see your actual, real, happy, positive personality comes out, because I know that's who you are.

Adam Paul Steed [05:41:45] Yeah. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm gonna go home with the cutest, most beautiful, fun wife and baby and a life that's going the right direction. Don't send me your money. Send it to this guy in a fund and give it to all the victims that didn't have the right evidence and they're still so torn up. Just do that. But don't feel sorry for me. And don't ever think that Jody's a super powerful lady. She's not these abusers. And don't think the Mormon church leaders are super powerful people. They're not. The ones that have chosen to abandon love are not powerful people.

John Dehlin [05:42:23] Beautiful. And my favorite cut to end my favorite comment of the whole episode. Finish this sentence.

Adam Paul Steed [05:42:30] Courage is courageous.

John Dehlin [05:42:34] Wait, I think it's contagious.

Adam Paul Steed [05:42:35] Contagious.

John Dehlin [05:42:36] Sorry, let's do that again.

Adam Paul Steed [05:42:37] Oh, man, I messed up my punchline.

John Dehlin [05:42:39] Let's do it now.

Adam Paul Steed [05:42:40] Is doing never going to be famous one line?

John Dehlin [05:42:45] Let's end again.

Adam Paul Steed [05:42:46] All right.

John Dehlin [05:42:46] You're my favorite moment in the whole episode. Finish this.

Adam Paul Steed [05:42:50] And I hope Jody Hildebrand's hearing and all those church leaders at the legal law firm that are trying to keep anyone from coming forward or hearing. Okay, what's my favorite line?

John Dehlin [05:43:01] Finish this sentence. Courage. Is

Adam Paul Steed [05:43:04] courage. Contagious.

John Dehlin [05:43:06] One more time. Courageous.

Adam Paul Steed [05:43:09] Contagious. Courageous. Contagious. It's contagious.

John Dehlin [05:43:12] It's contagious. That's beautiful. All right, Adam, Paul Steed, thank you so much for your huge gift. I hope you feel like we got your story out.

Adam Paul Steed [05:43:25] I think we did.

John Dehlin [05:43:25] I don't think anybody's going to give you six hours.

Adam Paul Steed [05:43:28] I think they won't.

John Dehlin [05:43:31] So we love you. We're grateful for you. Best of luck. Stay in touch. And thank you for joining us on Warmer Stories.

Adam Paul Steed [05:43:37] Thank you.

John Dehlin [05:43:38] Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Thanks to Julia for doing the time codes and show notes. Thanks to Maven for helping to moderate the comments. Thanks to Gerardo for the thumbnails for the consultation for the strategy for the partnership for the cinematography. Gerardo is amazing. Thanks to Brooklyn for the editing. Thanks to our board, Clint and Carrie that make all this possible. Thanks to all our donors that make all this possible possible. We couldn't do this without you. I'm not going to fundraise on this episode so I'm going to not give my fundraising push. And I'm also just going to say thanks to everyone who makes this podcast possible and we couldn't do it without you. Please email me@mormonstoriesmail.com if you've been a victim of Jody Hildebrandt and you're willing to speak to a national or international reporter in confidence about yourself story because more I would say long form news media programs and or documentaries are going to come to tell this story. So please reach out to me and we'll get the story told far and wide. If you have been abused by Jody Hildebrand, I'm also interested potentially in having your story on Mormon Stories. We've done a lot, but maybe we'll do one or two more. But most importantly, be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Like this episode. Subscribe to Mormon Stories podcast on all the platforms and we've got more to come. A little bit of teaser. I think tomorrow we're going to be interviewing David Archuleta's mom, which I'm kind of excited about. But anyway, much more cool stuff to come in the weeks, years and months ahead on Mormon Stories Podcast. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care.

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