Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is July 2, 2024, and today we're covering a breaking Mormon news story that's hitting the sports national news media in spades. It's basically the story of Kyle Filipowski. And I'm just learning about who this person is, but apparently he is a former player for the Duke Blue Devils, a basketball player, a center, super tall guy, and he was recently drafted by the Utah Jazz, which we'll talk about. Why that's interesting. But it's, it's newsworthy for kind of two or three reasons. One is because he was drafted in the NBA draft, so second round, I believe. But also he was drafted at a lower rank than was anticipated. That's news. And then the third piece of news is that the reason that people are saying he fell in his place in the draft was because of his girlfriend, who happens to be Mormon. And so if I were just to share with you some of the headlines right now about Kyle Filipowski, just to give you a sense for what's being said about him, I'll just read some of the top headlines. Who is Kyle Filipowski's fiance? Caitlyn Hutcherson. Swimsuit photo of Kyle Filipowski's girlfriend turns heads at NBA draft. Kyle Filipowski's brother takes aim at Duke coaching staff. Caleb Filipowski's family accuses fiance of grooming and isolating him. Prom photos surfacing amid NBA grooming. You know, Kyle Filipowski's family claims that the fiance cost him a better landing spot in the draft. Kyle Filipowski's brother drops shocking allegations about the Jazz rookie. And basically what's going on here is, and I'll just give you the short version, you know, Duke superstar basketball player Kyle Filipowski apparently had what appears to be potentially a Mormon babysitter who is something like seven or eight years older than him, who eventually somehow, as an adult in their 20s, becomes his girlfriend when he's something like 16, 17, or 18 years old, to the point of taking him to prom as a former babysitter, apparently, allegedly, but as an adult many, many years older. And, and so, and now, you know, not only are NBA front offices and scouts concerned that she's controlling him too much, his families come out on the Internet and said, basically, this Mormon, you know, girlfriend slash fiance of our son Kyle is not only groomed him, but has alienated him and cut him off from the family. And some even allege that she's trying to convert him to Mormonism. And so words like brainwashing are being floated by family members now. That's the very short, abbreviated version of. That's the hook for why we're doing today's episode. And as you can tell, I know very little about this story. And so what I decided to do was to turn to one of my favorite, you know, tiktokers out there who. Who does focus on true crime and on lots of different important issues, but also covers her fair share of Mormon influencers and celebs in even as an ever Mormon. But we're welcoming back to Mormon stories for the second time. Julie from the recap with Julie. Hey, Julie.

Julia [00:04:05] Hi, John. How are you?

John Dehlin [00:04:07] Good. Thanks so much for being willing to kind of dive into the story with me.

Julia [00:04:11] Thank you for having me on again. I had a great time and learned so much the first time. So I'm excited to cover this with you and get to the bottom of things.

John Dehlin [00:04:19] Now you've got like over a million followers on YouTube, right? Or Tik Tok. On Tik Tok.

Julia [00:04:23] I wish on YouTube. No, on Tik Tok. I do. I have a 1.1 and I'm just getting started here on YouTube, so I think I have about 16,000 followers so far.

John Dehlin [00:04:32] Hey, that's way more than you had last time. So your YouTube channel.

Julia [00:04:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going. So luckily.

John Dehlin [00:04:39] Okay. And, you know, and. And the episode we had you on was to talk about Rudy Ruby, Frankie's journal, and the Jody Hildebrandt thing. Why don't you just tell people the type, the ways you describe your channel and what you focus on?

Julia [00:04:56] So I cover a lot of true crime stories. Anything that's big in the news in today's world or from the past, really. I look into old cases as well. I do a little bit of celebrity gossip stuff, too. This case that we're about to cover today kind of intrigued me. Just the Mormon side of it, as you know, I've covered a few stories with that and the Mormon side of things as being a never Mormon and fascinates me. I love learning about it and looking into it. It's just kind of outside of my realm of understanding where I've never, you know, been a part of it. And where I'm from in New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada, we don't have a lot of Mormons here. So really I've, you know, never known a lot of Mormons, so I don't have a lot of experience with it. So it really intrigues me with situations like this. But I deep dived into the Ruby Frankie situation, the Lori Valo case. It just, it's. There's so much, it seems, coming out of Utah the last couple years, especially with Ruby Frankie and Jody Hildebrand. So when Kyle's story came out, it was a little bit of kind of celebrity gossip stuff, but it has that Mormon side of it that just kind of intrigues me. So I dug into it a bit.

John Dehlin [00:06:03] I love it. Yeah. And so the way we're setting up today, I have not had time to dig in to the Kyle of Filipowski story. I've read a few articles about it, but Julie's going to be digging into the Kyle Filipowski details. She did the, the deep rabbit hole dive yesterday and today. And then what I'm going to do, you know, I'll be asking Julie questions about, you know, and you in the audience can help ask questions as well. Julie will give us the Kyle Filipowski scoop. And then if I can fill in any details about Mormonism and speculate as to how Mormonism may or may not be involved here, that will be my role. How does that sound, Julie?

Julia [00:06:46] That sounds good to me. You can educate us.

Background on Kyle Filipowski and the NBA Draft

John Dehlin [00:06:49] All right. And you, us. Okay, so you put together some slides. And so what I'll do now is we'll jump to the slides and we'll just have you, we'll let you start. Tell us when you just want to talk or jump into the slides, but tell us what you've learned.

Julia [00:07:07] Yeah, we can just jump right into the slides too. I tried to put kind of a slide along with each kind of topic we're going to cover. But just starting it off kind of the, the basics of it is Kyle is still only 20 years old. Like he is a young man still. He's just kind of getting out into the world and, you know, seeing what's out there for him. But he was born in November of 2003, so he's only 20 years old. And he was being talked about because like you said, he is a fantastic bass basketball player with the Dukes while he was in University. He's 7ft tall almost, I think he's 6, 11. So he's huge. And he had everything going for him and the way everyone was talking about him, he was going to be picked in the first round of draft picks. I am not a sports person. I had to dig into this majorly to know what all this meant. But basically the first round draft is where you want to Be that's where the top players are. Now, they did say he'd be towards the end of the first round, but he was so good that they expected him to go. And this picture, so the one on the right here with him in the sunglasses, that's him arriving at the draft. And you can see he's super pumped. He's excited. His girlfriend Caitlin was there with him. As you can see in the other two pictures. That's his girlfriend. But if you want to move to the next slide, there's a bit of a different Kyle in the next picture. So he goes to the draft pick.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] Oh, really quickly. I'll just say. Yeah, reading from his Wikipedia page, it says he was a consensus five star recruit and one of the top players in the 2022 class. So he was. He was heavily recruited, which is why he landed at Duke. And yeah, when you're a five star recruit, that's one of the best players in the nation, right?

Julia [00:08:53] Yeah, they thought they'd kind of be fighting for him in the first round.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Okay. All right, so let's go ahead and go to the second slide.

Julia [00:09:00] So this is the one I wanted to show. So the picture on the right here is Kyle with his girlfriend Caitlyn. It's actually a video and I just took a screen grab of it. But this is him finding out that he wasn't picked in the first round. So all the hype was there. He expected to be picked, everyone expected him to be picked. And when he wasn't, it was actually quite shocking to everyone. So this is kind of a little side clip that someone had posted on Twitter saying Utah is selecting Kyle Filipowski at number 32 in the NBA draft. So this is the second round and he didn't get picked until the 32nd position. And when he did get picked, he got picked, like you said, by the Utah Jazz. And all of that's going to connect in a minute. Because what's Utah known for but a lot of Mormons, right? Like the Mormon religion. So the fact that Utah picked him when all of this kind of circulating around him had to do with his girlfriend being Mormon and what was kind of going on behind the scenes for that screams volumes with the Utah Jazz kind of picking them up, if you know what I mean.

John Dehlin [00:10:01] And the Utah Jazz, as I understand it, is owned by Ryan Smith, who is the former owner and founder of Qualtrics and the general manager of the Utah Jazz is, of course, Danny an, who is both Mormon, you know, NBA legend, all star, and former Boston Celtics basketball player, as well as a former BYU cougar. So Utah Jazz is very Mormon. So it's really ironic that Mormons are playing into this Mormon scandal. The only other thing I'll add is that apparently Kyle Filipowski attended Minisink Valley High School in Slate Hill, New York. So he's from New York, which is actually the state where Mormonism was founded. So we can find all sorts of angles here if we want to.

