Introduction and Brian's Goals for This Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's January 31, 2024, and today we have an interview I've been looking forward to doing for. For a long time, many months. Most of you who have been following Mormon Stories closely are aware of the Ruby Frankie 8 passengers, Jody Hildebrandt story that broke last year where, you know, world famous YouTuber Ruby Frankie was basically arrested along with her partner, business partner, and former life coach, therapist Jody Hildebrandt. And it was discovered that they had been basically punishing, torturing Ruby's children, and they have both now pled guilty to those offenses. But for us, what we've been focusing on primarily is Jody Hildebrandt and, and her part in that story. Jodi Hildebrandt, for decades was a Mormon church recommended therapist to individuals and couples all along the Wasatch front. If a marriage was in trouble, if a husband or a wife was caught or even a teen was caught masturbating or looking at porn, Mormon bishops would refer couples and individuals and even youth to Jody Hildebrandt. And then Jody Hildebrandt claimed the ability to cure these people of addictions and so forth. But what we learned years ago is that Jody Hildebrandt was actually destroying many families and destroying many marriages. We did an interview with Adam Paul Steed where he talked about how Jody Hildebrandt ruined his marriage. And Adam's ex wife contacted an attorney and forced us to take that interview down. We hope to get a version of it back up soon, but in the meantime, meantime, what I'm excited to announce today is that we found another person to interview who had personal direct experience with Jody Hildebrandt. And, you know, one of the titles we've explored for this episode is, you know, Jody Hildebrandt and the Mormon Church ruined my marriage. Now, obviously, there are lots of factors that go into a marriage ending, but that's the title we, we came up with. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Today we have Brian Tibbets. Is that right, Brian?

Brian Tibbets [00:02:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] Did I say it right?

Brian Tibbets [00:02:33] Yes, Brian Tibbets.

John Dehlin [00:02:34] Okay. And, and you, you and your ex wife saw Jody Hildebrandt as a coach or therapist, basically during what, what time period?

Brian Tibbets [00:02:47] 2018.

John Dehlin [00:02:48] 2018, yes. So that's just, that's just like six years ago, is that right? Five or six years ago, yep. Okay. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. We welcome Everyone who is joining us, either just listening or. Or watching or on. On the live stream. And please subscribe to these channels wherever you're watching it, on YouTube, on Facebook. It helps with the algorithms. Please like it. And we're grateful to our donors who make all this possible. So thanks. And if you want to become a donor, you can do that@mormonstories.org by clicking on the donate button. So. All right, Brian, before we jump in, one of the things we like to do is give our. Our guests a chance to kind of state their intention. And, you know, one of the things we always want to steer clear of is, you know, defaming anyone or specifically kind of saying things that. That. That could be harmful in any situation. So do you want to start by just saying your intention of why you're doing today's episode?

Brian Tibbets [00:03:56] Absolutely. Thanks for asking. I'd like to demonstrate through the story of my life and the story of my involvement in the church, the story of my marriage, my children, my relationship with the family, who are all in the church, how it sort of bred us to be weird and crazy and to be open to manipulation. So that when we were in that vulnerable state and Jody came along, it just. I mean, it was a tsunami through the family. And had we been in our right mind, had we not been manipulated and lied to our whole lives by the church, we probably would have seen it for what it was. But we didn't. And through a lot of therapy and a lot of healing, my life is now better than ever. But that's what I like to demonstrate. Okay.

Mormon Upbringing and Early Faith Experiences

John Dehlin [00:04:51] All right, so where. Let's talk a bit about your Mormon background and specifically focus on the stuff that you think plays in to your story around Jody Hildebrandt.

Brian Tibbets [00:05:04] Sure. So my mom is either seventh or eighth generation. Her family came in at the very beginning, very beginning with Joseph Smith. My dad was a convert. Both my parents are from California. I was born in Nebraska and moved to Utah when I was about 5. So all of my growing up was in Kaysville, Utah. Went to Davis High. Um, and, you know, I had normal experiences growing up. I had bishop. I remember I was a very late bloomer. Didn't hit puberty till I was in the mtc, actually.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] What? Never heard of that.

Brian Tibbets [00:05:48] Yes, I started to get my, like, literally hit puberty in the MTC at 19 at night. I was almost 20. We went. We went late. We. I'll get to that in a moment. I went kind of late. I was almost 20 when I went on my mission. And, yeah, I Grew two and a half inches on my mission. Anyway, I was a very late bloomer. And I remember as a young kid, my bishop asking me if I masturbate. And I said, what is that? And he said, well, do you beat off? And I was like, what is that? And he's like, well, okay. I ended up asking my best friend, I was like, what is beating off? And he said, oh, that's when you take a dirty magazine, roll it up, and you hit yourself. And I was like, I definitely don't beat off. And on my next bishop's interview, I was proud to announce that I didn't. And, you know, I had some funny experiences like that, of course, like everybody did growing up in the church, where they wanted to monitor our thoughts and sexual activity. Anyway, I went to kind of a pivotal experience that happened in my life that led me to cognitive dissonance and questioning myself and codependence. What happened at EFY when I was

John Dehlin [00:07:12] and for never Mormons. Do you want to tell them what

Brian Tibbets [00:07:14] EFY is, especially for youth? It's a summer camp of intense programming for the members of the church. I believe I've heard that it's very different now than what it was when I was there for Mormon teens.

John Dehlin [00:07:31] Right?

Brian Tibbets [00:07:31] Mormon teens. Yeah, Mormon teens. So when I was around 15 or 16, I was at BYU, at EFY. They were doing a simulation, and they put us down in this dark room, guys and girls, together, and our counselor wanted us to role play that we were on this boat that had been overtaken by pirates, and. And we were all going to die. And he was very convincing. And we were young, emotional teens, and everyone was crying and worried. And he'd come, he'd go out, and we'd hear all this yelling and banging, and he'd come back in and say, yeah, we're all going to die. We're all going to die. He came back and he's like, okay, well, the pirates have changed their mind. If one of you is willing to die for everybody else, they'll let you all go. And. And he turned to this kid next to me, and he's like, would you be willing to die? And in tears, he was sobbing. He was like, my dad left us. I'm the only priesthood holder. I can't die. I've got to be there for my mom and my sisters. And I said, raised my hand. I said, I'll die. Take me. Of course, my mind knew it was a simulation, but I was still very caught up in the emotion. And the counselor was like, well, Just like Brian has offered to die, Jesus Christ was the only one willing to sacrifice his life for all of you. And I remember thinking at the time, wait a minute, was that hard for Jesus? That doesn't make any sense. And right at that moment, Jesus broke for me. But of course the church was still true. I never questioned that. And the irony is it's the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But as a 16 year old, Jesus was broken for me.

John Dehlin [00:09:30] And just explain why Jesus broke for you.

Brian Tibbets [00:09:33] It just didn't make sense.

John Dehlin [00:09:35] What about it?

Brian Tibbets [00:09:36] That he would die for everybody and that it was something hard, some giant sacrifice. Wouldn't anybody do that if they could die for the whole world to save them? Like, if anybody actually had that opportunity, I think most people would take it.

John Dehlin [00:09:53] Also, if he was half God, he kind of had superpowers, right?

Brian Tibbets [00:09:56] Kind of. Well, you would imagine. But so just, it was just, it put a. Yeah, it just kind of broke for me of thinking Jesus as a savior, but I didn't question, well, if he's not real, then what about the church? Not at all. The cognitive dissonance was strong. And of course I still believe the church. Moving on. I started a band with two of my best friends in high school and we started to gain popularity and the church gave us notice and organization or they noticed us and we ended up singing for Efys. Like, oh, we were doing 20 to 30 every summer. We did that for a few summers before our mission.

John Dehlin [00:10:48] Tell the listeners, viewers what the group's name was.

Brian Tibbets [00:10:52] The band was Colors. And our heyday started in like 1994. And we took a hiatus when we were on our missions from 95 to 97. And then we picked it up again when we got back from our missions. But we were, you know, we had the opportunity to travel all over singing for all sorts of youth. And that's why we went on our missions late, because they wanted us to do one more summer before we left. We finished out the summer at vfys and then the three of us went off on our missions. And for whatever reason, I was really oblivious to church history and to church doctrine. Well, I know why I was oblivious to church history. It was buried at the time that I was growing up. But church doctrine wasn't. I just didn't pay attention. I was a very, very poor student. Like, I barely graduated high school. It was because of the band. I was offered a full ride scholarship at Utah State. And when I graduated, I did have straight A's. I turned my life around. Well, it was my mission, actually. But in the mtc, there was another experience that. That really broke me and. And. And opened the door for later manipulation of my life, getting to Jody eventually. And what that was, I was talking to my bishop there, and I said, I haven't heard the voice. I haven't heard the voice saying the Book of Mormon is true. I haven't felt the thing that you're all talking about. Of course it's true. I didn't question at all that it wasn't true, but I hadn't received the voice, and I wanted to have that authority of, I know that it's true. I just believed it was true. But I wanted to say I knew it and actually know it. And my bishop said, well, it'll come. What you need to do is you just need to keep testifying. Bless you. You need to keep testifying that it is true, and then it will come. And of course, I didn't know what confirmation bias was at the time, but he recommended, read this testimony by Neal A. Maxwell and memorize it and make his words your words. And I did. And I had a lot of experience with performing. I had played in front of tens of thousands of people at this time, so I know how to manipulate a crowd. And I stood up in sacrament meeting, and I used the voice that the apostles use, and I use the inflection. And I gave Neal A. Maxwell's testimony as my own in the mtc. And everybody was bawling, and everybody came up after me and said they had never felt the spirit so strong. They were so moved. And one sister was like, I didn't know if I was going to leave or stay, but now I'm staying. Thank you. And I was like, those were not my words. And I just moved an entire crowd of people. How. How is this possible? And I prayed. I was like, God, I want to know. I want the answer to, like, why this worked. I kid you not. I did the Book of Mormon, flipping it through, put my finger down, and after prayer, and I read. And it was the story of Nephi killing Laban, putting on his clothes, pretending to be him to get the plates. And I was like, oh, God uses lies to get what he wants. Okay, noted. And I didn't turn into a liar at that point. I just believed. Like, okay, we use these words, and these words will convert people. And we convert people. That's good. The plan is to everybody to hear it. As soon as everybody hears it, Second Coming, Jesus comes, we all win. Great. So I.

John Dehlin [00:15:08] And. And you. You Know, we're, we were all taught that a testimony is gained by bearing it.

Brian Tibbets [00:15:13] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:15:14] In other words, you say it's true. You say you know it's true publicly, even when you don't know it's true.

Brian Tibbets [00:15:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:21] And that if you, I guess if you say it enough, you'll come to believe it.

Brian Tibbets [00:15:25] Well, confirmation bias, it works in any category. And the church has monopolized on that just like many other religions and movements and cults have. And they have it, I mean, down to a science. And so yeah, I did eventually come to believe it and went to Sweden on my mission and I, I think the average baptisms per missionary was like one and a half, something like that. And I baptized, I think like seven people while I was there. I was very, very successful in using the words.

Missionary Service and Early Doubts

John Dehlin [00:16:06] What years were you in Sweden?

Brian Tibbets [00:16:08] 2000. Sorry, 97. Sorry, 95. September 95 to September 97. I was there. Sweden had just sent home, like, I don't know, 200 plus missionaries. It was a really messed up mission. And right when I got there, I was in the aftermath of that and there were very few missionaries and they were trying to build it back up with really good missionaries that would keep the rules.

John Dehlin [00:16:42] Do you know why they had sent so many missionaries home, what they had been doing?

