Jodi Hildebrandt

The backstory

The escape and the arrests

On Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023, a dispatcher in Ivins, a town in southwestern Utah, received a report that a boy had climbed out of a window of a house and run to a neighbor’s home, asking for food and water, with duct tape on his wrists and ankles, St. George News reported.²⁶ The house belonged to Hildebrandt.²⁶ According to a statement from the Santa Clara-Ivins Police Department, the boy was emaciated, had open wounds and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was placed on a medical hold for deep lacerations from being “tied with a rope.”²⁶ He was one of Franke’s children.²⁰

Officers who searched the house found his younger sister, who was also malnourished and was taken to the hospital.²⁶²² Police video released in 2024 shows that she was found sitting on the floor of a closet and agreed to go to the hospital only after about four hours with a sergeant, FOX 13 reported.¹¹ According to search warrant records reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the boy told officers that Hildebrandt had tied him down with rope before he escaped, and that his open wounds had been treated with cayenne pepper and honey; officers seized handcuffs, rope, tape and bandages from the house.²² Investigators found used gauze in Hildebrandt’s bathroom, which they cited as evidence that she knew of the injuries, according to the police statement.²⁶

Hildebrandt declined to speak with investigators and asked for a lawyer; after she was told of the charges, she said the two children “should never be allowed around any other kids,” according to police.²⁶ Both women were booked into jail and held without bail.²⁶ Four of Franke’s children were placed in the care of the state Division of Child and Family Services.²⁶

The charges

On Sept. 1, 2023, the Washington County Attorney’s Office charged Hildebrandt and Franke with six counts each of aggravated child abuse, a second-degree felony, with two child victims.¹ The office said each was charged with causing or permitting serious physical injury in three ways: physical injuries or torture, starvation or malnutrition that jeopardizes life, and severe emotional harm.¹ Each count carries one to 15 years in prison.¹ After the cases closed, a Washington County case summary stated that “religious extremism” motivated both women, ABC4 reported.³

The plea

Franke pleaded guilty on Dec. 18, 2023.¹⁸ On Dec. 27, at what had been scheduled as a preliminary hearing, Hildebrandt waived that hearing and pleaded guilty before Judge John J. Walton in St. George to four counts of aggravated child abuse; the other two counts were dismissed.¹⁹² The hearing lasted about four minutes.¹⁹ She agreed to consecutive rather than concurrent terms on each count.²

In her signed plea statement, Hildebrandt admitted that she inflicted serious physical injuries on two children, a boy and a girl whom the statement describes as 11 and 9, while they lived in her home from May 22 to Aug. 30, 2023, and that she allowed another adult to injure them as well, KSL and the Salt Lake Tribune reported.¹⁸²⁰ Her written admissions are almost word for word the same as Franke’s, KUTV reported.²¹ By her own statement:

• The children were made to do forced physical labor, were denied food, water and books, and were kept outside “at all hours of the day and night.”¹⁸ The boy was made to stay outside for long periods, causing repeated, serious sunburns, and was punished for secretly drinking water.¹⁹
• After the boy tried to run away in July, his hands and feet were regularly bound, sometimes to an adult or to weights. Handcuffs cut his skin and damaged muscle and tissue, and at times his arms and legs were suspended with ropes.¹⁸¹⁹
• She and Franke tried to convince the boy he was evil and that the punishments were an act of love.¹⁸
• She “physically forced or coerced” the girl to jump into a cactus “multiple times,” and the girl’s feet were repeatedly injured from being barefoot.²⁰¹⁸

Several acts admitted in Franke’s statement do not appear in Hildebrandt’s, according to KUTV.²¹ Her attorney, Douglas Terry, said she had agreed to cooperate early, decided to plead guilty before Franke did, and did so so that the children would not have to testify.²⁰¹⁹ County Attorney Eric Clarke said, “One of the toughest things we ask victims of alleged abuse to do is testify in a trial against their abusers.”²

The sentencing

Hildebrandt and Franke were sentenced in St. George on Feb. 20, 2024.¹³ Clarke told the court that the children had been kept in a “concentration camp-like setting” for months, denied food, water, beds and “virtually all forms of entertainment,” and that both needed hospital care for extensive injuries; he said the boy might not have survived much longer had he not escaped.¹³ He said Hildebrandt showed “little to no remorse for her actions” and in recorded jail calls repeatedly called herself a victim and blamed the children.¹³ In one released jail call, she questioned whether making a child sleep on the floor should count as abuse, calling that idea “ridiculous,” FOX 13 reported.¹¹

Terry told the court there are two sides to every story and that Hildebrandt “is not the person that she has been portrayed to be”; he said she accepted the consecutive sentences and the consequences.¹³ Hildebrandt spoke briefly. She did not apologize, NPR reported.¹² She said she loved the children and wanted them to heal physically and emotionally, that she had not gone to trial because she did not want them to relive the experience, and that she would accept whatever time the state found appropriate, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.¹⁴ “I sincerely love these children,” she said, adding that her “hope and prayer” was that they would go on to live full lives.¹³

Judge Walton said Hildebrandt had “terrorized” the children, that as an adult with specialized training she should have protected them, and that her treatment of them appeared detached from reality and any objective standard of decency, KSL reported.¹³ He imposed four terms of one to 15 years, to run consecutively.¹³ Utah law caps the total of consecutive terms at 30 years.¹²³

Before sentencing, the court had allowed Hildebrandt to sell her Ivins home on the condition that $100,000 of the proceeds be held in a separate account until restitution to the children was decided.¹⁷ The sources reviewed do not report a final restitution amount.