Julia [00:10:49] All right, I'll give a little backstory on this, too, because, John, at this point, the general public knew nothing about the Mormon backstory. It doesn't sound like a lot was being, you know, said in the public about his girlfriend or the situation. So we. In the next slide, if you want to move to the next slide, I'll show you kind of how it all broke. A lot of people were accusing his family of leaking this and kind of ruining, ruining his chances. And that's not what happened. It was actually the ESPN draft analyst and his name is Jonathan Gio Giovani or Giovani. He was on the Low Post podcast and he was quoted on a couple news articles and he was on tv and this is what he said. So I'll just read this quickly just so you guys can get a gist of how this first broke. So this is kind of the public's first inkling that something is going on here. So his quote that he said, and we'll listen to him in a couple minutes, but NBA teams are talking about the fact that they had questions about his girlfriend being so much older than him. So this was kind of a big thing. As you said, she went to his high school prom, so he would have been like 17 or 18 years old. And they're guessing she was about 24. So I don't know a lot of 24 year olds that would go to a high school prom, but she did. And that was being talked about. And they were wondering why was he estranged from his family because of this whole situation? It's a very, very odd situation. And he goes on to say, I personally don't understand why it would cause them to drop like this into the second round. There's no questions about his character, but NBA teams are talking about his nerves and his workouts weren't great. And when they asked him about the situation in interviews, the answers they got weren't satisfactory for them. So they were asking him about his family and why he doesn't speak to them. They were asking him about his girlfriend and the age difference. And he doesn't really answer the questions. He gets all uncomfortable and they're thinking it comes off as nerves. But a lot of people are thinking he just didn't want to share because there's something deeper going on. So if you want to play the next clip, that is where the ESPN draft analyst is actually talking about Kyle as soon as they find out that he was second round draft pick.

John Dehlin [00:12:57] All right, let's play the clip.

Julia [00:13:02] The draft board today, Christine.

Speaker C [00:13:05] It has to be Kyle Filipowski. He was invited to the green room. For him to be sitting there all night and not hear his name called was very surprising. He's 7ft tall, he can dribble, pass and shoot. He was one of the best players in college basketball last year. He's battle tested. He's ready to play a role right away. NBA teams are talking about the fact that they had question marks about his girlfriend being so much older than him. Why was he estranged from his family because of this whole situation? He apparently doesn't talk to his parents or, or his brother. And it's a very, very odd situation. I personally don't understand why it would cause him to drop like this into the second round. There, there, obviously there are no question marks about his character, but NBA teams are talking about his nerves and his workouts weren't great. And when they asked him about the situation in interviews, the, the answers they got weren't satisfactory for them. So this Kyle Filipowski situation is bizarre. I think he's going to be one of the first players to hear his name called tonight, regardless.

John Dehlin [00:14:08] Yeah. And I should know that like NBA, NBA teams, draft players from all sorts of different types of families and all sorts of different family dysfunction. So I, I would guess you have to have a pretty high level of family dysfunction to hit the radar of, of NBA front office, front offices. Is that, is that fair to say?

Julia [00:14:33] Especially when you're that good. Like, to have them back up and be like, whoa, this guy might be too hot to handle. There's got to be something major going on. And for the public not to know kind of what was going on, there must have been a lot, you know, running under in the, behind in the locker rooms and stuff of what was exactly going on.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] Yeah.

Julia [00:14:51] Okay, so he is the one who first broke this. So not his family. Because I know going through and checking out all the Twitter posts and the, the Reddit feeds and all that stuff, a lot of people were accusing the family because the family has now become extremely vocal, especially his brother Daniel and his mom Becky. But they did not come first with this. This is the first place that it broke. And as soon as that was. That came out of his mouth, it was everywhere. It was in all the news media. It was all over Twitter, Instagram, like, you name it. And that's when his family started coming forward. So it almost has an air of relief for them. Like, they started talking about it when they haven't for the last, apparently, two years. So now they're sharing. So if you want to check the next slide, this is kind of the first glimpse we have of his family coming forward after this. So this is actually his brother, Daniel. It wasn't. We weren't sure kind of at first if this was legitimately his brother and his mom, but it has been validated and. And verified now that it actually is them. It was hard because they don't have the blue checks to their names, but anyway, it has come out that it is them. So this is Daniel talking about Kyle, and he comments on a Twitter feed that was talking about what the ESPN draft analyst had said. So he says, I'm Kyle's oldest brother. You all don't have a clue of the extent of this story that has to do with his girlfriend. There's a story that has been pushed under the table for nearly two years now. And then he gets replies saying, like, my DMs are open. I'll take the post down if it's misinformation. And he replies and said, now he's talking about the analyst that we just heard. And he says, if Giovanni responds to my DMs, he would be able to get the full story that no one knows outside of who's involved, Duke coaching staff and his agent. So right there, he's calling out the Duke coaching staff and Kyle's agent, saying that they're well aware of what's going on as well, and only his immediate family. So this was the first we'd heard. And then his mom kind of got involved as well.

John Dehlin [00:16:55] Yeah. And so Daniel is basically saying, I'm his older brother. You know, this story has been suppressed for a long time. Duke has known about it. And, yeah, you wonder what he's. I guess you may be telling us. What he means is, is it just that he's estranged? Is it just that he has a girlfriend who is potentially grooming him? Or is there more? I wonder, do we know exactly what Daniel means when he says this story has been pushed under the table for two years?

Julia [00:17:29] A lot of it is vague, but we will get into quite a few tweets that he's posted especially recently. And he's even going after Duke now and the coaching team. So there's a lot that kind of gets revealed, but not enough yet to really kind of get to the bottom of what exactly is going on. A lot of it is just surface level, and he does tell people to dig into the Mormon grooming side of things is a lot of his accusations. So anyway, what. Go to the next slide, John. I'll show you the second part.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] All right, next slide.

Julia [00:17:58] So this is kind of them continuing. And basically he's the, the person who was responding to him tells him, you know, I'm not the right person with this story, like, it's too big for me. You need to reach out to people. And so then he replies. Daniel says, other than messaging the ESPN analysts, he says, I don't know how to get in touch with them, but look up and read on Mormon grooming and brainwashing and you'll find some introductory details in there to connect some dots into the story that is going on here. So this is kind of your, your thing here, John, because as soon as he kind of said that, I was like, oh, like, I don't exactly know where he's going with this, but I'm assuming he's accusing the girlfriend, because she was so much older than him, of grooming Kyle.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] Yeah. And if I can do my. This is where I come in. The term brainwashing from a psychological perspective, like from a technical, academic, even medical professional perspective, the term brainwashing historically is fraught. It's initially sort of mentioned in Vietnam era or World War II era sort of techniques to deal with prisoners of war, you know, all sorts of different torture methods and, or, you know, we can say brainwashing methods were attempted, you know, to try and, to try and deal with those scenarios. And then that that term, as I understand it, sort of got imported into the discussion of cults and high demand religions. So when you think about what would lead Patty Hearst, you know, the, the daughter of William Randolph Hearst, the, the publishing magnet, to join, you know, a terrorist organization or what would cause anyone to join Heaven's Gate or, you know, the Jim Jones cult of, you know, Guyana or the People's Temple where they ended up drinking the Kool Aid and dying, you know, the answer is, well, they were brainwashed by the cult leader. And even if you talk to, you know, experts on cults, they'll tell you that the term brainwash, brainwash is problematic. And so I want to just note that. But also Note that undue influence is a thing. And the best book that I can recommend and I hope Kyle Filipowski and his family will read this book and check it out. The book that I want to recommend most to understand Mormonism as it relates to is it or is it not a culture? Does it meet criteria? Is there brainwashing in the Mormon Church? Is the Mormon Church guilty of undue influence of its members? That's all answered in this amazing book. And the book is called Recovering Agency, Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control by Luna Lindsay. And this is a phenomenal book. It lists 31 techniques of undue influence within Mormonism. But I will say that, you know, one of the common techniques of high demand religions or cults is shunning. And of course Scientology and Jehovah's Witnesses and ultra orthodox Jews are often the most guilty of this sort of thing, of shunning. But there is shunning in Mormonism. So right off the bat I'm just going to say that if a Mormon family believes that a family member, a friend, a boyfriend, a spouse, an associate is potentially a threat to their religious beliefs and to their religious worldview, shunning in Mormonism absolutely will occur and can occur. So if in any way Kyle's family, if, let's just say in a scenario where, and we'll get to this, I'm sure where Kyle's fiance's family were feeling like they wanted Kyle to convert to the Mormon Church, they were having him talk to the missionaries, they were having him take the lessons and he was considering joining. And then the family steps in, Kyle's family steps in and says, Kyle, this church is a cult. Joseph Smith was a treasure digger. He was a sexual predator. The Book of Mormon's a fraud. Like if any of the family members would have tried to share that information with Kyle to keep him from learning about the church's true history. And all those things I just said are factual. Or if they would have thought that they were in any way trying to prevent him from joining the church or anything of the like, they absolutely would encourage her or him to cut off communications with family members. It happens every day within the Mormon Church when a Mormon feels threatened up by their faith that you cut off anyone who's challenging it. So I just, I just wanted to give that little.