Brian Tibbets [00:16:48] Just a lot of messing around. There was a lot of chastity problems, moral problems.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] Like missionaries having sex basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Brian Tibbets [00:16:59] And yeah, I don't know all the rules. They kept it. I mean, I don't know all the reasons. They obviously kept it. Hush, hush. I was with an older missionary at one point that took me tracting and they knocked on a girl's door that had had one missionary sent home and he wanted to see her. I ended up ratting him out and he got sent home. And like, that's like as much information as I know. But anyway, on my mission, having great success as a missionary, I started training 11 months into my mission and I trained missionaries for the rest of my mission. They liked what I was doing and what I was doing was regurgitating the words that I did believe at this point. But obviously something was dissonant in my brain because I'm using words that weren't mine and I still have this issue with Jesus. I did struggle testifying about Jesus. I had no problem testifying about Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon. And I wanted to understand how commandments work. And they really drill into our heads as missionaries to follow every rule and if you don't, you lose the spirit and if you lose the spirit, you can't teach people. And I was like, well, I want to test this. I tested in the MTC with Maxwell's words, and that worked. I want to test this losing the spirit thing. There's always repentance if things go sideways. And I was like, I'm going to do, like, the biggest. I'm going to break the biggest rule I can break as a missionary without. That's not going to send me home. And it's not going to be as big as, like, swimming because, you know, I would never swim. Of course, I say that in tongue in cheek, but literally, I wasn't going to swim. I thought, I'll masturbate. I've never done it at this point in my life. I'm 20.

John Dehlin [00:19:02] You had just gone through puberty, like, a year before?

Brian Tibbets [00:19:04] Yeah, I was still going through puberty and, like, just discovering, like, all these feelings in my, you know, down here. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. So I thought, I'm going to masturbate.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] And I'm just so. I want to understand, repeat. Why you wanted to break a commandment. You wanted to test.

Brian Tibbets [00:19:22] I wanted to test if I can lose the spirit and still teach or can I get it back. Like, every, you know, every day we have to read the missionary handbook and. And it's all about keeping the rules. It's not about, like, bringing souls to Christ. It's about getting the numbers up and keeping the rules. So it was so hounded and so burned into me. I wanted to know, can I actually break a rule, lose the spirit and still, like, teach people, or will I lose the spirit from. I'm thinking I'm a great missionary. I'm like one of the, you know, best missionaries this mission has. Can I actually break a commandment or break a rule and still keep the spirit? How does this work?

John Dehlin [00:20:09] So you're just trying to understand how the spirit works?

Brian Tibbets [00:20:11] Trying to understand how it works. Yeah. I'm doing a test and just like I did in the mtc, using someone else's words, it was so effective, and my whole mission proved that it was effective to just regurgitate what are. In the. In the. What do they call it? The lessons. And anyway, so I didn't know that it was a really common thing for guys to do and they could just go in the bathroom for five minutes. I thought it was like this really big ordeal. And so I needed to be alone, which is very hard for a missionary to do. But I was way up north in Sweden, like, Right at the Arctic Circle. And missionary changes because there were so few missionaries at the time. I, where I was, it was like a 10 hour train ride. And so I knew I was going to be alone for about 10 hours. Coming on missionary, or what do they call it? Exchanges. Exchanges, yeah. So I set a date to masturbate. Like I, I set the date and I'm like, okay, I'm going to do it on this day and I'm going to see what happens. And I knew my companion was leaving that morning. I walked into the train station and. And when I walked back. This is like really ironic serendipity, but I'm walking across the quad in between our apartment building and like rolling along the grass is this magazine or pages out of a magazine. And I reach down to pick it up and I open it up and it's a full spread naked woman. And I was like, that'll do. Folded it up, put in my suit coat and I walked up to my apartment, laid it out on the bed, figured out how it worked. And when I was done, I threw away the, threw away the magazine and got down on my knees and prayed. And I was like, well, feels like how it's always felt. Things don't feel different. I was reading my scriptures, thought this is fine. And my new companion came the very next day. We were out tracting in the evening and while we were talking to my companion, was talking to this person. I felt the spirit told me, there's somebody who needs help behind this building. And I kept having this gnawing feeling like, we need to help somebody, we need to help somebody. I now know I have very sensitive hearing, very good hearing. And she was just crying very lightly and I was hearing it over the conversation. But I walked behind the building and found this 80 plus year old woman that had slid down this icy hill and broken her femur. Sent my companion out to call 911 or the Swedish version of that, and carried this woman out and we saved her life. And I was like, oh my gosh, I broke this rule. I still have the spirit. I saved a woman's life. You know, commandments must be like speed limits. They make a lot of sense in the city, a lot of sense. But out in the countryside, you know, in the open range, you can speed. It's not hurting anybody and you know, it's fine.

John Dehlin [00:23:34] No harm, no foul.

Brian Tibbets [00:23:35] No harm, no foul.

John Dehlin [00:23:36] No harm. No sin.

Brian Tibbets [00:23:37] No harm, no sin. Yeah. So I had this, I had another break in me of like, well, commandments, you know, they're guidelines, they're not. And I was like, very naively happy to tell this to my mission president of what I had discovered. And he threatened to send me home for what I had done. And he really, really shamed me. And I learned at that point, oh, yeah, they don't. Leaders don't understand. Never again will I tell. And I did make that mistake a little while later, returning home from my mission, going back to college one night with this girl we ended up petting. And I turned myself in to the bishop. And I was the Sunday school president at the time. And he, I mean, he shamed me so hard. It was at that point I was like, never again ever will I tell a bishop. I'll just keep it between God and myself. And he didn't put the fear of God in me. He put the fear of shame in me. I didn't feel any shame from God. Like, to me it was natural. Anyway, so I meet my ex wife at Utah State. We get married.

John Dehlin [00:25:07] I gotta say, go Aggies.

Brian Tibbets [00:25:09] Go Aggies. Yes. We were both virgins at the time. We were keeping all the rules and doing everything right. And I remember, you know, we were just so naive. After we got married, we asked our bishop like, how. How long after sex can we wait before we have to put the garments back on? And he was like, well, you know, it depends on, on the people, you know, but you should never sleep naked. You should always put it on eventually. And okay, okay. And you know, and we, we asked about oral sex, like, is that okay? And he's like, no, that is not okay. You should not be doing that under any circumstance. And, and there are some positions you should avoid. And, you know, I mean, you know, we followed it. We followed it to a T. And we, my ex wife and I, she was very religious and I was at the time too. I wanted to become a seminary teacher. I was taking three institute classes every semester. I found an institute teacher there that really became my mentor. We became close friends. We're still friends to this day, and we talk a couple of times a year. And when I told him that I wanted to become a seminary teacher, he said, brian, do not. It will kill you. He said, you have too many questions. You're too inquisitive, and it is no place for people with questions. He said, just keep asking questions on your own, do research on your own, and don't talk to other people about your questions. I talked to him about my questions. And anyway, I didn't know how right he was at the time, but he Introduced me to some people, some of the Benson Mormons, some of the prepper Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:27:13] You mean Ezra Todd Benson followers. Okay.

Brian Tibbets [00:27:17] And at this time I was reading about like I was the second anointings and I was learning about what was going on in the temple in the history of the church. I was learning about spiritual wifery, I was learning about reprobation or reprobation or are you familiar with like the reincarnation or the Mormon version of it? And I was learning about the fullness of the priesthood. I came across Andrew Ehot's book the Words of Joseph Smith, which was like the best book out there for the fullness of the priesthood. And I called up Andrew Ehot and can I sit down with you? He ended up becoming a good friend. Are you familiar with him?

John Dehlin [00:28:12] He's at byu, right? Yeah, I've met him once.

Brian Tibbets [00:28:14] Yeah, I think so. You know, I ended up my ex wife and I and a couple of my good friends from the band who are also going down this pathway of over the top Mormon ness. We sat down in Andrew Hut's living room multiple times and just drank from his cup of knowledge. It was wonderful. And I just asked more and more and more questions and I learned. I went to the temple, sat down with the temple president, tried to ask him questions and he had, he didn't know anything, which I thought he was just being cautious, but I actually think he didn't know anything anyway, so I just kept researching on my own. We eventually moved up to southern Idaho to Burley, Idaho. And southern Idaho is full of some very strong, interesting Mormons that are also very fringe in a lot of their beliefs, very conservative. We had some neighbors. We had a neighbor who was a farmer who was just absolutely convinced that Gadian robbers were stealing his wheat out of the field. For listeners not familiar, Gadian robbers are out of the Book of Mormon and apparently they're still around in southern Idaho. So yeah, know, watch your back. Anyway, while I was in southern Idaho, I had written this paper that took me almost 10 years to write because this is, you know, the Internet's still new and the archives weren't available like they are now. You couldn't search them. But it took me almost 10 years to write this paper on reincarnation and it was maybe 20 pages or so, but I was convinced it was Joseph was onto something. I was convinced this is what he wanted to teach the people. I was convinced that this is what we should be preparing for and teaching our kids.

John Dehlin [00:30:28] Is this the multiple probations idea that maybe Preppers, Chad Daba, Lori Valo and others have glommed on too.

Faith Crisis and the Weight of Living Inauthentically

Brian Tibbets [00:30:37] So I have this paper 20 pages or so, and it's very few of my own words. It's all of Joseph's words and Brigham words and all the original people. But in preparing for that, I had 100 pages of stuff that made no sense and was very contradictory to the Book of Mormon and the Book of Mormon contradicting itself. And just 100 pages of problems that I just set aside because of course it's true. And anything that I found that contradicted the church, I just would say, well, maybe they didn't record it correctly. But then in my studies, you know, I'd hear a well, with the Adam God theory. In that same discourse that Brigham Young gave, the church is saying, well, it's not true, but they're using words in that same sermon later, quoting it as church doctrine. I'm like, well, how do they know what's true and what isn't true? And there was just a hundred of those things that came along in my research. And in 2006, I'm working for the city of Burleigh at this time, and I'm walking through the council chambers just with like, how do I reconcile this? All these questions, and I can't ask anybody. I brought some of the questions up to my ex wife and she was uncomfortable even discussing them. And I talked with them with some of my best friends. They were also uncomfortable to talk about some of my concerns. And I was just pacing in the council chambers and I said out loud, what if it's all bullshit? And like, immediately just. I mean, I lost all the energy in my body. I just felt weak. And I was like, oh, my God, it is all bullshit. Oh my. And I gathered that document of 100 pages of problems and I just started pouring over. It's like, oh, that's a lie. Oh, that's a lie. Oh, he was caught in a lie. Oh, there's another lie to cover up this lie. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I can't ever tell anybody because the church is so wonderful and it makes people better. It's so great. I love going to church. I love singing the hymns. I can never tell anybody. And so I just filed that away and I hid it. I buried it deep. And I was a model of codependence. I just, I hid it. I mean, I was stake president and the stake presidency secretary. I was there with the High Council, you know, every Sunday. And just like, let's continue the you know, the church, let's grow it. And I thought I could do it for the rest of my life. And 10 years later, 2016, I am with my family in China. We set up a joint venture over there and brought all the kids. And I am like intensely suicidal. I wrote a suicide note to my ex wife on the 24th of January on my birthday. And I was going to jump out the window of our 16 story apartment and leave this world. My whole life was so upside down from living that lie for 10 years. And I left the letter for her and I was standing at the window and just like in the council chambers, the revelation of like wait a minute, telling, telling the truth will be easier than death. And I was so relieved and also still horrified. Like I really thought suicide was going to be easier than telling my family. But I had to say it out loud. Telling them will be easier than death. I ripped up the letter and I decided to tell my wife. And I didn't until October. Like it took me from January till October to actually tell them. And my family was with me in China until July. My youngest child got really sick. We didn't know what the sickness was from. We do now. It was from something we were feeding him that we thought was healthy but wasn't. And anyway, so my whole family was back in Burley, Idaho. I was in China.

John Dehlin [00:35:33] Can I ask what you say living the lie was making you want to die? What about living the lie? When I assume you say the lie, you mean living as if you believe the church, Mormon church is true when you don't believe it's true. What about that made you feel like you wanted to die? If you don't mind trying to describe that.

