Ruby Franke Child Abuse

When it comes to family vlogging channels, they have not had a good reputation in a long time, but Ruby Franke and her family channel 8Passengers has not helped with this either. Franke had gained millions of followers on social media due to documenting her family’ life ,as she is the mother of 6 children, beginning in 2015. However, things began to take a turn in 2020 when those tuned into her and her husband Kevin Franke’s “8Passengers” page grew suspicious and concerned on how their household was impacting their children, especially with some of the parenting advice she would give. This is because the Frankes are strict Mormons and both her and her husband had a stern parenting style. After initially dismissing critics, she continued to share videos and explained how “she’d take away a child’s bed as a punishment or withholding meals as a teaching lesson” (Neumann). This caused a lot of criticism and backlash from people online, but Frankie continued posting like normal regardless of all this. However, it is important to note in these videos that this was only Ruby Franke’s advice and not much her husband’s advice, so for a while it was unclear as to who was really responsible for the abuse of the 4 children living with them as the older 2 of the 6 children had moved out. When online scrutiny became more intense in 2020, there was even an online petition to go around asking for Child Protective Service to investigate the Franke family due to concerns of the children being abused (Neumann). One of the videos that caused this concern was when Franke’s oldest son Chad explained how his mother took his bed away for 7 months after he played a prank on one of his siblings. 

Things escalated even further when Ruby Franke began to associate herself with Mormon therapist, Jodi Hildebrandt, as they began to work on the “ConneXions' ' parenting podcast together. Their content covered things ranging from parent, sexuality, race, political issues, and religion. In August of 2023, Ruby Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested due to abuse after her 12-year-old son escaped through the window of Hildebrandt’s home and ran to a neighbor’s house asking for food and water (Kindelan). Her son was malnourished and had lacerations due to being tied up and Franke’s 10-year-old daughter was also found in the home and malnourished as well. According to reports, “The neighbor, noticing duct tape around the child’s ankles and wrists, called the police'' (Olson). This shows that Franke and Hildebrandt were keeping these children trapped in the household and limiting the activities they were able to do. It came out later in court documents that this was because Franke had convinced her children that they were evil and needed to be punished in order to repent. The following month, Franke was charged with six counts of felony child abuse in Washington County, Utah. Due to the children being in Hildebrandt’s home, she was also arrested and charged with six counts of felony child abuse, as they were under her direct care. As Kevin Franke was not living with them at the time, he was not arrested and charged as there was no evidence pointing to him being involved in the abuse. Kevin Franke’s attorney had an interview with Good Morning America and indicated how Franke was separated from his wife for more than a year and had no knowledge of the abuse going on.