Family Members React on Social Media

Julia [00:23:08] So that the two kind of tweets that I just read were from Daniel, his brother, and then his mom gets involved. So if you want to go to the next slide, this is Becky Philipowski. So she, for the first time kind of chimes in. And I went to her Twitter. She doesn't have any posts herself. She just replies to a lot of things. So this was kind of the first sighting that we had of her on Twitter. And she says in response to those comments that her son Daniel was commenting on, she says, you were opening a two year issue. So this is the first time we hear that this has been going on with his family for two years. And she says, and she is 28 with an end game three years ago to have a diamond ring on her hand. When Kyle left Duke, he was still in high school. So she's accusing Caitlyn, the girlfriend, of having this end game of three years ago, that she wanted a diamond on her hand. And he, he's only 20 now, so this is. He was 17. So if you want to click to the next slide, we'll see what happened with that. There it is. They're engaged. So this happened April 18th and they're supposed to be married this August. Actually, the picture on the right is actually Caitlyn's post and he had posted this as well. And you can see the ring on her finger in that shot. Now rumor is, or I, I guess I'll call it rumor. Some of his former teammates came forward and said that he actually got engaged during his, I believe it was his first semester at Duke. And they hit it for the first semester. They didn't. And this was apparently the coaches were telling him to hide it and not announce it. And then they came forward and announced it. So supposedly this was like secret and, and it was all due to the coaches for whatever reason.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] I'm just gonna, my, my radar is going off a little bit. My Mormon, orthodox Mormon radar is going off a little bit. Anyone and, and looking, looking at, at the fian here. Anyone who knows Mormonism knows that sleeveless dresses, any dress that shows any sort of cleavage is forbidden within Mormon orthodoxy. Showing your shoulders is forbidden within Mormon orthodoxy. You would never be able to wear that sort of dress at church. In fact, I tried to bring Renee Zellweger, my high school close friend, to a high school steak dance. I may have mentioned this to you in our interview. Yes, I brought her to a steak dance with wearing a dress like the fiance is wearing right there. And they turned her away. And I, I'm also looking at a bathing suit. Not to, not to modesty shame anybody, because I am body positive and sex positive and anti purity culture and modesty culture. But he's sporting a bikini. And we all know in Orthodox Mormonism that, that, that bikinis are forbidden. So that's, that's, that's making me wonder how Mormon she really is.

Julia [00:26:14] Good point. See, and I don't know these things either.

John Dehlin [00:26:16] Yeah. Because those are, those are problematic. And, and so anyway, I want to keep hearing what you're learning, but I just need you to know, Julie, that a good Mormon girl is not going to be wearing a strapless dress or a dress that shows her shoulders or a bikini. So that's a problem.

Julia [00:26:34] Okay, go to the next slide for me.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] Okay.

Julia [00:26:37] So this dress obviously wouldn't pass the flavor test either. That. So this one is his prom, so not hers. His. This was actually in 2022 when he graduated. So he would have been like I said, 17, 18. In this picture, they're thinking she's about 24. The first one on the left is his. And this is the comment that he wrote. Underneath this is his caption. He said, people will stare, make it worth their while. Which you and I talked about this, John. I, I find that odd. I'm assuming he's referring to their age difference, that he knows people have an issue with it and that's what he dropped. What do you think?

John Dehlin [00:27:17] Yeah, I mean that I, I told you before, that reminds me of the, of the song let's give him something to talk about. It's like, you know, you know you're going to be causing a scandal, so let's just like let your freak flag fly. He's basically saying, this girl, this woman is six years older than me. They're going to be gossiping about us, but let's give them something to gossip about, right?

Julia [00:27:41] Yeah. Yeah. And again, I, like, I just can't see a 24 year old comfortably going to a 17 or 18 year old's high school prom. She'd been out of high school for like you said, like six years. It's just, it's odd. And the one on the right is hers and she captioned hers a little bit differently. She basically just said like, you know, my, my best friend, you know, this, this cute little post. But neither of them are hiding this. Like, this was on his Instagram and that was on her Instagram. So now she has privatized her account, but just within the last few days. It was always open before that.

John Dehlin [00:28:16] Okay, all right.

Julia [00:28:18] Yeah, you want to flip to the next one?

John Dehlin [00:28:20] Okay, yeah, we'll go to the next slide.

Julia [00:28:22] It gets worse. Okay, now this one. So the prom was 2022. This post was a one year anniversary post. And she posted it on December 11th of 2022. So this is basically saying they'd already been together for a year. So he would have been like 16 or 17 years old when they got together. And she, like I said, was, you know, early 20s. And I'm sure they didn't just get together, you know, December 11th. It was probably a bit before that. They would have been hanging out and, you know, testing the waters to see if they wanted to date. Because you don't just meet someone and all of a sudden day one of your relationship. So for this to be a one year anniversary and it. Yeah, you know what I, what I'm getting at? I think, I think he would have been like 16, maybe 17 kind of when this went down.

John Dehlin [00:29:13] So would she have been living in Raleigh, Durham area while he's going to Duke, or was she living in his hometown in New York while he's in high school?

Julia [00:29:21] I don't know where she. I don't know where she was living when he was at Duke. I'm not sure. Go to the next one for a sec because that one has her LinkedIn info. So it kind of shows if she

John Dehlin [00:29:33] was his babysitter and he was raised in New York, she must have lived in his hometown in New York is what I'm guessing.

Julia [00:29:39] Well, here's. Well, she went to the University of Alabama. And does it have her. It doesn't have her high school listed, does it? I wasn't sure if it did. No, it doesn't. So this one's just showing that she went to the University of Alabama. We know that. They must have been living apart like she was going to the University of Alabama. She graduated in 2015 from high school and graduated from university in 2018.

John Dehlin [00:30:03] Okay, so again, my, my spidey sense is tingling a little bit. My unorthodox spidey sense is tingling because a good Mormon girl would go to byu. A good Mormon girl wouldn't necessarily go to University of Alabama. So again, I'm questioning her Mormon cred as someone who thinks about these things. Julie.

Julia [00:30:25] Yeah, I can't wait to get to another picture to see what you think of it. But go to the next one. So this one is a little bit creepy too. So this is one of her Instagram accounts. One of the, you know, the Internet sluice detectives went through found this one on her Instagram and if you look at the bottom, it says liked by Kyle and the date ON that is December 1, 2014. So I mean, I'm terrible at math, but I'm Pretty sure he would have been what, 11 years old in 20.

John Dehlin [00:30:54] Okay. And my super sleuther is wondering, is it possible that the photo was released in 2014 but he liked it more recently?

Julia [00:31:02] I wondered that too. But supposedly you can see the date that they like. I, okay, I'm terrible with this stuff, but when it was posted. Yeah, that's what they said.

John Dehlin [00:31:12] Well, it's so it's, it's possible that he knew her when he was as young as what age?

Julia [00:31:18] Well, 11 would be this one, but we know for sure at least 16.

John Dehlin [00:31:23] Okay. So at least.

Julia [00:31:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:26] I, I, I don't know if you've, I don't know if you've studied this at all, Julie, but I'll just ask you. You know, there's this thing obviously called statutory rape where an adult can't have sex with a child or teenager. It's not supposedly there is, there are laws against this. However, every state's different and some states allow quite a range of variability. Some states basically take the age of one and then allow kind of a plus or minus in terms of what age they're allowed to have sex with somebody that can exceed 18 and then some can go even much higher. If I'm not mistaken, in Utah, like a 17 year old girl or boy can actually date or have sex with someone like as much as six years older. So it's not always as simple as if, if someone's 18 and someone's 17, they go to jail. Do you know anything about statutory rape kind of laws?

Julia [00:32:25] I don't in Utah what it is, but I like, I have when covering Ruby Frankie's case and Lori Valo. It seems like Utah's laws are really wonky when it comes to kids. Like I, I, I find the sliding scale really odd in Utah. Like how old you can leave your kids home alone even overnight is, it's really young. Like the whole, kind of, the whole law in Utah around kids seems off, in my opinion. I know, I think it's the, I believe the age of consent for me here in, in Canada is 18, but I know it's 16 in a lot of places. And like you said, there's that floating scale in some places, but I don't know what it is in Utah. I'm guessing it's probably like you said, the floating scale.

John Dehlin [00:33:07] Okay. All right. I was just curious about how. Yeah, so either way, potentially, and this is where the, I don't know, is it confirmed that she was a babysitter? And I don't mean to be jumping Ahead if you're going to be talking about this.

Julia [00:33:19] No, no. And actually, I didn't put that in only because I found a whole bunch of people kind of saying that wasn't the case. That was the big rumor going around for a while. First it was that they were cousins, but it looks like that's been debunked. And then the next thing was that she was his babysitter, but there was so many saying it's not true that I couldn't figure out one way or the other. So I just. I just left it. It. It's been rumored that she was this babysitter, but I can't find anything that has kind of like flat out proven that his family hasn't said that. So I'm not sure.

John Dehlin [00:33:49] Got it. Okay. All right.