Brian Tibbets [00:35:58] I, I'm, I'm a really transparent person. I don't like to bury feelings. I like to speak openly. I like people to know what I'm thinking. I like to know what people are thinking. I don't like to, I don't lie well, I don't hide well. And it was a full time job to hide my disbelief. I'm using the words to my own children in family home evening bearing my testimony and seeing my kids eyes just light up and glow and knowing, not deep down knowing right here on the surface, I'm feeding you bullshit that I don't believe and you're glowing. That's what it was. And every Sunday, John, I was a 100% home teacher. 1 100% until the month that I left the church in October 2016.

John Dehlin [00:37:14] Meaning every month you would visit your Families that you would assign to you every single month.

Brian Tibbets [00:37:18] I was the only 100% home teacher I ever knew when I was in China. Our church was over the phone because we couldn't meet. The whole country was one ward. I had 22 families to home teach. It was a full time job. And I'm bearing testimony to these people, you know, multiple times a week. And like I was doing it so completely. I didn't become a Jack Mormon or a lazy Mormon like we were. My ex wife and I were over the top.

John Dehlin [00:38:00] So you're saying lying to your children, sort of indoctrinating them when you know you don't believe what they're getting excited about believing and then lying to your ward or branch, lying to all the home teaching families.

Brian Tibbets [00:38:16] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:38:16] Just. You're saying telling all these lies was psychologically wearing.

Brian Tibbets [00:38:23] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:38:25] And were you living a double life? If you want to share that, like sometimes people secretly drink or secretly, secretly do drugs or secretly.

Brian Tibbets [00:38:33] Yes. So Starting in like 2009, I want to say around 2009, I started to have coffee. When I would travel, have a cup of coffee. We were actually doing homebrew at home with a little bit of alcohol. Very low percentage. But the reason why is because. Because, sorry, the word of wisdom says barley is for mild drinks. So we were trying to like make a mild drink. Well, mild in what? Well, they clarify strong drink is not for your belly. Strong in what? Well, strong in alcohol. So mild in alcohol is what we're supposed to be doing. So my ex wife and I were making like low percentage alcohol or low percentage beer from barley, trying to keep the word of wisdom. I mean we gave up meat because it said eat meat sparingly. But then we found something contradicting. So then we started to eat meat. Like we were so wishy washy. But I was supporting her. I was supporting her with this stuff that I didn't believe in and supporting it like over the top. And so I just want to throw that out there. That's not her fault. I own that. Like she was lied to for a decade with me not believing. And we were not your average Mormons. We were over the top doing it. Yeah, Our daughters didn't wear pants. They wore dresses. Like no choice of pants. Because that's not appropriate for girls.

John Dehlin [00:40:16] Not just to church or every day. Oh wow.

Brian Tibbets [00:40:20] Every day. My, my two oldest daughters in China, you know, they had to wear dresses everywhere and they just looked like Mennonites. And of course I was like dying for my daughter, but I couldn't Tell my ex wife. And I couldn't save my daughters because that would be going against my ex wife. And like I had tried to have little conversations with my ex wife but they never went anywhere. And to her credit she was keeping the rules. You don't talk about those things. You're taught to not talk about those things. So I want to answer the suicide question a little broader and I want to step back and really quick.

Fear of Disclosure and Its Toll on Mental Health

John Dehlin [00:41:06] You were afraid that if you told her the truth about your disbelief in the Mormon Church, what would happen?

Brian Tibbets [00:41:12] She'd leave me. And that was my greatest fear. And that is exactly what happened. Which I'll get to. So I want to step back to about that 2000, 6, 7, 8, 9, around that time that I didn't believe the church and I didn't believe Jesus at this time. But I still believed in God. I still believed in something.

John Dehlin [00:41:41] Are we back in Burleigh?

Brian Tibbets [00:41:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:42] Okay, we're going back to Burleigh.

Brian Tibbets [00:41:44] Yeah, I'm just stepping into the suicide. So you have a better picture of why I wanted to kill myself. I still believed in God. I believed in something and I still had that notion I'd heard my whole life. Well, we'll understand it when we die. Like I still, you know, thought everything would get sorted out when we're standing in front of God at the end. And anyway, at this time my ex wife's father had a co worker who, who's I now know he's a charlatan. But my ex father in law didn't know that. And he was hearing amazingly spiritual, fantastic, wonderful stories and he would gather his children and their spouses and not the little kids. And like we'd sit in the living room and he would tell us these stories that he heard from his co worker about the coworker's son. And we were sworn to secrecy. Hearing these, we had to swear we could never tell anybody about these stories.

John Dehlin [00:42:56] We give us a sense for what the stories were saying.

Brian Tibbets [00:42:58] Oh, I'll tell you but I just want to convey the seriousness of we lived to get together to hear more stories about this little boy. And this little boy was literally like hand to hand combat Satan in the streets. He was casting out devils. He could speak like every language there was. He could walk up to a stranger that didn't speak English and he could like gift of tongues speak their language. The boy's dad, who was my stepfather's. Sorry, not step, my ex wife's dad, father in law. My father in law, he had told him that he donated to the church. $185 million that he had inherited. Of course, he's not wealthy at this time, but he wanted to give it all to the church. And when he did it, he was invited to come sit down President Hinckley. And President Hinckley at that time told him now I was there when your son volunteered to usher in the second coming. And we're all preparing for your son to take over. And like these are the stories that are coming back to us.

John Dehlin [00:44:23] And at the time you're hearing these stories from your ex father in law's coworker's son about him. How old was that son in 2000?

Brian Tibbets [00:44:37] In 2009, he was eight.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] Okay, so this Mormon dude that you know through your ex father in law was telling you he had basically a son who was 8 or 9 who's basically the. The Messiah reincarnated.

Brian Tibbets [00:44:52] Yes. He came to my, my ex sister in law's wedding. He was eight son or the son. The whole family came. Okay, but like we wanted to like kneel down when he came in. Like there was.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] You believed that this 8 or 9 year old was Jesus reincarnated?

Brian Tibbets [00:45:10] John, that's what's so messed up in the same cognitive dissonance of not believing Jesus. But the church is true. I didn't believe the church, but I believed stories about this kid like he was something, he was going to do something. And like I felt it. Like I'd felt the spirit before. I know what it feels like. It's like when your team wins the super bowl, you know, like I felt that when I was in his presence. But I also like didn't believe the church. I mean, there's so much cognitive dissonance going on in myself. So I go talk to Andy ehot about this boy and I'm like, can we, can we find some research about him? And he gave me a couple of books about preparing for the second coming. And he gave me some books talking about the person that's going to be the prophet when he comes. And anyway, I started talking to spiritual leaders that weren't Mormon, trying to figure out who this kid was because he's obviously something. And anyway, John, my ex wife had a revelation that our oldest daughter was going to marry this guy. And that's one of the reasons why she could only wear dresses. Like we were saving. We were like grooming her to marry the last prophet on this earth. And as time went on, I started to realize, like, wait a minute, I'm being duped. My ex father in law is Being duped. But I couldn't say anything like, this was over and over again. At family gatherings, we'd have like, long family prayers about how privileged and blessed we were to have this information.

John Dehlin [00:47:14] Any idea if any of this was tied to the Mormon teaching of the one mighty and strong of the Davidic servant that's supposed to come at the end?

Brian Tibbets [00:47:23] Well, that came up in my own research in talking to Andrew Ehot, but no, those terms were not brought up in the family meetings. Maybe the boy's dad thought that then. Maybe that information just didn't come to me, but that's what I believed he was okay.

John Dehlin [00:47:45] But then he started questioning it, so

Brian Tibbets [00:47:47] I just started questioning it. Once I started questioning it, I was just like, of course this is not true. Of course it isn't. And anyway, he. Well, so now back in China.

John Dehlin [00:47:59] Wait, did anything become of this dad and son?

Brian Tibbets [00:48:03] No, he didn't end up going on a mission. I think he became inactive and I think it just became too shameful for anyone in the family to talk about.

John Dehlin [00:48:14] Did it ever turn out that the dad of the son was defrauding people in any way or.

Brian Tibbets [00:48:19] Okay, I don't know. I'll tell you why I don't know. So in 2016, family still believes the story of the boy, but he's about ready to go on a mission. And really big things are supposed to happen when he goes on his mission. And so it's about this time that I'm like, I've been lying about believing the church all this time. And I will give the church credit for teaching me to be codependent. I was trained to regurgitate Elder Maxwell's words as my own, to just keep testifying until I believe it. And don't ever tell anybody you don't believe. I was perfectly groomed at codependence. And it is a human thing, but the church is quite good at it.

John Dehlin [00:49:04] Really quickly, just what that does give us is an example of how a family, and even a community around a family can start believing that a child in a family has special powers. And that fits the Joseph Smith narrative, that the Smith family started believing Joseph Smith had powers. They started telling other community members, and soon you've got Joseph Smith taking people from other states on treasure digs because word gets around that a child in a family has special powers. So I'm just saying that is interesting, regardless of what came of it, that there was a reproduction of that structure in your life.

Brian Tibbets [00:49:44] Yes. Well, being raised believing the church, you're so ripe for Any sort of manipulation or being taken advantage of. So here I am in China, like my whole wife's ex wife's family believes this very weird stuff. They all very much believe the church as well. I've been hiding it and like it's not just telling my ex wife I don't believe. If I don't believe, I'm turning against the prophet, the guy that is ushering in the second coming. So it's a big deal for me. It's not just leaving. Like I am giving the middle finger to her whole family. And I really truly love and respect my ex father in law. He's a wonderful man. And her whole family, I, her sisters and brother, they're wonderful, wonderful people. I never want to hurt them and I love them and respect them as people. But they had, I mean, they were just believing this, such a story.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] So what did you do?

Brian Tibbets [00:51:07] Well, that's why I sat on it from January to October. And in October it was the morning for my ex wife and it was the evening for me. In China, we're 15 hours ahead.

John Dehlin [00:51:19] Okay. Did you tell us that she was back in the States while you were in China?

Brian Tibbets [00:51:22] My youngest son had been getting sick from something we were eating that we didn't know.

John Dehlin [00:51:27] That's the eating thing. So they're back, she takes the kids back home, they're back and I'm still in China.

Brian Tibbets [00:51:31] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:51:32] You've been separated for how many months? That whole time?

Brian Tibbets [00:51:34] Well, I'm commuting back and forth on a regular basis. So the whole family went back in July, I spent a month with them. I came back back and forth. So I hadn't been gone very long.

John Dehlin [00:51:45] So this is over zoom, where you're

Brian Tibbets [00:51:47] talking to your wife phone, so FaceTime. And I tell her, I'm so sorry, but I have to be honest with you, I do not believe the church. And I drink coffee when I travel and I have real beer by real beer. It's beer that you buy at the store, not the weak stuff we make at home. And I masturbate when I travel. And she was of course, absolutely heartbroken. And she contacted, she didn't want me to tell any family yet I had sent an email to my parents and she had asked me to unsend it and I was the administrator of their email accounts at the time. And so I was able to go in and delete those and she didn't want me to tell anybody till we could like figure this out and which makes sense of course, but she started talking to my niece My niece by blood. So her niece in law, and she's just a little bit younger than us, and she started talking to her about what was going on, and she told her about the masturbation and the hiding. And this niece said, well, you need to talk to our therapist. She knows how to tune a guy into shape. The therapist is Jodi Hildebrandt.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] So what year is this? 17.

Brian Tibbets [00:53:33] This is the fall of 2016. So she didn't talk to Jody yet, but she was getting coaching from my niece who was working intensely with Jody. The reason why she was working is because her husband consumed porn sometimes. And he was. He was in such the doghouse, like, to the tune, that he had to stand up at a family party and tell the entire family, children included, that he is bringing a curse upon his family because he consumes porn. He's addicted. He can't be trusted anything. He can't be trusted around anyone. He's out of control. He had to tell this to the whole family.

John Dehlin [00:54:18] And is it your understanding that Jody Hildebrandt made him. Required. That.

Brian Tibbets [00:54:21] Required it of him, and if he didn't, he's not humble, and my niece needs to divorce him.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] Okay, so this is your Jody's putting your niece and her husband.