The challenge to her plea

On March 24, 2025, Hildebrandt filed a petition for post-conviction relief on her own behalf, KUTV reported.⁷ She argued that her plea was “unlawfully induced or not made knowingly and voluntarily,” that her lawyer was ineffective, and that her due-process rights were violated, writing, “I did not know my rights and my attorney did not inform me of them.”⁸⁷ A former prosecutor, Nathan Evershed, called it a “Hail Mary attempt” and said such claims rarely succeed after a guilty plea.⁷ The sources reviewed report no ruling on the petition.

The parole question

Utah uses indeterminate sentencing: the court sets the range, and the five-member Board of Pardons and Parole decides when a prisoner is released.¹⁵ The board may consider whether the offender takes responsibility and shows remorse, the length of the abuse, the harm to the victims, risk to the public and participation in programs, KUTV reported.¹⁵ When the women were sentenced, defense attorney Skye Lazaro, a member of the Utah Sentencing Commission, said she expected each to serve at least four years, and Clarke said each could serve as much as 30.¹⁵

In July 2024 the board moved the original hearings from September 2024 to December 2026, citing the minimum term, sentencing guidelines, the nature of the offense, victim impact and rehabilitative needs.⁹ It ordered both women to take part in a cognitive behavioral therapy program and the Department of Corrections to complete a mental-health review by Nov. 1, 2026.⁹ Attorney Clayton Simms, speaking to KUTV in October 2026, said, “The board is going to have a tremendous amount of control on the amount of time that they serve,” and estimated that release could be five, 10 or 15 years away.⁴ Victims may give a statement at the hearing.¹⁰

Personal backstory

Early life

Hildebrandt was one of seven children in a family belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and grew up in Arizona, where she played sports and sang, according to Biography.com.⁶ She later lived in Utah and attended Utah Valley Community College.⁶ In a book she self-published, she wrote that she was sexually abused as a child, Biography.com reported.⁶ She was 54 at her arrest.²⁶

Counseling and licensing

State licensing records show she received an associate clinical mental health counselor license in May 2003 and became a licensed clinical mental health counselor in July 2005.²⁰

On Jan. 27, 2012, the Utah Division of Professional Licensing placed her license on probation; it was reinstated in full on Aug. 6, 2013.²⁵ The Salt Lake Tribune described the probation as 18 months.²⁰ According to the order, as reported by KUTV, she discussed sensitive information about a married couple she was treating with clergy of both spouses and with two other therapists without signed authorizations between 2008 and 2010; disclosed a client’s confidential information, including a diagnosis, to administrators at a Utah university in 2009 without authorization; and let a client who was also a therapy student complete a clinical practicum at her clinic without documented informed consent.²⁵ The order states that she “admits that Respondent’s conduct described above is unprofessional conduct.”²⁵

After her arrest, the division worked with her lawyer to secure a voluntary surrender of her license, announced Sept. 19, 2023.²³ Margaret Busse, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce, said “the surrender of the license was the best course of action” to protect her clients.²³ The surrender was not a disciplinary action, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.²⁰ Biography.com reported in 2025 that the license is “currently frozen” and that a licensing board would have to decide whether she could practice again.⁶

ConneXions and Franke

Hildebrandt started ConneXions Classroom online in 2012 as a program of DVDs, workbooks and workshops based in Orem, built on principles she said could heal destructive behaviors, including addiction; she described her approach as “compassionate yet direct and clear.”²⁴ NPR reported that she first worked with Franke’s family as a counselor before the two went into business together, including parenting seminars.¹² The ConneXions website listed Franke as a “certified mental fitness trainer.”²⁴ The two made parenting-advice videos for ConneXions featuring Franke’s children.⁵ Hildebrandt had lived in her Ivins home for about six years, she told detectives.¹¹

No mental-health testimony or court findings about Hildebrandt appear in the sources reviewed.

In custody

Hildebrandt is held at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City, in the same women’s general-population unit as Franke but on a different side, a corrections spokesperson told Biography.com.⁶ She has taken part in a technology business program in prison, KUTV reported in October 2026.⁴

No statement from the children or their family about Hildebrandt’s parole appears in the sources reviewed.