Julia [00:33:50] Yeah. But this next picture is the one that I wanted you to kind of weigh in on. So I noticed she does have a sweater on in this one, John. But this one was posted from the church and. Or at the church. So this is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that they were at. And then of course, the person showed who was tagged in it, and there she is there with the three other people. And this is kind of, you know, evidence that she goes to the Church of Jesus Christ. So I don't know if this is the only place they're getting the Mormon side of it. If picture wise, from her account, other than his family are the ones that saying she's Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:34:26] So there's a chance she. There's a good chance she was raised Mormon. And that's. That's what this photo is, is of her being raised. Likely being raised Mormon or being at a Mormon church. Gerardo is sharing with me some information behind the scenes he's finding. And this is just for those who are in Utah. You can date anyone you want to. But if, but, but regarding consensual sex in Utah, your legal age group would be 16 to 23. So I guess 16 year old can have sex with a 23 year old according to what Gerardo is sending me behind the scenes. So anyway, I didn't know that.

Julia [00:35:07] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:35:07] That kind of. Is that problematic? Not problematic. It's problematic to me.

Julia [00:35:11] Wouldn't she be. She'd be right on the cusp of that. Like, I think if he was 16, she probably would have been 23.

John Dehlin [00:35:16] But also, she's not. They're not Utah, so, you know, they're governed. They might.

Julia [00:35:20] Oh, true. Yeah. It's probably different where they are. Yeah, good point. Okay, now you just said that she was probably raised Mormon. So do you think, based on the clothing she's been wearing to his prom and things like that, that she may have stepped out of the, I don't know, harshness of the Mormon Church, like maybe still in the church, but it's

John Dehlin [00:35:39] totally possible that her parents left the church. You know, one common scenario would be that a kid rebels, and so her parents were still devout, but she was not living the standards. Another possibility would be that the parents were just super liberal, that they're, you know, cafeteria Mormons, Mormons in name only, where they occasionally went but didn't really follow the rules really strictly. And then another, the entire family was Mormon at one point. But then like so many Mormons in 2024, they left the church and, you know, but. But yeah, the clothes she's wearing, not going to byu, going to University of Alabama and doing this stuff with the. With the Duke Blue Devil, seven or eight years older than him. None of that screams orthodox Mormon to me. So I've got. They've got some explaining to do.

Julia [00:36:30] Yeah, seriously. Well, let's get into some of the tweets that the parents and. And Daniel are doing, as that kind of gives a little bit more info, I guess, on the Mormon side of things and what the parents are thinking. So this is actually a post from Kyle on Twitter. He posted this April 12, and basically it's just his kind of, I don't know, goodbye, I guess we'll say to. To Duke. And he just titles it I always love. And then someone commented below and said, best of luck to you and your family. Remember whenever you stop by. And he carries on, but it's the part that he says, best of luck to you and your family. So if you look underneath, it says, Becky, that's his mom. And she wrote on this and said, thanks, Stephen. But the family gets no congratulations since Kyle chose to leave the family two years ago. So she wanted to make it clear to everyone. And I mean it. Yes, was outed by the analyst, but she's coming out now saying, like, nope. And it's kind of interesting they haven't blocked each other on. On Twitter, so I guess she's. She's following his account still, apparently for her to be able to. To comment on it still. But this is kind of the start, so if you want to go to the next slide, we'll get into it. So this is Daniel, and he's kind of commenting on other people's posts. So when someone comments on Kyle and the situation, this is what he wrote. So he's got. No, sir, you got it backwards. She forced him to cut us off from his life almost two years ago. Sent us an email and everything, basically the official goodbye letter. So this is him responding to a comment that was on Twitter from someone saying that Kyle cut his family off. So he was saying, nope, that's not what happened. She forced him to cut us off. So he believes she did this. But he says it was through an email that they basically sent him like a goodbye letter through email. And then the second tweet down below there says there has been numerous people that could have listened a while ago and uncover this that continued to say it happens all the time. I promise you this story is a one of one. So in this one, he again is accusing basically Duke, the coaching staff, the teammates, saying that they all knew this was going on and they did nothing. And a few tweets that, that they have posted, they've said they tried, that they went to people asking for help and no one would get involved in it, basically.

John Dehlin [00:38:57] Wow. Really quickly, just. Just as it's fun to kind of bounce back and forth a little bit. But Gerardo's sharing with me some good stuff behind the scenes. Thanks.

Julia [00:39:07] Love it.

Age of Consent Laws and Legal Context

John Dehlin [00:39:07] So this is a list of. This is from Health and Human Services. This is a government website. It shows a table, statutory rape, a guide to state laws and reporting requirements. Okay. And so let's just look at. Let's look at New York. So it's got different columns. It's got the state age of consent, minimum age of victim, and then age differential between the victim and defendant.

Speaker C [00:39:36] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:39:37] Age of defendant in order to prosecute. So those are the columns. And if we go to New York, let's just assume they were in New York. It would be 17 and 17.

Julia [00:39:49] Oh.

John Dehlin [00:39:51] So the age of consent would be 17. And the minimum age of a victim could be 17. So if I'm reading that right, New York is actually quite strict relative to other states.

Julia [00:40:10] Like Alabama just had 12.

John Dehlin [00:40:12] Oh my goodness, did Alabama is 12? Holy moly.

Julia [00:40:19] Yeah, not good.

John Dehlin [00:40:20] Alabama, but only two year differential, right? Only two year differential.

Julia [00:40:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] Okay, so Raleigh Durham is in North Carolina. I'm just curious about North Carolina. So it's 16 is the. Is the age of consent and a four year differential. But I just have to Show Utah. So Utah, 18 is the age of consent. 16 is the minimum age of victim. But Julie, tell us what differential is allowed in Utah?

Julia [00:40:52] Oh, 10.

John Dehlin [00:40:55] 10. It's the largest number.

Julia [00:40:57] 10 years.

John Dehlin [00:40:58] It's the largest Number in the entire table. And just to give a little bit of history there, those of you, this is so dark, but Joseph Smith, the Mormon church's founder, was in his mid-30s when he started really taking on his polygamous wives. His first polygamous wife was Fanny Alger, who was a teenage girl, domestic help in his home in his early 20s. But in his, but in his 30s, early to mid-20s, I'll say. When he, by the time he gets to Nauvoo and he starts taking on dozens and dozens wives, polygamous wives. He, he marries women as young as, well, girls as young as 14. So Joseph Smith married multiple teenagers, at least one or two 14 year olds, while he was in his mid to upper 30s. So it would make sense that in Utah they would allow the largest differential, if for no other reason, to cover for their own founding prophet, Joseph Smith. That's kind of dark.

Julia [00:42:10] They probably wanted it a little higher, but just couldn't get it. It looked a little too bad to go past 10 years.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] Yeah. And I, you know, I may be getting all this wrong, but this is just my cold on the spot analysis and, and googling and, and showing what Gerardo finds. But Gerardo's telling me that Fanny Alger was between 17 and 19 years old when Joseph was 29. Yeah. So Joseph was 10 to 12 years older. 10 years than his first polygamous wife, Fanny Alger. Anyway, that's a little more. So Kyle Filipowski, if you join Mormonism, you're joining a church whose founder as a 30 plus year old, not only married 14 year old girls, but married other people's wives. Married women who were married to other men, I should say married, mother, daughter pairs, mother sister pairs, sister pairs and mother, daughter pairs, Kyle Filipowski. That's what type of family you're potentially marrying into. And Kyle Filipowski's non Mormon family. You need to have this information as you're talking to the press that if Kyle indeed is converting to Mormonism, he's converting to a church founded by a sexual predator that, that preyed on teenage girls. There's no other way as an adult. So anyway. Yeah, all right. Sorry, I just had to share that. So, Julie, should we go back to the slides?

Julia [00:43:42] Yeah, carry on. Let's. Let's get into this. So this is the Twitter comments that we're kind of into now. Yeah, we showed this one. So head to the next one.

John Dehlin [00:43:51] Here we go.

Julia [00:43:51] So this one was a post that college basketball report posted. It was all about Kyle and it said it's kind of going after the analyst had kind of outed them. So it says trending. Kyle Philipowski's family members are on social media stating that he was groomed by his Mormon girlfriend and he is no longer in contact with his family. Filipowski is 20 years old and his girlfriend, 28, graduated from U Alabama in 2018. They started dating when he was in high school. So when you hear 20 and 28, it doesn't sound as bad. But back him up to 16, it seems worse. It says he was nervous in NBA draft interviews on the subject and this could be the reason he fell to the second round. Now he heads to the Utah Jazz of all teams. What a wild story. So if you want to go to the next slide. His mom actually responded to this. There was a lot of people, as you can imagine, commenting and she started getting involved in this. So the first thing is this. How did. What. I got to put my glasses on to read this. The W2, it says the Warner Read. Well, he's, he's kind of commented on a few of the posts. I don't quite know who he is, but he's commented to the mom and the brother a few times. So in this one he says, My DMs are open, friend. I can take down the post if it's blatant misinformation. And she replies, not blatant, not misinformation. Go to the reliable source. And then she adds, you are opening a two year issue. And she is 28 with an end game three years ago to have a diamond ring on her hand. When Kyle left Duke, he was still in high school. So she's written this statement a few times, a few responses. She wants everyone to realize, like this is two years in the making with his family and she wanted that ring three years ago when he was in high school.