Brian Tibbets [00:54:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:33] Through the ringer that Adam Paul Steed.

Brian Tibbets [00:54:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:36] Was going through.

Brian Tibbets [00:54:37] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:37] And then telling your wife about it.

Brian Tibbets [00:54:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:40] And encouraging similar tactics with you. Correct.

Brian Tibbets [00:54:43] Correct. So she calls me back a couple of days later, and she said, just so you're aware, until you are not a sex addict. And I was like, huh? You know, the masturbation. Until you're not a sex addict, and until you are ready to lead this family in the way that you covenanted to me, we're not sleeping in the same room. And I don't even know that I want you in the same house when you come back. This is like two days later. And I was like, oh, my God. This is why I hid it for 10 years.

Coming Clean About Non-Belief and Marriage Strain

John Dehlin [00:55:22] So that's the Jody Hildebrandt cut off the husband and either kick them out of the house or make them sleep in separate beds. And just really quickly, the term sex addict in Mormonism has a whole different meaning. You were. What was the frequency that you were likely, you know, masturbating once or what?

Brian Tibbets [00:55:43] Oh, if I'm traveling alone every couple of days, I think I have a highly unusual sex dress.

John Dehlin [00:55:49] A couple times a week,

Brian Tibbets [00:55:51] maybe once a day.

John Dehlin [00:55:53] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [00:55:53] All right. I mean, yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] Yeah. As much as once a day.

Brian Tibbets [00:55:58] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:58] Sometimes a couple times a Week?

Brian Tibbets [00:56:00] Yeah. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:56:01] Okay. All right.

Brian Tibbets [00:56:03] I mean, it is what it is. And I told my ex, I was like, look, if I don't, I'll be honest. If I'm like co workers I spend time with become more attractive to me and I start to have thoughts like, we should go out for a drink. And I'm like, no, I know how to solve that. I just take care of it at night when I come home. And when I do that, I'm solved. And of course that makes me a sex addict. What do you mean I can't control my thoughts? Jesus said, like, having the thought is the same as actually doing it. And so, you know, I was a sex addict because I used it as a tool to stay faithful. But according to Jody and according to the church, like, that is breaking a commandment. That's not staying clean. That is, I mean, to abuse yourself is as bad as abusing somebody else. And so anyway, so I, I'm traveling back and forth to China. I had a two year contract that I had to fulfill from beginning of 2016 till 2018. And so we never, like, I wasn't ever home long enough to get into big problems and I wasn't gone long enough. Like it was just, we couldn't really get any traction while I was traveling back and forth to China. But so when I came home for good at the beginning of 2018. Oh, let me just back up just a little bit. She did call me back a couple of days later, my ex wife and say, look, I've changed my mind. You don't have to sleep in the guest room. But, but we're not telling the kids. You need to keep taking them to church and, and we need to figure this out. I came home and I said, I, I'm not hiding this from the kids. And I was like, I don't want them to end up like me. I, I don't.

John Dehlin [00:58:15] You're not hiding what from the kids?

Brian Tibbets [00:58:17] That I don't believe.

John Dehlin [00:58:18] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [00:58:18] I was like, I have to tell them. I was like. And what's interesting, John, is as soon as I like told my ex wife and I told a couple of my best friends, as soon as I was out, like, I'm sure you've seen this a million times. Like, I just exploded. And like the stuff that I could kind of repress easily, the BS in the church, I couldn't repress it anymore. Like immediately I'm in infuriated over the racism, I'm infuriated over the homophobia. I'm infuriated over the lies, the lies and the lies and the lies, the blatant lies. And I'm just like, oh my God. And they trained me to be a liar and now I'm a liar and I've been lying for 10 years. And like, I just, I was so angry.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] What did coming clean to your ex wife about your non belief do to your suicidal ideation?

Brian Tibbets [00:59:20] It was totally gone. It was gone when I said it out loud in January. But I was just now working up the courage of how am I going to tell her? But I didn't have those suicidal thoughts at all at this time. I had anger and like really deep anger. So when she.

John Dehlin [00:59:45] I just want to note for the audience that suicidality in my experience can be associated with hiding big lies from your loved ones for an extended period of time. And when you come clean, you experience significant relief of pressure and guilt and shame and fear and it can be very liberating. So I just sort of, from a mental health perspective, I just want to really drive that home. It's not healthy to keep huge secrets from the person that you're supposed to love and care about most for an extended period of time. It's toxic not just to your mental health often, but to your physical health. And you know, it's worth, it's worth noting, people often say, I don't want to blow things up or hurt their loved ones, but sometimes hiding for a long period of time blows things up for your mental or physical health, but also leads your spouse to eventually think you've been hiding and lying to them, which is really what causes the blowup. It's not so much. I mean, yeah, they're not excited about the fact that you don't believe, but they feel like you've betrayed their trust when they find out that for 10 years you're not only not believed, but you were hiding these behaviors from them. So the hiding is often the really damaging, fatal part, not the actual information. So keep that in mind, audience, as you're deciding how long you maybe feel like it's a healthy thing or a worthwhile thing to keep those secrets deep down.

Brian Tibbets [01:01:30] Absolutely. And it was so liberating, it was hard to focus on how liberating it felt because I was so angry and I was just allowing myself to be so angry. And just a quick note to the mental health that you brought up. I started journaling when I was eight years old and I filled up

John Dehlin [01:02:00] six

Brian Tibbets [01:02:01] physical journals and in 2011 I started keeping on a Google document, I have several thousand pages of journal And John, from 2006 to 2016, I almost have no memories that I can recall in my head. When I read my journal from that time, it's like, who wrote this? I think I was, like, losing my mind from the hiding. My brain was so messed up during those years of hiding, I couldn't log memories well. And I was going back through my journal to prepare for this, just to be clear on some details. And from 2006-16, I don't know who wrote that. It wasn't me. I mean, it's not the guy that's sitting here. Physically it is, but not mentally. After I did come clean and tell my wife, my sharp memory was back, and I remember things very clearly from that time forward. And that was a wonderful, wonderful relief. So when I'm back, I'm back in Burley now, and I'm telling my ex, I, I can't hide this. I have to tell the children there's no more hiding. And I did. I told all six of my kids, and I said, from now on, you have the choice if you want to go to church or not. And a couple of them. Well, one of my sons was like, great. And he never went back to church. He just wanted to stay home. And did. And all the others would, like, test with it. They'd try it out. Maybe not my two oldest officially kind of announced, maybe a couple years later, another one after listening to Mindy Gledhill's story, they love her music, and listening to her Mormon stories pushed another daughter over the edge. But so we're now in 2018, and we are still very, very strict parents. And, like, our kids don't have phones. They don't have access to the outside world very much. We lived in this big giant mansion in Southern Idaho that looks like a slave plantation. And I mean, we still kind of refer to it as the plantation because metaphorically, we were all enslaved there. And my ex wife and I were. I mean, we were just out of our minds. And how over the top we were with how strict we were with the kids. And they were provided secret phones by family members, and they had kept him hidden from us for a while. The niece that was working with Jody caught wind of it, and she sat us down. And in honor of Jody and 100% honesty, and she said, you have to know that Brian's family has provided phones for your kids and their talking to grandma and grandpa unauthorized and to cousins that they shouldn't be. And she turned on the family to tell us. And so it was a Big to do. And that's when we reached out to Jodi. We're like, well, we need help because we have these kids that are now out of control and they're being manipulated by grandparents. Grandparents were not manipulating my kids. They were saving our kids, saving them from us and our craziness. And of course, you know, this has got to be hard for my kids. It's got to be hard for my ex wife because, you know, for 10 years I'm supporting this BS and on a dime, I'm now not supporting it. But I still want my kids to, like, keep the family rules. And I just. Until we can change the family rules. So we meet with Jody and we.

First Encounters With Jodi Hildebrandt

John Dehlin [01:06:27] So is this the first time you meet with Jody?

Brian Tibbets [01:06:30] Now we start meeting with Jody. Not about marriage stuff.

John Dehlin [01:06:33] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:06:34] It's for kids stuff.

John Dehlin [01:06:35] So do you want to talk about, like, who reaches out, how you meet her, where you meet her first, how much it costs?

Brian Tibbets [01:06:40] Call. So we ended up spending more than 30 grand with Jody.

John Dehlin [01:06:46] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:06:47] Over.

John Dehlin [01:06:47] Over how long?

Brian Tibbets [01:06:49] From 2018 to 2000. Probably the end of 19. I'll get to that.

John Dehlin [01:06:57] For around a year. Around maybe a year and a half.

Brian Tibbets [01:07:01] Under two years. About a year and a half.

John Dehlin [01:07:03] You spend 30 grand?

Brian Tibbets [01:07:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:05] With Jody Hildebrandt?

Brian Tibbets [01:07:06] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:07:06] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:07:07] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:07:07] Okay. So let's talk about your first.

Brian Tibbets [01:07:10] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] Reaching out to Jody.

Brian Tibbets [01:07:11] So we reach out to Jody through email or phone. Okay. Phone. We.

John Dehlin [01:07:16] You're in Idaho or Utah?

Brian Tibbets [01:07:17] We're in Idaho.

John Dehlin [01:07:18] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:07:18] We're at the slave plantation in the backyard. My ex wife and I were both on the phones, and my niece put us in contact with Jodi. Jody calls. This is the big call. And we say, what's been going on with our kids? And that grandparents supplied phones. And Jody says, well, they can never see those grandparents again until those grandparents have a session with me. And I vet them suitable to see your children. And they can't hang out with their cousins. You need to read through their journals. You need to know what's going. Read through our children's journals. You need to find out. You need to wrap these kids up. You need to keep them. No, not wrap them up. You need to keep them under wraps. Jodi literally wraps up kids. We needed to keep the kids under wraps. And my parents, they go have a session with Jody, and it was the most humiliating, awful experience of their life. And, I mean, Jody just rips them up one side and down the next. Makes them feel so horrible for supplying their grandchildren with a phone so that they could talk to them. And I was kind of oblivious to how bad things were for my kids because I was traveling back and forth to China. I'm not innocent, but I was blind to it. And I was so wrapped up in my own faith crisis, I didn't see how much my kids were crying out for help. But once we started talking to Jody, we didn't double down. We tripled down trying to follow this professional's help. And we made family members talk to Jodi before they could talk to our kids again. And so can you try and help

How Jodi Hildebrandt Manipulated the Therapeutic Relationship

John Dehlin [01:09:12] us understand the relationship that Jodi forged with you and your wife? So in. In a regular, healthy, professional, ethical, mental health context, husband and wife are adults. Their obligations are to themselves and to each other. And then a therapist is there to work within the values of the couple to help them achieve their goals. Can you talk to us about your meeting with Jody, how she sets up the relationship with her?

Brian Tibbets [01:09:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:09:45] What her role is and what power

Brian Tibbets [01:09:48] she asserts Jody is. It was my experience that she was never interested in helping us achieve our goals. She was interested in. In helping us achieve her goals, only her goals.

John Dehlin [01:10:06] And what were those?

Brian Tibbets [01:10:09] That children will be controlled and monitored all day. That nobody shall have contact with those children unless they've been vetted, unless they're totally honest and by vetted, like, meet with her and get vetted. And the way that my parents were vetted is they showed up to Jody and they. They apologized, and they said they'll do whatever Jody said. And when they left, they're like, to hell with that. This woman's a wack. And my parents are still active. They're believers, but they saw right through her. And they tried to tell me, and they tried to tell my ex, like, Jody's crazy, but we believed her. Jody was at the level of craziness that we were now. I was a crazy Mormon, but I left that. But I was still a crazy parent. I was over the top. And so she. She fit that MO of over the topness, and she had a plan for us. Like, bedtime at this time, kids up at this time. You read their. You make them write in a journal. And you read that journal, and you. You know, we were just. We were following Jody's rules.

John Dehlin [01:11:20] What was her goal,

Brian Tibbets [01:11:23] John? I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:11:24] No, no, You're. You're hiring her. You're paying her. She tells you. What was she. What outcome was she telling you she would help you achieve that?

Brian Tibbets [01:11:32] This is going to make kids be honest, and it's going to make them be responsible. So that they can honestly connect with themselves and connect with the world around them.

John Dehlin [01:11:43] So you're going to make your kids ethical, honest, responsible kids through her intervention?

Brian Tibbets [01:11:50] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:11:51] So she's saying cut off the grandparents.

Brian Tibbets [01:11:55] So she wants to meet with the kids. Oh. And about this time she says, so my ex had a private conversation with Jody and Jody, I get a message from Jody saying, we need to talk. And it's at this point that Jody informs me the reason why my kids have misbehaved and the reason why they accepted phones from my parents and the reason why my family has problems is because of me and my sex addiction and me leaving the church. And so we have. She tells my wife, my ex wife and me that I have to put back. I have to put back everything I stole from the family and I stole the family culture. I brought a monster into the house.

John Dehlin [01:13:06] Meaning what?

Brian Tibbets [01:13:08] The monster of disbelief, of being able to leave the church, of whatever. But I brought a monster into the house. I had to put it all back. And I had to go through church court and I had to come back into the church in full fellowship before I could see the kids. And she wanted me immediately separated with the kids.

John Dehlin [01:13:38] So was your main offense not believing in the church?

Brian Tibbets [01:13:42] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:13:43] Okay. And I just want to highlight that as someone with the mental health background,

Brian Tibbets [01:13:48] that and lying about it for 10 years.

John Dehlin [01:13:51] Yeah, yeah. Like if an ethical therapist doesn't push or promote beliefs, religious beliefs, on a client. Clients establish their own beliefs or non beliefs and then a therapist works with them to help them live the life they want to live. But they don't become enforcers for religious devotion or commitment. That's unethical. But you're saying she assumed the role of sort of religious police person.

Brian Tibbets [01:14:23] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:14:24] As your therapist?

Brian Tibbets [01:14:25] Yes, it was, it was. I had to put everything back, church court and full fellowship of the church before she wanted me to have any contact with the kids. And this was over the phone. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, let's sit down. Let's have like a sit down. Because that's not right. Like I'm not going to not see my kids. So my ex and I, we drive to Provo from Burley, Idaho, sit down with her, we have a couple session and it's, it's. Sorry. I had a one on one with her. My ex had a one on one with her and then she talked to us both and it was at this meeting that she informed my ex and I. She said, brian, I can't work with you. You are not humble enough. You won't accept what I'm telling you. So I'm firing you as a client, but I'm keeping your wife as a client. And the reason why she fired me, when I questioned her, I was like, why? She said, because you're questioning my methods and you're questioning what you have to do to save your family. Well, of course I'm questioning it. How does leaving my family help them? And she said, it's the only way. So on the drive home, my ex says, well, it's either this or divorce. I need a place to heal from you. I need to keep the children safe from what you've brought into this house. And you have to leave. Leave the house.

John Dehlin [01:16:23] And I said, jodi Hildebrandt's encouraging your wife to kick you out of the house for the offense of losing your faith. And what else?

Brian Tibbets [01:16:33] Losing my faith?

John Dehlin [01:16:34] What about the masturbation porn stuff?

Brian Tibbets [01:16:37] That's all I think in Jody's mind and my ex wife's mind is I left the church because I was masturbating, because I was sinning. So I lost the spirit. I think that's how they thought it. But to me, it had nothing to do with that, obviously. But I said, I'm not going to leave. But my ex wife moved out and she moved in with some family and she took the kids and she still wanted to. To stay together, but she started working with Jodi. And at this point, Jodi was the first therapist we worked with. And over the next couple of years, we worked with nine more therapists. Our mutual friend that, you know, that I know, that's a family member of my ex wife tried to help us as a therapist. And the idea that Jodi put into my ex wife's head was that all the problems were my fault for bringing this monster into the house and for me changing faith dishonestly. And she couldn't allow me to honestly change my faith dishonestly. And what that means is I stopped believing and I didn't tell anybody, and I let lived a lie for all those years. And that's.

John Dehlin [01:18:05] And that's the, that's the rub, because you already told us you didn't tell your wife that you lost your faith because you were terrified that she would leave you, so you hid it from her, became suicidal to the point where you had to tell her, and then you tell her, and sure enough, she wants to leave you. But then Jody Hildebrandt enters the picture and says that you're a liar and you should be Kicked out of the house because you lied. When really you're just trying to keep your marriage together in the best way you know how. Because ideally, in a normal religion, if you're Presbyterian or Methodist or Lutheran or Catholic, you know, you say, hey, I don't believe in the Lutheran Church anymore. I think Protestants, that's not grounds for divorce, right?

Brian Tibbets [01:18:57] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:18:58] But in Mormonism and especially with Jody Hildebrandt's form of therapy and coaching, that's grounds for divorce, Correct.

Brian Tibbets [01:19:06] So Jody said something to my ex that my ex kept through the following nine therapists and it's this. Jody said, you are not a split faith marriage. It can't be split faith until you both agree that you can leave the church honestly. And until you can leave it, you live it. And so my ex wife never would concede that we were a split faith couple. She didn't agree to that. And until I could and she wouldn't let, she didn't want me to leave the church until she knew that my intentions were honest and pure for leaving the church. And obviously that's a non starter. I mean, we would start with a therapist and we'd make it two sessions in and the therapist would say, well, this isn't how couples work. If you want to stay together, you have to allow each other to change. And when she wasn't satisfied at that, we went to another therapist. And so after nine therapists, after nine therapists, well, I'm going to back up before we get to divorce. We are getting closer and closer to divorce. And I'd been away from my kids for six months and I finally was like, I've had enough, I'm not doing this any longer. And I told my ex, I'm coming to pick up the kids, I'm going to bring them to the house where I was currently living. I had given her the mansion to live in. She didn't choose to take it. But I got myself another apartment. It was another rental property I owned and I was living and I brought my kids over and I found out at that time that my kids were working with Jody like several days a week. And Jody had my son, who was under 18 at the time, talking to like registered sex offenders who were having incestual fantasies talking to my son about this.

John Dehlin [01:21:23] Okay, so just to be clear, my understanding of Jody Hildebrandt's method is she would start off an individual one on one or couples therapy. Then she would try and split the husband from the wife, do lots of one on one coaching or therapy with the Wife.

Brian Tibbets [01:21:40] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:21:40] Get her to hate the husband, get her to want to punish the husband, to split from the husband, to kick the husband out. But then anyone involved who needed additional support to make more money, she would start these support groups that were either the addicts, which could be pedophiles, which could be sex offenders, or it could just be a teen kid that is confused or was caught masturbating one time, or an adult husband. They're all in these support groups that weren't actually led by Jody, but were led by former addicts or former participants in the program. So it sounds like Jody convinced your ex wife to put your kids in some of these support groups that were super expensive, where your kid may have, you know, confessed to masturbating once, and he's literally in a support group with adult pedophiles or sexual predators. Is that. I'm not trying to inject that in your story. That's just the pattern I've heard.

Brian Tibbets [01:22:48] Yes, that is correct. And. And my ex was seeing Jody the entire time we went through the nine therapists. So she would report to Jody what the therapist, what the new therapist was saying. And Jody would inform my ex how wrong they were and that they didn't know their stuff, and that if we do that, we're, you know, we're headed for disaster and it's dishonest. And Jody had nothing complimentary to say about normal health professionals or normal therapists. So that's where all the money went is. I think she was talking to Jody on a daily basis, like five days a week for, you know, several hundred dollars a session. And I didn't know this until I threw in the towel. I picked up the kids, found out how much they were meeting with Jodi, and I told the kids, you do not have to do Jody if you don't want to. And my three oldest kids were like, thank you. We do not. She's crazy. And they started telling me horror stories about what they were hearing in her classes or in her sessions. And so they stopped with Jodi immediately. And I told my wife, I said, I want a divorce. I cannot. I'm not going to not see my children. And I'm not going to. Like, if we're going to actually work on this marriage, I want to be in the same house. If we're not in the same house, we're not working on the marriage. We're working on divorce. And so I said, we're done. And I, like, on a rebound, like, started dating a girl at this restaurant that I Owned, like, right away, before the divorce. Oh, yeah. Like, I left my wife. I said, we're done. If we're not going to be in the same house, if I can't be with the kids, we're done. There's no world that exists where living in separate houses is called working on a marriage. There isn't. I've never raised my voice. I've never laid a finger on my wife or children ever. I'm not violent at all. I don't have a violent bone in my body. So, like, why do they need to be in another house on the other side of town to be safe? No, that's just rhetoric from Jody.

Identifying Jodi Hildebrandt's Controlling Tactics

John Dehlin [01:25:25] And I just want to. Because this is about Jody Hill Hildebrandt. I just want to really take our time to identify the tactics. And in this case, because the Mormon. And you also wanted to make sure we didn't put all this on Jody. It's the Mormon Church and its teachings, too. I just want to give people the education, if it's okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:25:43] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:25:43] The Mormon teaching that comes from the Book of Mormon is that sexual, quote, sin, which is any sexual behavior outside of heterosexual marriage, is a sin next to murder. And so Jody would glom onto that, make a wife feel like her husband and her teen children are either committing sins next to murder or coming close to committing sins next to murder, that if Jody didn't intervene, they would end up in jail or as drug addicts or as prostitutes or dead. So Jody would terrorize, often the mom. And once she was able to terrorize using religious indoctrination, the mom or the wife, then she could. She could justify daily consulting fees or coaching fees or therapy fees and the group fees. And that's how she was getting literally tens of thousands of dollars a year from her clients, which is what allowed her to buy, what, a 3.1 million dollar, you know, residence in Ivan's, you know, St. George, Utah. You know, that's not. That's not the income of a normal therapist. And by the way, the Mormon Church was paying, oftentimes the coaching or consulting or the therapy fees of Jody Hildebrandt, often bishops referring couples or youth to Jody to fix the problem. So it was a racket. Jody Hildebrandt had come up with a racket. I can tell you, even some of the most serious clinically psychological treatments, like obsessive compulsive disorder, you'd still only meet once a week.

Brian Tibbets [01:27:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:40] So this idea of meeting daily, daily is just. There's no support for it, especially when it's rooted in religious indoctrination and fear and terrorizing. In this case, the wife or the spouse. Correct. Now, that's just me trying to fill in the blanks for somebody that doesn't know Jody Hildebrandt. And it's not just Jody Hildebrandt. There are therapists, Mormon therapists up and down the I15 corridor, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, that have had the same racket, you know, these organizations for decades. This has been a racket that Mormon therapists and the Mormon Church use to get their members on the shame spiral, the shame cycle. And so tell me if I got all that right in any color you want to add to it before you move on to the girl you're dating, Right?

Brian Tibbets [01:28:33] Absolutely. So. Well, to drive the point home of fear, that was put into my ex wife at one of our therapists, my ex wife said, we were separated, and she said, it's because he has raped the children. And she said, raped? And I was like. I mean, I stood up and I was like, what? What are you talking about? And the therapist stood up and he's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Has there been. Has there been sexual misconduct or sex abuse? And I was like, I've never touched those children. And she said, well, I mean, yeah, he hasn't physically raped them, but he has spiritually raped my children.

John Dehlin [01:29:26] So Jody Hildebrandt would encourage the use of the term rape.

Brian Tibbets [01:29:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:29:30] As leverage.

Brian Tibbets [01:29:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:29:33] To help drive wedges between husband and wife and eventually, as we saw with Adam Paul Steed, to become fodder for litigation once there were separation or divorce proceedings. Is that right?

Brian Tibbets [01:29:46] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:29:47] So you're, in effect, being called a rapist.