John Dehlin [00:45:40] So basically they're claiming that she was not only a groomer, but was kind of a gold digger trying to hook her fortunes.

Julia [00:45:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:51] To a future NBA star who would certainly be.

Julia [00:45:54] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:45:55] Yeah. And.

Julia [00:45:55] And he was known in high school like people knew he was going far, like he was, he was going to go places. So that's kind of what she's saying. So she carries on if you want to go to the next one. His mom gets really invested in this and she does share a lot in some of these Twitter arguments she got into.

John Dehlin [00:46:10] And I keep saying his girlfriend or his fiance, we should just say her name. It's Caitlyn Hutchinson, right?

Julia [00:46:17] Yep. Caitlin. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:46:19] We should say her name. All right, keep. Keep going. Oh, I was just saying go ahead. And. Should we go to the next slide?

Julia [00:46:29] Yeah, let's go to the next one.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] Okay, go for it. Here it is.

Julia [00:46:33] All right, so now excuse my French at the top, I'll just say F. But this is from an account called Duke Update, which I thought was kind of funny, but they say, what the F am I reading? And they shared this post that says, kyle Filipowski's brother and mom are on here, revealing how his girlfriend groomed him into Mormon culture and cut him off from all of his family, and now he ends up with the Utah Jazz. Now, he shared these screenshots, which we've already read. It was the first tweets we saw of Daniel, his brother, and his mom, Becky. But she writes to this one and says, we have been waiting for two years for you to do what? Your title is Update. Now. You're on the right path. So this is, like I said, the. The account's called Duke Update. And then she says, we've been waiting for two years for you to finally post this. So it looks like this Duke Update account didn't realize this was going on. I don't think mom agrees. She says that she's been waiting two years for this to come out. So.

John Dehlin [00:47:27] Okay. All right.

Julia [00:47:29] Yeah, let's go to the next one.

John Dehlin [00:47:31] All right, next slide.

Julia [00:47:32] It keeps going. Okay, so now Daniel starts making his post. So these were on June 29th. So just a couple days ago, he kind of wanted to break the story down, it almost seems. So he starts off with saying, this is going up to the Pat McAfee Show. So he had done a piece on this. So Daniel's kind of reaching out to him about this, and he says, you're never going to get the true story and facts of the whole chronological timeline of events from start to current day from my brother or his girl, because of the facts and reality of the severity of this tragic situation that my brother is a trapped victim in. So he does tag the Pat McAfee show, and then he goes into this next post, and he says, I want to take this moment to bring awareness, education, and support throughout this developing story. And because it's not a common situation that people know about, the important thing to know that is that it is a real problem that exists, and it's out there. So if you want to go to the next. Oh, go ahead.

Allegations of Coercive Control and Grooming

John Dehlin [00:48:35] That's a big deal. He's saying his brother is trapped.

Julia [00:48:39] Like they're on fire about this. Like they honestly Think it's almost like he's just been kidnapped. Like, from their perspective of this, he's been stolen from their family.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] And I, I also just have to say that the Mormon Church is perceived as a cult by a lot of people to the point where the Mormon Church actually, in the past five to 10 years, got rid of the name Mormon and rebranded its church, emphasizing the Jesus Christ part, because they did sort of survey research and they did kind of sort of. What's it called when you test groups of people to. To market, to understand the. They kind of did research and market analysis and just realized that the Mormon name was a damaged brand because it's generally, it's. It's. Is it polygamous? Is it Amish? Is it Mennonite? Is it a cult? Joseph Smith, golden plates.

Julia [00:49:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:43] Mormon musical. Like, it would be reasonable, regardless of what Caitlin's behavior has been, it would be reasonable for Kyle's family to worry that he's been indoctrinated into a cult because that's how Mormons are viewed. Mormons are viewed as kind of nice, happy, go lucky, clean families on one level, but on another level, they're viewed as weird. And it's. Is it a sex cult? Joseph Smith, you know.

Julia [00:50:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:14] Stuff. So it's reasonable for the family to be alarmed, in my opinion, as a. As.

Julia [00:50:20] As a. As a Never Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:50:22] Yeah, it.

Julia [00:50:22] It does wonders, the rebranding, because it confuses us. We don't know is Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saint is the fundamental. Like, there's so many names for it now that if you don't have an education or background in this, we don't know which is which. So I, I think it does throw people off a bit. And we don't quite know what is bad and what is not. Like it.

John Dehlin [00:50:43] Yeah.

Julia [00:50:44] Or what is. What is. If it's all of the Mormon Church or not. Like it's. Yeah. It's misleading.

John Dehlin [00:50:49] And a bunch of my listeners are like, john, John, it's focus group. So Keiko.

Julia [00:50:53] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [00:50:54] Linda, Neil, they're all like, john, John, focus group. It's called a focus group. Okay.

Julia [00:50:59] They got it.

John Dehlin [00:51:00] My brain freezes sometimes.

Julia [00:51:01] Okay, so he gets into it now and he starts making kind of some bullet points. So the first point that he wanted to make. Oh, next slide. Yep, next slide.

John Dehlin [00:51:12] Okay.

Julia [00:51:14] So the first one that he says is number one. This is the first thing he wanted people to understand. He says, my brother is a victim and was unfortunately a perfect pawn and target for this girl's lifelong Scheme based on his human characteristics and growing potential as a high level prospect, which started taking place in 2019, exactly at the time when she began her pursuit of him. So he's accusing her now of, of kind of coming into the picture in 2019, which kind of gives us a little bit of understanding, I guess, age and things.

John Dehlin [00:51:47] Five years ago.

Julia [00:51:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:49] He's how old now?

Julia [00:51:51] He's 20. He's only 20.

John Dehlin [00:51:53] He would have been 15 five years ago.

Julia [00:51:56] Yeah. And he's almost 21. So he was probably almost 16 at the time.

John Dehlin [00:52:00] 15 or 16. All right, let's keep going.

Julia [00:52:02] Yep. And then number two, he's actually sending a message to his brother in this one. He says, kyle, myself, your entire family and friends love you and are here for you. I have received so much outreach and support from families that have a child who has fallen victim to the same terrible and evil progression of psychological control and manipulation. And my heart. And then he keeps going.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] Okay. Yeah. And, and I just also want to. Number one, I want to extend an invitation to the Filipowski family. You can call me. I will answer any questions that you have about Mormonism or the Mormon Church. And I would be happy to bring you all on Mormon stories to let you tell your own story if that's something that you want to do. But I'll also tell you, Julie, I don't know if you know this, but I have parents reach out to me all the time, sometimes frantic because their teenage or adult child falls in love with a Mormon. Just, just a few ago, I had the parents of a, of a Mormon, of a never Mormon son. I think they were secular Jewish or, or maybe Protestant Christian, but they raised him in a secular way. He loved science. He was a top notch student. And then at like a local community college, he fall. Oh no, he went to high school with a Mormon girl. And before you knew it, a year or two goes by and he's believing the earth is 6,000 years old and he's engaged to be married to this Mormon girl. And he's starting to distance himself from the family and hide things and cut them off. This is not a unique situation. I have never Mormon parents of children, you know, and there's this term flirt to convert. That's how Stephen Hassan, the famous cult leader, was actually converted to the Moonies. Is he just some really cute Mooney young women flirted with him and that brought him in. So a lot of converts to Mormonism, you'll find, are converted through the flirt to convert method.

Julia [00:54:05] That's a thing and, and especially when they're that young.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] Yeah. And secular parents are terrified when that happens, so.

Julia [00:54:12] Oh, and we don't understand, like, we don't know enough about it. So I'm sure they're, they're dying for your information and guidance on that.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] Oh, Julia's, Julie's correcting me. And I, I love corrections. Julia says, I called Stephen Hassan a cult leader. He's a cult expert. When my brain starts going, I just use the wrong words. So I just still ask everybody. Yeah, thank you.

Julia [00:54:33] I think we all do.

John Dehlin [00:54:33] Thank everybody who's, who's correcting me. Okay, let's go back to the slides.

Julia [00:54:38] Okay. So we ended that one with saying the progression of psychological control. Where are we here? And manipulation. And my heart. And you can flip to the next screen, goes out to all the families out there who have suffered through this experience in the past or are currently going through this right now. You are not alone. And then as you can see, John, he's got a bunch of clips on coercive control. Do you want to talk a little bit about this? Is this like a Mormon? Are these like Mormon snapshots he's posted here? Like the National Domestic Violence Hotline is part of that.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] Okay. So I'm looking at these for the first time and it's basically. Yeah, okay. And he is talking, this is, he's mentioned in New York because it says New York Senate, sponsored by Senator Kevin Parkin. But, but basically, I'll tell you my interpretation of this. Yeah. Number one, you know, the term cult is offensive. And so, and the Mormon Church and churches like the Mormon Church have a lot of power. And so you don't get very far calling cults cults in modern times. It's off putting. It raises the defenses and the anger of the people who are members of the organization. And you know, when the Mormon Church, for example, is powerful enough to have Mitt Romney be the, you know, the Republican candidate for president, Harry Reid is the Senate Majority leader or used to be. You know, when the, when the Mormon church is a $250 billion high demand religion reaches the top echelons of power overrepresented in CEO suites across the country, overrepresented in terms of Congress and the FBI and the CIA, you know, etc. Etc. You, you, you want to tread lightly. So this language of coercive control, I think has been cultivated to avoid offending or hurting, you know, members of high demand religions or cults. That's, that's the one thing. And that's why Again, I mentioned this book, Recovering Agency. You get farther these days by calling them high demand religions instead of cults and by talking about coercive control or undue influence. And so there have been movements spring up. Oh, one more thing I'll say is that secular people have been trying to create laws to outlaw cults or to control or limit the influence of cults. But Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormon Church, they've all hid under religious freedom exemptions and constitutional protections to avoid any, any potential legislation. And so you have to use language like high demand religions, coercive control, undue influence, if you want to have any chance of anything sort of passing any state or federal.

Julia [00:57:51] That makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:57:52] Does that make sense?

Julia [00:57:53] Yeah, I didn't even think. Yeah, that absolutely does make sense. Because when I was going through that, I couldn't quite understand where he was going with that. But that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:58:03] Yeah. Okay, so. So it's enough to say that the brother of Kyle Filipowski is citing legislation around coercive control, undue influence. And I guess that can, that can apply not just to religions or high demand religions or cults, but I guess also to people. Right? But yeah, because if he's alleging that Caitlyn, again, I want to use her name. If he's alleging that Caitlin Hutchison is exerting undue control or influence, that would have been true when he was a teenager. But now he's a grown ass man. He's an adult. That makes it complicated, right?

Julia [00:58:42] Yeah, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:58:44] Yeah. All right, let's go to the next slide.

Brother's Public Statements and Fallout

Julia [00:58:48] All right, let's go. So now this is June 30th. So this is the next day. And he says for someone that aspires to be a head coach. So he's referring to himself for this, for a D1 program, and been coaching high school and double AU basketball for nine years. I'm very lucky and grateful for the lasting, genuine relationships I've had with my players and their families. Then he goes on to say, as a kid, I grew up idolizing and wanting to be the next Coach K. The years of success of what he built at Duke just to be torn down in two years. So again, I am not a sports person. I have no idea what he's talking about with Coach K at Duke, but it's the same time line as basically when his brother stopped speaking to them. But he says it's an absolute shame to know what has changed and only for the worse for the program. You all don't realize how bad Duke is. Really missing Coach K. And then you can go to the next slide. It keeps going for the staff to just turn around and hide from the problem. When we ask for help from the very beginning, Duke students, we know you have the story when you were told to keep it quiet. Make no mistake, you have the power in your voices to continue to ignite this push further. So he's, he's like pleading to people to come forward and tell their stories. Now you have the ability to help numerous families get through this serious problem. And to the future families of students and athletes who consider this school as the place for your child maybe consider where their priorities lie. It's not in your kids best interests. And then this is where he got the next statement. So this says Duke is no longer Duke anymore. Sick. And then he's got the throw up faces now. A lot of people got fired up in his responses to this. So one of the, the first responses says this is a personal family issue, not a school matter. And then someone else said when you're a bystander in a situation and choose not to act or help and ignore it, you're part of the problem, not the solution. So yeah, they are part of this matter. Aside from how they chose to ignore this problem, those examples are not for me to tell. Find my brother's teammates, past coaches and recent transfers to just name a few they know. So he's basically saying there's a bunch of people that know what's going on and no one's talking. But again, I don't know what happened at Duke in the last two years. Like if the new court, the new coach is Mormon, like I have no idea. I tried to find out a little bit more about that but the sports rabbit hole was not my niche apparently. Yeah, I couldn't get it.

John Dehlin [01:01:21] Which K I think is. I think it's Mike Shashevsky. I think that's how you pronounce it. He's one of the winningest coaches, if not the winningest coach in the history of college basketball. Duke Blue Devils have won are amongst if not the most winning programs in terms of championships in all of the NCAA men's basketball history. And so clearly this is Daniel Filipowski just trying to like shame the. I mean I guess he's, he and his family are genuinely frustrated that they knew about Caitlin.

Julia [01:01:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:01:53] While he was of 18 year old, 19 year old player at Duke. I. So I'm assuming that either the grooming and, or the gold digging and, or the family ostracization started while he was a Duke. They must have tried to let Duke know. And I, you know, I. I don't know anything about this. My immediate reaction to that is like, he's an adult. Like, how much parents. How much can parents. Even in. I have kids in college, I can't tell them who to date, who not to date.

Julia [01:02:26] No.

John Dehlin [01:02:26] If they want to date, my son

Julia [01:02:27] won't even tell me. Yeah, I have no idea.

John Dehlin [01:02:31] I have no. I could just love my kids and hope that I have influence with them. I'm certainly not going to go to the lacrosse coach at Utah State University and say, my son's dating someone eight years older. Can you intervene? So I guess I'm trying to understand here. It could be that he's just trying to loop Duke in to make bring more eyeballs to the story, But I would like to understand why he feels like it really is a Duke problem here.

Julia [01:03:00] Right. Like, I feel like there's more to the story, and we just don't kind of know what he's referring to. And it's. So he got a lot of. Of. I don't want to say hate, but he got a lot of comments about that post being like, you can't blame Duke. And actually, if you want to go to the next slide, there's a couple more examples. And his mom gets involved in it, too. She gets kind of upset, too. So this is again, to his comment saying, Duke is. No. Yeah, we're on the next one. This one. So again, he. He's commented, Duke is no longer Duke anymore. Sick. And Duke ball, minister of propaganda. So another Duke account says, blaming the university who got him as an adult rather than your own family who allowed him to be groomed from 11 to adult. Stop trying to blame everybody else. You and your family are mostly to blame if we are looking to play that game. Yikes. But this is where Kyle's mom, Becky, gets involved. So she says, you can take your ignorant, simple, judgmental ass and do some research on grooming procedures. Walk a mile. And then he gets upset back, and he says, I need to learn about grooming procedures. Ma', am. I'm trying to keep it cool and be civil with you, but you need some serious looking within. And it carries on the next slide there, John, if you want to flick.

John Dehlin [01:04:17] Okay.

Julia [01:04:18] So she says, yeah, you do. We didn't allow anything. I'm sorry, but you hit a nerve that I'm trying to heal. If I had any role in changing this, I would have, but my hands were tied. Now, I think this kind of softened him because then he says, you know, I believe you and I'm sorry that this is all happening. Unfortunate situation. I didn't mean to strike a nerve. And he kind of continues on to apologize, but she's upset, like, you know, rightfully so. And they're lashing out, like you said at Duke, but they're going to get this backlash because like you and I, we don't quite understand what exactly was going on at Duke the last two years without Coach K there that has upset them so much. Like, what is he saying they knew about, like perhaps they were going to Duke, pleading for help and they turned a blind eye. Like, we don't know. And, and he's not saying in those posts. He's just kind of going after them, I guess.

John Dehlin [01:05:08] You know, I just have to make a shout out to a really worthy documentary to watch. And, and by the way, it's not my favorite documentary of all time, but it is interesting. I don't know if you, you've seen Dancing for the Devil.

Julia [01:05:21] I did. I sure did.

John Dehlin [01:05:23] Did you, did you cover, did you cover this on, on your channel?

Julia [01:05:28] Yeah, I did, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:30] It's the story of this amazing TikTok dancer. I followed her for years not knowing that she was part of a cult. But. Yeah. What's her, what's her name?

Julia [01:05:40] It's Melanie and Miranda.

John Dehlin [01:05:42] Okay. Miranda is the, is the one that's in the cult.

Julia [01:05:45] Yes. And Melanie's the sister.

John Dehlin [01:05:46] Yeah. And it's just about how she, she got brought into a. I think. Yeah. A Christian based production company slash cult. And she's, she's been pretty cut off from her family as well. And it's her mom and her sister that basically make this documentary. And the point I was going to make is I'm reading Kyle and Becky Filipowski, Kyle's mom and then the brother, Daniel Filipowski. I'm reminded of that Dancing with the Devil documentary of these family members going national to say, hey, please help us, everyone. Anyone out there. We're cut off from our own child, our own sibling and can, can someone please help? And it's kind of tragic because I don't know what you think about Dancing with the Devil. I'd love to hear your feedback on this, Julie, but I felt like it wasn't, it was a counterproductive thing to do for, for the, for Amanda. It's Amanda. Right. For, for the mom, Miranda, Miranda's mom and sister, to go national with this because it's only going to worsen the relationship and create what's called the backfire effect, where the person who's being accused doubles down and goes deeper into the cult or the high demand religion or the ideology because they feel attacked and threatened.