Brian Tibbets [01:29:49] Yes, of my own children. And, I mean, thankfully, that therapist was very stern in saying, you may never use that word again to my ex. You cannot say that word under any circumstance. It didn't happen. There's no such thing as spiritual rape at all. And anyway, so we're separated. I started dating someone, and it was maybe a month later that my ex said, look, I want to change things. I want to get back together. I'll let you come back into the house, and let's just get under one roof and let's see if we can fix this. And I said, great. And we got back together. This was in Christmas of 2018.

John Dehlin [01:30:46] So you and your wife reconciled for a moment. Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:30:50] Yeah, we were together. And I thought she was done working with Jody at this time, but she wasn't. She was still talking to Jody, and I moved back home. We shared the same room and bed for about a month. And then what was that like to

John Dehlin [01:31:12] be able to move back in your home and to restore and try attempt a healthy relationship with your wife?

Brian Tibbets [01:31:20] It was great. I just, I. Yeah, I thought family divorce diverted. We've saved the family. Great, let's do this. And. And we had decided that we were going to be split faith and that we were going to continue to let the children choose whether to go to church or not. I was not going to go. And she would go and take those that want. And I could have a glass of wine in the evening if I wanted.

John Dehlin [01:31:57] Do you have a sense for what made your wife all of a sudden okay with your quote, apostasy?

Brian Tibbets [01:32:02] She was okay with it for about a month.

John Dehlin [01:32:04] But do you have a sense of what changed her heart?

Brian Tibbets [01:32:06] Fear. Fear of actual divorce. Fear.

John Dehlin [01:32:09] Divorce sucks many times. Yeah.

Brian Tibbets [01:32:12] It's horrible.

John Dehlin [01:32:13] Yeah. It's hard. It's expensive. It's hard on the kids.

Brian Tibbets [01:32:15] Yeah. So. And maybe a moment of clarity, like, you know, if there was a God, maybe God whispered in her ear. I don't know. I don't know what the moment was for her, but she sent me a text saying that she wanted to talk. And we sat down and talked. And that was the first time I had been in her presence in six months. Anyway, after about a month of living together, she asked me if I'd move into the guest room. Just until. Just until I had my. Either my sex addiction under control or I had a professional that, like, vet me that it isn't a problem, that I masturbate when I travel.

John Dehlin [01:33:12] So your wife was frustrated or angry. And by the way, the Mormon Church has taught for decades that masturbation is evil, that masturbation sinful. There's an understanding that's spread among Mormon women or husbands that masturbation is almost the same as infidelity, that it's a perversion, it's deviant. Spencer B. Kimball, the Mormon prophet, taught in Miracle Forgiveness that masturbation was evil. As you mentioned, Bishops Grill youth and adults about whether or not they masturbate

Brian Tibbets [01:33:41] about the Little Factory.

John Dehlin [01:33:42] Yeah. And Boy Kid Packer and all that. And so somehow in this month where you're trying to reconcile, your wife learns that you're still occasionally masturbating. And she's saying, okay, back out of my bed. Back out of the bed. Because you're an addict.

Brian Tibbets [01:34:02] Yeah. And in my mind, I was thinking like, okay, we can talk to some professionals and put forth the evidence to her that this isn't A problem. This is normal. And, in fact, some say it's healthy and that this is a normal part of the human existence.

John Dehlin [01:34:21] And that's what psychologists would say.

Brian Tibbets [01:34:24] Yes. And I knew that because we'd been through nine therapists. And so I just thought, I just need some time to put forth the right amount of evidence that this is going to work. And then. But then, like, once we were separated, I was in the other room. Then it was like, oh, I'm still uncomfortable with the kids seeing you drink a glass of wine. I don't want to see the coffee maker in the kitchen. I'm uncomfortable with that. And, you know, I'm trying to keep the family together. So I move the coffee maker out, and then I'll have a glass of wine after the kids go to bed so they don't see it. And then she didn't want any wine in the house. And then it got back to, you know what? I do want to stay together. I just need you to put everything back. And after you've put everything back and, like, the whole family's calm because some of the kids are not going to church. Like, once everybody's going to church and everyone is. Their heads are right, then let's make, like, a more gentler exit for you. And I'm like, babe, there's no putting it back. Like, and our mutual.

John Dehlin [01:35:43] So put it. Putting everything back means what?

Brian Tibbets [01:35:46] Taking the kids back to church?

John Dehlin [01:35:49] Like, you putting your doubts back in a bottle. Hiding. Going back into hiding mode with the kids. Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:35:57] Like, putting it back. Our mutual friend, who is a relative of hers, had a great euphemism for that. She said, you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. It's impossible. And I just. Like, we went back and forth on this for a couple of months. I just would say, I can't put it back even if I wanted to. Like, the cat's out of the bag. Pandora's box has been opened. Like, our children have been given a choice, and they chose, and they can't unsee what they've seen. Like, you know, my daughter listened to the Mindy Gledhill Mormon stories and came to me and said, book of Abraham. Like, what's that all about? Mindy kept talking about it. I'm like, well, read this article. You know, I had a big, giant library in the house, and I just pulled a book off and read this. She came to me horrified, and she's like, why didn't you tell me this years ago? Well, sorry. She's like, yeah, I'm done, you know? So I tried to explain to my ex, you can't unsee what you've seen. There's no putting it back. And on the 4th of July, 2019, we were at a matinee, and she. We were right in the middle of the matinee, and she stood up and walked out. And I've never been in the same room with her since. She. She moved out, and we started splitting up the kids back and forth. And she said, look, I don't want to get divorced. I do want to make this work, but you can't see the kids while we're doing it. And I was. I just. I really, really wanted to make it work. And I conceded to not see the kids. I think she had stopped talking to Jodi at this time, but it was still just in her head that me being around the kids is not good and that we needed to be separated to make it work. And this was. The kids were going back and forth a little bit through the end of 2019, but by October, they were just with her, and I didn't see him. October, November, December. And in January, I was headed for a business trip to China to fulfill one of the biggest contracts that we had. And against her wishes, I stopped where she was staying, and I hugged the kids, and I spent 10, 15 minutes with them, and I went to the airport, and I landed in China right before COVID And I couldn't leave China for two years because it would have bankrupted my company if I didn't have the ability to travel back and forth. And while I was in China, we finalized the divorce. And that was really, really hard because I couldn't leave China unless I had a residence permit. And I had started dating this wonderful English teacher in China, and we couldn't get married till the divorce was finalized, and my ex knew that. And so she wouldn't sign the divorce papers because she didn't want me to come home. And I had to compel her to sign them legally, and she did. I was able to get married to my current wife, and I was able to come home for a month and see the kids.

Parental Alienation and the Ruby Franke Connection

John Dehlin [01:40:00] Can I just note one. I know you're feeling kind of emotional. I just have to note that this alienation, this parental alienation, feels exactly like the Ruby Frankie, Kevin Frankie situation. Because everybody was asking, how did Ruby Frankie's kids end up in handcuffs, tortured, in the basement of Jody Hildebrandt's house? Where was the husband? Where was Kevin Frankie? And the answer was Jody Hildebrandt had cut off Kevin Franke from Ruby Frankie and the kids, such that Kevin, because he was evil, because he was a sex addict or whatever, I'm assuming, was no longer worthy to be with the kids. And this parental alienation is both how the husband becomes more and more disempowered and cut off from the family. It's also how Jodi Hildebrandt gets more and more power. It's almost like she becomes. She takes on the patriarchal and, in Mormon parlance, the male role. Jodi Hildebrake becomes the patriarch of these families, tries to become really close with the wives, takes on the parenting role of the children, and cuts the husband out for months, if not years at a time. And I just have to note that for those who are wanting to understand Kevin and Ruby Frankie.

Brian Tibbets [01:41:30] Correct. And that's layer A and layer B. My ex wife is. If you met her, she would be the most believing Mormon you've ever met. There's nothing you could ever say or do to sway her testimony. And by being a believing Mormon, she's quite susceptible to gullibility. And she has this woman that talks to dead people that talks to her dead grandma and that.

John Dehlin [01:42:09] Who's that?

Brian Tibbets [01:42:10] My ex wife. She has this woman, this spiritual lady.

John Dehlin [01:42:14] This isn't Jody. This is someone else.

Brian Tibbets [01:42:16] Somebody else. And it's going to get to Jodi. Like, back when we lived in Burley, Brian Regan, the comedian, had a special. I wanted to watch it, but he says, son of a bitch in it. And she turned it off. And she had to call her and get her grandma's permission to finish the movie. Like, and her grandma told this medium, this medium lady, whatever you call them, like, yes, Brian Regan's. Okay, you can watch it. Like. And, you know, so she gets her dead grandma's approval on lots of things. After I left the church, she had this woman ask her grandma to look at my soul. And my soul was dark and black. And so when Jody says, you husband's a monster. Yeah, my dead grandma has vetted that. So she knows it. Like, she fully knows from her grandmother that died years and years ago that my soul is black. And she has a health professional, Jody saying, yes, he's a monster, and he has raped your children. Spiritually, he cannot be in the household.

John Dehlin [01:43:31] Okay. And I just want to tie these pieces together. So now you're giving sort of Chad Daybell, Lori Valo vibes. This idea of some sort of powerful spiritual being, like Julie Rowe, like Chad Daybell is able to. Well, is one potentially able to communicate with dead spirits. And that Tim Ballard also relied on a medium who was able to claim that she could talk to Nephi or whoever. So there's this idea that's clearly prevalent in conservative Mormon circles as late as 2024, that super righteous Mormons can talk to dead people, can see into a living human soul, can declare them light or dark, and then can communicate that often for money or power or influence to a spouse. Being your ex wife, that can then be used as justification for further alienation, murder, you know, whatever it is it's got. I mean you're seriously pulling. Tim Ballard, Chad Dabel, Lori Valo, Jody Hildebrandt, Ruby Franke, Kevin Frankie, like all of these different influences. Influences are converging in your story.

Brian Tibbets [01:44:53] And at the center of it was visions of glory that sat on our non coffee table for years.

John Dehlin [01:45:04] Your postum table, Our posting table had visions of glory by John Pontius.

Brian Tibbets [01:45:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:45:11] Who is actually. Oh, I'm trying to think of the name Tom. Tom Harrison.

Brian Tibbets [01:45:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:18] Which we've also covered on Mormon Stories, which is a book about a near death experience that Tom Harrison claimed, you know, he had the ability to communicate with dead people and all that.

Brian Tibbets [01:45:29] When we got that book, our food storage went from one year to two year food storage. And that book was often discussed between my ex wife and her medium. I don't know how we came across that book. Maybe it was from her, maybe it was somewhere else. But it was pivotal in our household. So getting back to how susceptible my ex was to Jody. My parents who are active saw right through Jody. My best friend from the band. We've been best friends since fifth grade. When I told him about Jody, he saw right through it. And every therapist we worked through saw right through it. But the programming of my ex wife's belief was so deep and so ingrained in these weird stories of A, every story Joseph Smith ever told, B, the stories her own father told about the kid ushering in the second coming, this woman that's talking to her dead grandma. Visions of glory on the post him table to have Jody just further all that she had been groomed to believe and think and that, I mean not helping at all by hiding and lying for 10 years and then erupting like a volcano of anger and disdain for the church. Oh I was, I was volatile when I was so angry with the church. Like I was letting my kids choose to go to church. But I was like, but I'll tell you why I kind of don't want you to go. You know, and I had so much anger. So, yeah, the cards were stacked against her, or the deck was stacked against her. Hugely. She was so ripe to be manipulated by Jody. And it was during the divorce, when we were splitting things up, that I had realized that almost our entire cash savings had gone to Jody. It was like 30 something grand, I think like 36 or 38 grand that had gone to Jody in that amount of time. And that was really heartbreaking to. To learn that we're not splitting up the savings. We know where it went anyway.

John Dehlin [01:48:10] And that's just an unethical amount of money to charge clients totally. For totally scientifically illegitimate, harmful, unethical practices.