Julia [01:07:16] What did you think is, is almost what happened? Because Miranda did post after that saying how upset she is at her family for doing that. But knowing, you know, I, I don't have a lot of experience with cults and things like that. So for me, I feel like they thought it was their, their last chance. Like that maybe they could, you know, open her eyes with this documentary or open the eyes of the people around her because there are a bunch of dancers that did leave and they spoke in this documentary and others have left since. So I think that was their hope. But like you said, I think it made them like buckle down a bit more and, and you know, retreat away from them. But they've shared like Melanie and her mom and dad both shared that Miranda, yes, she was seeing them the last like, year or so, but on this surface level relationship, like they said, she was just doing it to basically make them shut up and stop posting and doing lives about her. So it wasn't their sister, like they said. She seemed totally different, almost robotic with her interactions with them. And they just want their sister back. They just want their daughter back. So I don't think they knew what else to do. And I feel like it's the same with Kyle's family. And, and you gotta remember they were quiet through this whole time. Like we knew none of this until that one analyst came forward and mentioned it. And then they just opened the floodgates and now they're just, they're talking now.

John Dehlin [01:08:37] Yeah, well, I can't, I can't fault any family member from, from crying out for help when they feel like their child has been abducted into a culture.

Julia [01:08:46] I can't imagine.

John Dehlin [01:08:47] So I'm not judging them, but I do think there's some strategy discussions worth having about what the most effective way is to have influence and have a chance of getting your kid out of an occult. And I can say telling someone they're in the, in a cult is not the way to get them out of a cult.

Julia [01:09:05] No, no, I definitely agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:09] But, but, but again, I'm also, I'm also sympathetic to, to this, to this Duke Ball minister propaganda guy who's saying, stop blaming this on Duke. You know, if we're going to do the blame game, it's the family's fault for allowing their son Kyle to be in a cult. But I don't know, I. That's probably not fair either. I'm guessing maybe that's not fair. I'll just say that I, I. Yeah,

Julia [01:09:36] I just think it's the lack of information. Like, it's great that Daniel's posting this, but he didn't give enough background as to why he feels this way. So I think a lot of us reading it are just kind of left wondering, like, what did Duke do? Why are you making these posts like it's. Yeah, okay. It looks like he's going after the. The school when we don't know if he actually. If they had anything to do with it.

John Dehlin [01:09:57] Yeah, we're really grateful for all the comments that come in, and. And we're really grateful for the super chats that come in because they help pay our bills. I'm going to read one of the super chats, Rye. The guy writes, what is Duke supposed to do? Violate his First Amendment right to practice religion, even if his family disagrees with it. Sorry, but they can't really control that. That's a great comment, Rye, the guy. What's Duke supposed to do? Anyway, we've made that point. Should we go back to the slides?

Julia [01:10:24] Yeah, sure. Let's go to the next one.

John Dehlin [01:10:26] All right, let me go back to the slides. Here we go.

Julia [01:10:32] Yeah, we just finished on this one.

John Dehlin [01:10:33] Okay, next slide.

Julia [01:10:36] So this is another comment saying, blaming Duke for an internal family problem. Seems wild to me. Hope nothing but the best for Kyle, but this isn't it. So again, this person's like, what. What are you blaming Duke for? And then Kyle's mom, Becky, responds and said, this is not an internal problem. Duke was responsible for covering up the situation and eliminating us from his life like that. That's a bold statement. Try doing some research on what happened before you drop your ignorant opinion. And then the Duke Ball minister of propaganda chimes in again and says, blaming the university who got him as. Oh, no, we already read this one. And she writes underneath, can take your. Oh, did we read this one, too? Yeah, we read that one, too. So that was just part of the bottom part. So she's just making the statement, basically, that they helped eliminate Kyle from their life, which is. That's a huge statement. Like, huge.

Speaker C [01:11:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:27] Yeah. Okay, let's go to the next one.

Julia [01:11:31] So this is Becky again, replying to both of those people, and she says, duke took my son away and blacklisted us. So I don't exactly know what she. What. What Duke did, but she basically saying, they blacklisted her after years of attempts to make contact. We were never allowed access to my son. Also, hundreds of friends were also eliminated from his life. When my sister attended games. The mother of the momo was brought into chaperone. And I'm thinking, is she saying, like, Mormon when she says momo?

John Dehlin [01:12:02] Like, is she talking about Mormons Momos? But I. But that's not an. Oh, I mean, it says Mormon girlfriend there. So. Yeah, I've heard momo is a nickname for Mormons. Yeah.

Julia [01:12:13] Okay. I haven't. I was like. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:12:15] Commonly used term.

Julia [01:12:17] Okay, okay. So I guess there was a chaperone at this point for that. And then someone else commented and said, Darren Harris said, don't really think they're coming at flip more. So flip it is. Kyle, they call him flip more than it's on his girlfriend. And his parents definitely think it's weird how much older she is, but parents shouldn't have brought this story up on the biggest day of his life. And she got upset with that because, like I said, a lot of people were accusing them of that. And she commented and said, his parents did not bring this story up. His lies and deception caught up to him in his interviews. That's where it came from. We've been living quietly in our loss for almost two years, and obviously they have. I mean, we haven't heard anything about this until now.

John Dehlin [01:13:03] Some of the. Some of the audience are asking how old she is now. How old is this?

Julia [01:13:08] So she is 26, 24? 20. No, 28. She's 28.

John Dehlin [01:13:16] She's 28. And he's. She's around 20. He's around 20, right?

Julia [01:13:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:22] Okay.

Julia [01:13:23] Yeah, he's almost 21.

John Dehlin [01:13:25] Okay. All right. Oh, and that's the last slide we have, Is that right?

Analysis, Audience Discussion, and Takeaways

Julia [01:13:31] I think.

John Dehlin [01:13:35] Let me double check the last slide. No, though, there's one more slide.

Julia [01:13:42] Was there one more?

John Dehlin [01:13:44] Wait, this is the last slide. No, that's it. That's it.

Julia [01:13:47] Oh, no. Yeah, we did that one. Yeah, that was it. So there's. There's a lot more to this story. I mean, there's. There's other posts and stuff. I just kind of took the. The biggest kind of moments from most of their Twitter conversations. Now, I did notice that Daniel, his brother, a lot of comments, he'll say, DM me on my Instagram. I did try to do that, but he's privatized his Instagram in the last day to. So you have to request to follow him. There's no way to DM him unless he approves it. So, I mean, I, I don't know how we're supposed to kind of ask him, but I hope he watches this. And, and here's your offer for him to kind of come on and, and share his information and plead his case.

John Dehlin [01:14:27] Yeah, absolutely. I've got, I went ahead. I'm just pulling up images from, I'm pulling up images from Google just to see what other types of photos are out there showing, showing them together. And let me just go add that to this to the stage. So it's got, it's got the photos of her at a basketball game with him, different types of dance photos. Yeah, it's got her with like laser beam eyes. Like, she sort of like, that's not good, you know, alien.

Julia [01:15:08] And most of these were taken from her Instagram, but she's privatized it now. So.

John Dehlin [01:15:13] Yeah.

Julia [01:15:14] Okay, this is still open.

John Dehlin [01:15:16] So. So, you know, sometimes people call true climb, try true crime, true slime. And they like to say that it's just like gossipy and, you know, kind of like muck raking. And on Mormon stories, I try and walk that line of, you know, dealing with crime, which is important, dealing with cultural issues that, that sometimes are associated with people committing crimes and wanting to give context to stories that involve Mormons, but also not wanting to become like an ambulance chaser. Right. So.

Julia [01:15:54] Right.

John Dehlin [01:15:55] Let me ask you, Julie, from, from the recap with Julie, what's your view on, you know, where this ranks in terms of like a newsworthy story versus just like, just like gossipy and, you know, ambulance chasey and slimy. What, what's your overall take?

Julia [01:16:13] I think until his parents stepped forward and our parents, mom and brother stepped forward, it was a lot of gossipy stuff, like I said when I went through, and it was like, maybe they're cousins. I think she was his babysitter. Like, there was a lot of kind of back and forth. The only things that personally I put stock in was his brother Daniel and his mom's comments that I think spoke volumes to kind of what's going on. But for this one, there's so much unknown. Like, it's, it's hard to kind of dig into this when it's, it's such a vast hole of information right now. Like, you can go down. I went down the rabbit hole the last two days on this, I can tell you, but it's hard because he's not speaking, Caitlyn's not speaking. So. And the mom and brother are. But it's kind of surface level right now. So I think if they do some interviews and come forward. I think we're going to learn a lot more about this situation than meets the eye.