Brian Tibbets [01:48:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. So, you know, there I am in China, haven't seen my kids. I'm stuck there due to Covid. But the divorce is finalized. I'm deeply in love with my new wife. Falling in love. We're having a wonderful time together. When the borders finally opened and I was able to travel back home, oh, it was just so, so wonderful to be with the kids and to, you know, they're with me just under half the time, but. But the. The tentacles of Jody are still in this. In this divorce. When I've asked for more time with the kids, more custody time, longer vacations, the response has been not till you repair the dishonesty, not till you put back what you've stolen. And it's still been the same rhetoric, even in divorce. And I don't blame her. I really don't. I mean, I have empathy for

John Dehlin [01:49:45] the

Brian Tibbets [01:49:45] difficult position that my ex is in. I mean, she's been fed a bowl of lies her entire life and just knows it to be the gospel truth. And I don't want to end on a sad note. Like I mentioned to you earlier today, I'm happier than I've ever been. There's nothing incongruous in my life. My relationship with my current wife is totally honest and above board. And it's so wonderful. She's Chinese. She's never even heard of the Mormon Church till she came here and just sees the temples and thinks the golden guy is funny, you know, and, like, she doesn't. So there's no baggage there at all. There's no mutual ground of the church. And so it's just. It's been a wonderful fresh start and a wonderful relationship. And all six of my kids have left the church, and they. And, you know, it's interesting, they all left for different reasons. And just like you find with any Mormon, it's not one Thing, it's a host of all sorts of things, but I think, you know, there's light at the end of the tunnel and I think we're all looking up at this point.

John Dehlin [01:51:10] So if you had to summarize, let's just do first the Mormon Church and then Jody Hildebrandt. So what were the teachings, the doctrine, the theology, the teachings and the practices of the Mormon Church that you feel like were harmful to your marriage? And that laid the groundwork, the framework for Jody to come later and then we'll talk about Jody. So what teachings and then practices of the Mormon Church do you feel like harmed your marriage?

Church Teachings on Doubt, Sex, and Discipline

Brian Tibbets [01:51:43] Just in summary, doubt your doubts. You never express doubts. Of course you're going to have them. I mean, I'm saying that as a human, the church doesn't think you have doubts. If you're righteous, you won't have doubts. If you have the spirit, you won't have doubts.

John Dehlin [01:52:00] You're referring to Elder Uchtdorf's recommendation that if you have doubts about the Church's truthfulness, the more in church's truthfulness that you doubt your doubts.

Brian Tibbets [01:52:09] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:52:10] You're saying doubt harmed you?

Brian Tibbets [01:52:11] Well, of course. And years before Uchtdorf was even an apostle or before he's even in the Church, there is a. It's just culturally accepted that you don't talk about your doubts, you don't talk about the things, the problems. The Church doesn't have problems. The Church is perfect. The, the people aren't, but the Church is. And the leaders aren't perfect, but God is, but they're following God. So you just, you bury doubts. And so that's the underlying issue at first, doctrinally, like if you disbelieve. I mean, how many times in the Book of Mormon is it he was killed because of his unbelief, trodden underfoot because of his unbelief. Like bad things happen to people that don't believe. So if you don't believe, you bury that and you hide that. So that set a foundation in our relationship of dishonesty. And I honestly believe my ex wife has never had one tiny doubt her whole life. I had many and I couldn't bring them in. Or when I tried to a little bit, I was shut down. And I support her shutting me down because she was doing exactly what her leaders were telling her to do. Exactly. She was the one keeping the rules as taught. It was me that was breaking them by questioning.

John Dehlin [01:53:46] So by the Church teaching your wife and you that doubts were evil, that they should Be hidden or suppressed. That set you up to lie to your wife, and it set her to think that any doubts you had were evil and bad.

Brian Tibbets [01:53:59] Correct. Correct. And then the church teaches that personal revelations come, angels can show up, you can talk to dead people. You can look into people's souls. You can. You know, you can get the priesthood. You can lose the priesthood. You can

John Dehlin [01:54:21] like, basically supernatural beliefs.

Brian Tibbets [01:54:23] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:24] Is this medium Mormon that your wife consulted?

Brian Tibbets [01:54:27] Totally.

John Dehlin [01:54:28] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:54:28] Yeah. Yeah. Her husband. Her first husband died, but she still talks to him every day. They still have a wonderful relationship.

John Dehlin [01:54:38] The medium.

Brian Tibbets [01:54:39] The medium.

John Dehlin [01:54:40] Okay.

Brian Tibbets [01:54:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:54:42] So the church taught your wife the. This spirituality, this superstition, that people can speak with dead spirits.

Brian Tibbets [01:54:53] Sure. The early founders of the church talked to dead people all the time. They didn't actually see the plates. They saw them with their spiritual eyes.

John Dehlin [01:55:03] Joseph Smith talked to Moroni, to Peter, James, and John to John the Baptist after they were dead.

Brian Tibbets [01:55:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:09] That's the whole talk to God and Jesus. Like, Joseph Smith was the original dead spirit talker in Mormonism. True. Correct.

Brian Tibbets [01:55:17] Correct. And my ex, she knows about the scene with the spiritual eyes, the golden plates. She doesn't have a problem with it. She doesn't have a problem with the spiritual wifery, doesn't have a problem with however many wives they all had. Like, to her, this is God's church and God's plan, and it must be for a reason. And that reason should not be questioned or examined or looked at unless we're commanded to question and look at it.

John Dehlin [01:55:43] But the supernatural part was harmful. Why?

Brian Tibbets [01:55:47] Well, when a crazy lady Jody, is telling her, your husband's a monster, and the medium says, yes, his soul is black. He has lost the spirit. He is a dark soul. He has lost. You just put two and two together. Okay, then Jody, the crazy lady, she's the only one supporting what my grandma's telling me from the other side of the veil. The other therapists, they don't have that connection. They're supporting him. They're not supporting me. And so that's why it's harmful.

John Dehlin [01:56:27] Did Jody give you and your wife the impression that she had the blessing or the support of top church leaders? And if so, what did she say? Or just the blessing of the church?

Brian Tibbets [01:56:39] She bragged that she had helped family members of the apostles. She also bragged Utah is so messed up that I make over a million dollars a year turning people's lives around.

John Dehlin [01:56:56] And these are Mormons. Yeah.

Brian Tibbets [01:56:58] She only helps Mormons. Yeah, that's her people. Everyone else would see right through It. And John, I don't think just like regular Mormons would see Jody. It's over the top Mormons.

John Dehlin [01:57:11] My niece, wealthy Mormons.

Brian Tibbets [01:57:13] Yeah, well, my niece was not wealthy, but they were also over the top Mormons. By the way, the good news is my niece and her husband saw the light and they. They got out of the Jody cult about a year ago, which is good news. But the only people we referred Jody to, four or five couples, four or five friends. And the only takers we had were also some more crazy Mormon friends that we had that were also over the top, that talked to dead people. So I think she really, really appealed to not just mainstream people that were conservative. Yeah. And people that were easily manipulatable and people that were, like, happily manipulatable. Like they wanted to be told what to do and how to do it and. Thank you. Can I give you more money for more advice?

John Dehlin [01:58:09] What about the Mormon Church's teachings on sex, sexuality, masturbation, and pornography? How did those harm you? Just to summarize, you and your wife in your marriage? Well,

Brian Tibbets [01:58:21] that gave a catalyst for Jody to put a label on it.

John Dehlin [01:58:25] What teachings?

Brian Tibbets [01:58:26] The church says masturbation is evil. Your husband does it. He's evil. The church says having thoughts about pretty women is the same as sex. He's had that. He's a sinner, he's a fornicator, because he's had those thoughts. So the church just has these teachings that she can. She can weaponize, she can give to my ex as a weapon to kick me out of the house.

John Dehlin [01:58:47] And they're not just sins. They're sins next to murder and severity.

Brian Tibbets [01:58:51] Oh, yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:58:52] Which gives you license. He's basically a rapist. He's basically a abuser. What's the word? Rape. Yeah. And so of course, you kick him out of your bed and potentially out of the house. And of course, you separate him from the children because he's, in effect, a rapist. Is that how Jody Hildebrandt?

Brian Tibbets [01:59:09] Of course. Of course. So from Jody's side, he has raped your children. Spiritually, he's a monster. And from the medium side, his soul is black. He's lost. And just look at the fruits. Now you have kids that don't want to go to church. Now their souls are lost. And then at the time that we were separated, a conversation somehow got recorded that somehow got sent to my son accidentally. But my ex wife's bishop at the time, who he said that he had received spiritual confirmation, that she was going to have all the children in the next life, and that they will not even if they follow me in this life. And it seems as if they're being dragged down to hell. He received spiritual confirmation that she was going to have them in the next life. And so, I mean, that's her bishop. And like, you know, this is me saying no to the split family and wanting the kids to come back, and then the bishop telling her that it's just more fuel for the fire from another angle, you know. Oh, that was a hard recording to listen to. He was a friend of mine, that bishop was. I mean, I haven't talked to him in years. I haven't talked to him since I listened to that recording. But.

John Dehlin [02:00:36] So to what extent did your wife and Jody incorporate your bishops into your discipline, your family discipline?

Brian Tibbets [02:00:42] Well, part of what Jody required of me was to put everything back and to. I had to go to church court and come back into full fellowship of the church. Can't do that without your bishop. And, you know, so obviously, I mean, Jody was using the church in the church court as part of her weight. You know, you involve. That brings credibility, especially to my ex, of what she was trying to accomplish.

John Dehlin [02:01:16] And I may have missed this. And if I did, forgive me. So was there church discipline? Was there a disciplinary court? Were you excommunicated? Disfellowshipped?

Brian Tibbets [02:01:26] I left the church before I got excommunicated. When I was in Burley, I sent my hundred pages of that document that it was 100 pages. I just rearranged it into. I asked a pretty damning question, and then I put forth all the very damning evidence.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] And.

Brian Tibbets [02:01:48] And this is pre CES letter.

John Dehlin [02:01:53] You're talking about truth claims of the church?

Brian Tibbets [02:01:55] Yes, it's the research that I found when I was writing that multiple probations paper. The hundred pages of problems. I put that in question form. I sent it to my bishop and I said, hey, and this is after I told my wife I didn't believe. I said, I would like some answers to these questions. I don't believe, but. But I want to tell my kids. I'd like to tell my ex wife, like, I want some answers. And he responded back. He called me into his office. I hadn't been to church in a while, but he brought me in and he laid the paper down on his desk and he said, do you still have these questions? And I said, yeah, you haven't answered any of them. He said, well, then we're going to have to start the process of excommunication for having the questions. I Sent that same paper to my.

John Dehlin [02:02:44] What happened to that disciplinary.

Brian Tibbets [02:02:46] I just said, save your breath. I'm going to ask to have my name removed.

John Dehlin [02:02:52] And did you?

Brian Tibbets [02:02:53] Oh, yeah, I did. I did.

John Dehlin [02:02:55] You resigned.

Brian Tibbets [02:02:56] QuitMormon.org okay, I just typed in the thing, sent in my driver's license.

John Dehlin [02:03:01] What year was that?

Brian Tibbets [02:03:03] This is 2018.

John Dehlin [02:03:04] Okay. And. And I would like to take just a few minutes for you to list off what were the top 10 teachings. Historical moments, doctrine, theology, problems with the Mormon Church. Summarize in a few minutes.

Core Faith Transitions and Reasons for Leaving

Brian Tibbets [02:03:23] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:03:23] What were the main things that were problems for you that caused you to lose your faith? In summary, just go through his Book of Abraham, just list them, and just give a one to two sentence description of each of the main things just so that our audience, some of whom have never even heard of these issues before, can just get your summary of the problems.

Brian Tibbets [02:03:46] Sure. The Book of Abraham was a big one.

John Dehlin [02:03:50] What about it?

Brian Tibbets [02:03:51] Well, it came from papyri that nobody could translate at the time that Joseph translated it. And then later we found the actual papyri, so they were discovered in the Chicago Museum. We know what they are. And they were translated. And it's a very common book of breathings.