John Dehlin [01:17:07] All right. Yeah. And, and I'm torn because as I, as I mentioned before, there's a lot of stuff here that doesn't scream Mormon. From, yeah, the way she dresses, the, the bikinis and the shoulders showing to her not going to byu, you know, to her not, you know, dating and marrying a returned missionary. That's what an orthodox Mormon could do. So my first question is, and this is all speculation until more comes out, what's not Mormon about this? Are those things? So it's possible she's not Mormon. It's possible her family's not Mormon. It's possible that there really is no Mormon ties to real relevant Mormon ties to Caitlin Hutchison. And in that sense, this really isn't much of a Mormon story. That's one extreme of the possibilities here. But what I will tell you is very Mormon. Sexual predators grooming children and teenagers is very Mormon in the sense that as we already mentioned, the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, did that. And the Mormon Church competes with the Catholic Church on the COVID ups of sexual predation, of sexual abuse. Whether it's the Boy Scout scandal where tens of thousands of Mormon boys have now come out claiming that they were sexually abused by Mormon Scout leaders. The Boy Scouts of America going bankrupt because so many, you know, have accused Boy Scout leaders of, of committing child abuse. And let's just say the Mormon Church was the largest participant percentage wise in the entire United States. Boy Scouts of America. So child abuse is rampant in Mormonism. Cover up of child abuse is rampant in Mormonism. So that's all very Mormon. And on brand, weird sexual repression type stuff is very Mormon. Fraud is very Mormon. So Utah leads the nation in affinity fraud per capita. So the idea of people committing fraud, that's, that's very Mormon. And then also undue influence is very Mormon. Flirt to convert is a main way that people convert to the Mormon Church these days. So if she is Mormon, that's on brand. And then what's also very Mormon is if in fact Caitlyn and her family are Mormon and in any way they felt threatened by Kyle's family and kicking people out of your life and shutting them off and all that sort of undue influence, that's very Mormon. And then of course, the most bizarre thing of all is that the Utah, Utah Jazz are very Mormon. It's as Mormon of a basketball team as there is because both the owner and the general manager Danny Ainge and Ryan Smith, the owner, they're both active, devout Mormons. And the Utah Jazz is in Utah, which is the most Mormon state. So that's where it all becomes the most bizarre of all, is why would Utah, of all the teams, recruit or select.

Julia [01:20:29] Right.

John Dehlin [01:20:30] Kyle. But he was a steal because he had dropped so far down that they maybe got a really good bargain and maybe it'll be really good.

Julia [01:20:39] Right? Right. Yeah, I think, I think so. Yeah. I mean, he was, he was being raved about like he, he's a, he was an up and coming star and they got him 30 seconds. So.

John Dehlin [01:20:49] Yeah, another.

Julia [01:20:51] Yeah, it's going to be interesting.

John Dehlin [01:20:52] So another super chat from Jeff Adams. Jeff. Jeff writes, isolating the victim from loved ones when the ideology is threatened is very Mormon as well. Well said, Jeff Adams. And thank you so much for the super chat. I'm going to share just a few of the comments here, if that's all right. Julie Paloma Bennett, WordPress blog, writes, I agree with John that there is a lot we do not know about this case. Kyle's family may be toxic or Caitlyn might be a sexual predator. Also may or may not be Mormon. Who knows? Yeah, there could be, yeah, there could be problems with Kyle's family. Maybe another scenario is, is that Kyle has cut himself off from his family because of.

Julia [01:21:34] Right.

John Dehlin [01:21:35] Bad things that happened in his family drama.

Julia [01:21:38] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't know really, other than what the family's saying.

John Dehlin [01:21:42] Yeah. We shouldn't just assume goodness on the part of Kyle Filipowski's family and bad stuff. Yeah. And it may be, it may be like, I mean, we're, this is where it just gets crazy and speculative. But it could be, you know, very possible that Caitlyn Hutchison's family saved and rescued Kyle from dangerous, unethical circumstances and they've been a, a strong support of him and they've actually are the good actors in all of this because Kyle needed saving. Again, we have no idea.

Julia [01:22:20] We don't know.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] But because I also don't want to get sued and so I just want to say this is all speculation until we know these are all allegations. This is just the best information that we can find as of now. And we would invite. I'll do this. I will invite the Hutchison family. I'll invite, I'll, I'll invite Caitlin. Sorry, I'll invite Caitlin or I'll invite Caitlyn's family or I'll invite Kyle or Kyle's family to come on the show. And to tell their story because maybe we've got all this wrong. And I would be thrilled, but I think Caitlin has some splaining to do. Yeah, right.

Julia [01:23:04] Yeah, I think Kyle does as well. I think the two of them, that's, that's where the, the truth's going to lie, I think with the two of them.

John Dehlin [01:23:10] Yeah. What, what are the parts of this that are unquestionably problematic? Just.

Julia [01:23:15] No, no doubt the two years with, with no contact with the family. That, that, that's not normal. That's not right. And like you said, it could be any reason, but that, that I think is a big thing. And the fact that none of this was in the public and it affected his draft so much that he didn't make it into the first round just seems really odd. Like, I feel like there's a lot more to this story that we don't know that was in kind of the undercurrent of the basketball world.

John Dehlin [01:23:44] Yeah, yeah. And then obviously the fact that if it's true that Kaylin was his babysitter when he was a boy.

Julia [01:23:51] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:52] Or if it's true that she was a 20, what, 22, 23, 24 year old adult sort of grooming a 16 year old boy, taking him and then, and then. Yeah, like that's, that's gross. If that's true. That's.

Julia [01:24:10] I, I find that gross too. I would like to know or speak to some of his high school friends that saw her at prom. Like, because they'd been together a year, maybe it wasn't a big deal, but like, what are her friends thinking? Like, you're going where tonight? Oh, prom. Like, you know, we're going to the bars and you're going to a high school prom. Like, it, it just, just, it seems really odd to me. Yeah, really odd. Imagine if the roles were reversed too. Like, I hate to say that, but unfortunately in our society it seems people seem to have more of an issue when the man is older and the, the woman is younger. If it was a 16 year old girl and she brought this 20 or 17 year old girl, she brought this 24 year old to prom, I think a lot more people would have said something and spoken up as opposed to when the rules are reversed, unfortunately.

Speaker C [01:24:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:58] Yeah. So, you know, I hope that we can learn more. I want to just say if anybody knows anything about this case, please email me@mormonstoriesgmail.com. julie, if they want to reach out to you. How do they reach out to you?

Julia [01:25:13] So I am the recap With Julie on all of my socials. So I'm on TikTok and YouTube would be kind of the two main ones, I guess, that I use the most. So you can reach out to me on either of those.

John Dehlin [01:25:24] Yeah. So again, the recap with Julie. Right. Or mormonstoriesmail.com we would love any tips, any insider information, and of course, any of the people we've talked about, any other friends or family members. We invite you to come on and help straighten us out because we hope we're wrong. We hope everyone is acting. We hope everyone has acted ethically. And if there's any way we could broker a piece of between the Hutchisons and the Filipowskis, we would love to do that. Because we on Mormon stories, we believe very firmly that religions, if they do anything, they should never break up families. Right?

Julia [01:26:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:04] Yeah, good point. No healthy religion should be breaking up families. And if there's some way that Caitlin was not, you know, we are not shaming large age differences in couples, whether that's women that are older than men by a long shot or men that are older than women. Let's just be clear. We're not shaming age difference. We're shaming if in any case, an adult grooms a child using when they're

Julia [01:26:31] a minor, there's an issue.

John Dehlin [01:26:32] Yeah, power differential. Especially when they're a minor. All right, well, Julie, it is such a pleasure to have you back on Mormon Stories. Any final call out you want to do for people who want to follow you? I know you want to grow your YouTube channel, so, yes, other people subscribe to your channel.

Julia [01:26:51] I would love that. So if you guys want to go to my channel, it's the recap with Julie. I would absolutely love a follow on YouTube. Like I said, I post a lot on Tick Tock, but I am trying to grow my YouTube channel. So I would love to see you over there. So it's the recap with Julie. I'm also known sometimes as Julie Louise 1975. But the recap with Julie is the easiest way to find me.

John Dehlin [01:27:13] All right, thank you, Julie. And also while you're at it, please subscribe right now to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to us on Spotify if you can. There. We're also on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. We love those follows. We really appreciate the super chats Mormon Stories lives by its donors. So if you value this content and you want to see Continue, go to MormonStories.org Click on the Donate button at the top of the window, become a monthly donor. And that's how we pay Gerardo and Maven and Julia and Brooklyn and me and Margi and. And the co hosts and all that we do here. And Julia, I hope, will you come? Can we have this little sort of situation where occasionally I say, hey, Julie, I need a deep dive in. In this Mormon topic. And then you do the research and then come back and report to us.

Julia [01:28:06] John, I would love nothing more. I absolutely love coming on here with you. It's always so educational and I would absolutely love to come back anytime. You'll have me.

John Dehlin [01:28:14] Okay. And. And if I could ever return the favor, I'm always. We did a. We did a live on. On Tick Tock.

Julia [01:28:20] We did on Tick Tock. Yes. Yeah, that was excellent.

John Dehlin [01:28:23] If you want to do a live on Tick Tock about this type of stuff, I'm always game as well.

Julia [01:28:27] Deal.

John Dehlin [01:28:28] All right, thanks. Thanks, Julie.

Julia [01:28:30] Thanks, everybody. Thanks so much, John.

John Dehlin [01:28:32] All right, you guys take care. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We hope to hear from the Filipowskis and the Hutchinson's and anyone else who knows them. Email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com. most importantly, 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, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.