John Dehlin [02:04:09] By Egyptologists.

Brian Tibbets [02:04:10] By Egyptologists. And what he came up with was, I mean, like quintessential quack Christian doctrine of the time, and it doesn't exist at all. Okay, well, then there's the argument that it was just a catalyst for him to be inspired to do this. Okay. Just like the gold plates. Why were the gold plates even there? He never even looked at them. He never opened them up.

John Dehlin [02:04:42] You were taught that he did. What with the golden plates?

Brian Tibbets [02:04:44] Well, the picture I had hanging on my wall as a kid of Joseph pouring over the gold plates with the Urim and Thummim and Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone, Oliver Cowdery. I've been out for a while. Oliver Cowdery sitting next to him, translating that whole picture was a BS And I found that on my own.

John Dehlin [02:05:03] You learned that what was the reality?

Brian Tibbets [02:05:06] That there was a sheet, that nobody actually ever saw them. And most of the time he had his head buried in a hat. And I was just like.

John Dehlin [02:05:14] And the stone was in the stone in the hat.

Brian Tibbets [02:05:16] The seer stone in the hat. And wait a minute.

John Dehlin [02:05:19] And the plates were where?

Brian Tibbets [02:05:21] Who knows?

John Dehlin [02:05:22] They weren't even in the room.

Brian Tibbets [02:05:24] Usually not.

John Dehlin [02:05:24] Or even in the house?

Brian Tibbets [02:05:25] Usually not.

John Dehlin [02:05:26] So no plates in the house.

Brian Tibbets [02:05:27] Why did he have to sometimes brought in a burlap sack, but he wouldn't let anybody touch it, but certainly not

John Dehlin [02:05:32] sitting it over the plates. He was putting his face in a hat with a stone in it. And the plates weren't even in the house.

Brian Tibbets [02:05:40] Correct.

John Dehlin [02:05:40] And that's different than what you were taught?

Brian Tibbets [02:05:42] Of course. The pictures I saw, the stories that I sang. I mean. Sorry. The songs that I sang as a child. I'm reading, I'm finding this is a very different story.

John Dehlin [02:05:57] Do you want to tell them where the stone came from?

Brian Tibbets [02:05:59] I don't know. Oh, it came from digging a well. Didn't it come? He was digging a well and they found it, and he said, oh, this was so and so stone. I've forgotten that.

John Dehlin [02:06:09] Well, just that he had like five, six, seven years of treasure digging telling people that he could find buried treasure with this magic stone.

Brian Tibbets [02:06:19] Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:20] He never found treasure, Digit.

Brian Tibbets [02:06:21] Well, he was arrested for that, which I found out later and we've found since found those court documents.

John Dehlin [02:06:26] So why is he using this magic stone that he used for illegal treasure digging? Why is he now using that for the Book of Mormon translation?

Brian Tibbets [02:06:33] And I didn't know that at the time. I had just found out that he was. Was using a seer stone and a hat, believing that seer stones were real. But when I first discovered these problems, I was like, that's really weird. Why did they say this when it was actually that it was just another one of those things. I was really disturbed to learn about spiritual wifery and really disturbed us what that is. Well, that's where someone is your spiritual wife. You can have sex with them in the flesh, and you don't. You don't even have to tell your wife, and she doesn't even have to tell her husband.

John Dehlin [02:07:13] But what does that do to Joseph Smith?

Brian Tibbets [02:07:15] Well, he did a lot of that. A lot of that. That was his M.O. he'd get caught sleeping with somebody and be like, well, she's my wife. Spiritual wife. So I'm good. Because God told me a thing and he said if I didn't, he's going to kill me. So, you know, there's that.

John Dehlin [02:07:33] And he hid it from his wife, of course.

Brian Tibbets [02:07:35] Yeah, of course. And doctrine of covenant says that polygamy is okay as long as the wife's okay with it. The problem is he just didn't ever tell his wife till he got caught.

John Dehlin [02:07:44] Well, also, that revelation came, like over 20 wives into this practice. So why is he receiving the revelation after he's already had sex with 20 plus women? You know?

Brian Tibbets [02:07:54] Well, you may not know this, John, but God works in mysterious ways.

John Dehlin [02:07:58] Okay, yes. Any other main church issues that cause you to lose your faith?

Brian Tibbets [02:08:05] The biggest was the changes in the Book of Mormon and learning, like the Isaiah that's in Second Nephi. And I dove into learning. I was taking Latin and I was studying Greek at Utah State. I was trying to get to the root of the Bible, and I took a history of Christianity Christianity class, and I discovered that, like, the King James Version was not at all the most correct version and that we now know exactly what the original Isaiah should look like from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi script and other codices that have been found. We now know, like, really what those Old Testament stories were. So to have. So to have, you know, 15th century English version of Isaiah showing up in the Book of Mormon pretending to be the original Isaiah, an uncorrupted version, like that was a huge blow. And I remember sitting in that class in History of Christianity and in the basement of Old Main just like, oh, this is not good. This doesn't make sense. Of course the church is true, but why would God give Joseph Smith this version from Middle England and not the original? I better bury this one deep. But that was probably the biggest one for me that I wanted to know. Like, what the hell? Really, with this translation and the Book of Mormon. And there is no good answer for it. Like the Joseph Smith translation, the thick one, the real one, you know, where he went through everything. You can't even buy that anymore. Like, I found an old, old copy that BYU used to print. But the church, I mean, it's too embarrassing. The church has even given up on the Joseph Smith translation because it's so bad. And I was discovering that on my own, slowly and just feeling more and more horrified. And bury that, bury that, bury that. And just keep the stuff that's good, keep the stuff that supports my belief over here. So that was probably what most of the questions are around.

John Dehlin [02:10:42] Okay. Those are the main things.

Brian Tibbets [02:10:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:44] All right. Okay. So did we probably covered the ways Jody Hildebrandt harmed your marriage? Is there anything else you want to say about her? I mean, she's now confessed. She's now, you know, what's it called when you admit that you were wrong? She's.

Jodi Hildebrandt's Conviction, Healing, and Moving Forward

Brian Tibbets [02:11:06] She's admitted guilt. She pled out. She took the plea.

John Dehlin [02:11:10] She pled guilty. Pled guilty to child abuse. She's going to serve multiple years in prison. How does it feel to see Jody Hildebrandt get justice?

Brian Tibbets [02:11:20] Well, my older children and I cracked open a bottle of champagne the day that she was picked up and we celebrated hard. I mean, we, of course, we were horrified for the kids, and we didn't know what the kids had been through at that time. Nobody did. We were just so. We felt so vindicated that she had been caught and locked up. Of course, I was surprised by the allegations that she was actually abusing a child. And in my. In my worst daydream, I couldn't. I couldn't imagine that it was so bad. I listened to, like, what they actually admitted to and was horrified for those kids. So, so sad for those kids. However, back to the day we found out, we didn't know it was that bad, but we celebrated. We were so. Felt so vindicated. Like, finally, you know, we knew we were right, that she was crazy. We knew we were right, that what she was doing was wrong. And here's the proof. So that felt wonderful.

John Dehlin [02:12:36] Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. And the damage was done. But now you feel like you've moved on to a happier situation.

Brian Tibbets [02:12:48] I went through about two years of pretty intense trauma therapy, and that was really, really helpful from an actual certified therapist that hasn't lost their license and took my therapy goals into account. And I've really done a lot of healing, a lot of forgiveness, forgiveness of myself, forgiveness of my ex wife. I'm not ready to forgive Jody just yet. I'm going to hold on to some of that for a little while. But I say that a little bit in tongue in cheek. Jody is an absolute charlatan. She's a horrible person. And I just imagine that something really, really bad happened to her when she was younger to turn her into what she became. And I just want to acknowledge that, like, she had the power to manipulate people the way that she did because people were so gullible and vulnerable from a horribly chaotic fundamental religion called the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [02:14:04] Yeah, yeah. Well, I know that there are going to. There are many, many victims, hundreds, if not thousands of victims of Jody Hildebrandt. And I was just bummed that we had to pull down Adam Paul Steed's interview. I want to get that back up in any way that I can. But I also want other victims of Jody Hildebrandt to, you know, to hear this story. And if there are others that want to tell their stories, I know they're going to be making documentaries and maybe even dramatizations of the Ruby Frankie, Jody Hildebrandt sort of fiasco. And so these stories can be used by filmmakers, documentarians, by historians, by other victims to help educate and to help support accountability and also to prevent stuff like this from happening again. Yeah, yeah, yep.

Brian Tibbets [02:15:03] The more knowledge, the more knowledge they can get out. And the more people that fall away from the church or at least have their eyes opened and want to stay in and change things, the better it is for everybody. You know, the Mormon Church is not unique in manipulating and lying to people, but it's, it's who's in charge here in Utah. These are our people, these are our families, these are our friends. And so, you know, the more we can do to help them, the better, better equipped they are. Yeah. All right.

John Dehlin [02:15:46] Well, I just, I just want to thank you, Brian, for Brian Tibbets, for coming on my Mormon stories, telling the story, for your courage. And I'm just happy to hear that you're doing well.

Brian Tibbets [02:15:58] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:15:59] And that there's healing and happiness after Mormonism. I think we're taught that children can't be healthy and happy without the Mormon Church and that individual lives can't be healthy and happy without the Mormon Church. It's sounding like that. Has it been your experience?

Brian Tibbets [02:16:16] Not at all. After my volcano erupted and I had all the anger and, and shame and ptsd, after healing from that, I'm able to see it for what it is and understand it. Doesn't mean I like it, but I understand it. I have a place to put it, a place to work on it. And I've come into it deep satisfaction and happiness outside the Mormon Church. And I wake up excited every day for the day ahead of me and look forward to a long, happy life outside the church.

John Dehlin [02:16:54] Would you say your marriage now is healthier than your previous marriage?

Brian Tibbets [02:17:00] It's 100% healthier. And the reason is it's built on honesty and it's built on communication. Like my new wife, she knows if I'm traveling alone, what's going to happen. No problem. I'll just take care of the hotel room. I'll tell her about it, we'll talk about it. Do you want a video conference? Great. That's healthy too, for a. You know, we had to get creative ways to connect when I was back in the States and before she was able to come to the U.S. she didn't come till February of last year. So, you know, we had to date over the computer and that would have never been an option in my first marriage and just starting the relationship with everything laid out like this is who I am and I have a one up. I'm her first marriage, she's my second. But I know exactly what I did to blow up my first marriage and to set things in place so somebody like Jody could take advantage of us. I know what I did, and I'm not going to repeat those mistakes. And what I did was I codependently hid from who I actually am. She's only seen the authentic me, and that's what brings me so much happiness in my daily life and in my relationship. She doesn't have to hide who she is. I don't have to hide who I am. When my kids come over to my house, they don't have to hide who they are. They get to be authentic in front of me and any of their beliefs or sexual attractions or affiliations or anything. There's nothing that needs to be checked and hung at the door before they come in. And so that has made for a really peaceful, joyous household and a joyous life.

John Dehlin [02:19:02] Beautiful. Well, I'm happy for you. Thanks for sharing your story and stay in touch.

Brian Tibbets [02:19:08] Thank you. Will do.

John Dehlin [02:19:09] All right, and thanks everyone, for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Again, if you were a victim of Jody Hildebrandt and you feel like your story will add important details or color or a different perspective, please reach out. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com please we want to thank our donors who make all this possible. We lose donors every month, so if you value this type of content and want to see it continue, we would welcome you becoming a monthly donor. @mormonstories.org Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor and we'll continue to provide this type of content for as long as you're able to support it. There are other ways you can support us, including subscribing on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, liking our videos, commenting on our videos, sharing them with other that all helps with the algorithms and helps us be sustainable. And we want to thank everyone who helps make all this possible. Julia Gerardo Maven Brooklyn are bored. A lot of people's work goes into these episodes and so we want to just acknowledge that, appreciate all you, our viewers and listeners. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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