Six glowing, happy, children and one blonde, glossy, tousled mum. Dad Kevin was handsome and clean-cut, too. The stage was set for Ruby Franke and her photogenic family to become online superstars.
The Franke posse; Shari, now 20, the eldest, with her sisters, now 16, 14 and 10 and brothers, now 19 and 12, were the kind of super brood the world loves to follow. And soon, though she split from Kevin, 42-year-old Ruby’s YouTube family vlog, 8 Passengers, was racking up two million followers, making her an American mommy blogger supreme. It documented life with her picture-perfect offspring.
But behind the flawless online image was a shocking reality. A court in Utah heard Ruby had “committed horrible acts of child abuse …in a concentration camp-like setting. “The children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in… isolated from others and hidden when people came to visit the house.” This week, this golden mum-of-six was given up to 60 years in jail for starving and abusing the very children she had marketed and monetised so successfully.
Her time behind bars will be decided by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. Franke’s dramatic downfall has drawn more eyeballs than the glam vlogger could ever have hoped for.
Yet her YouTube channel had been disquieting viewers for a while. There, with her business partner and co-accused Jodi Hildebrandt, 54, she’d been dispensing parenting advice in the style of tough love. Increasingly, lots of tough. Not so much in the way of love.
Franke proudly detailed how her elder son had been evicted from his bedroom for seven months for playing a joke on his brother, then banished to a punishing wilderness camp. And how, when her very little ones forgot their school lunch, she refused to take it to them. In another video she threatened to behead a child’s favourite soft toy. Franke even boasted of how she’d told her two youngest kids Santa wouldn’t come to them because of their behaviour.
”It’s because they’re so numb. The more numb your child is, the bigger the outcome they need to wake them up,” she advised. Shocked, some viewers launched an online petition to get child protective services involved, and Ruby’s eldest daughter ostracised her.
Finally on August 30 last year a 12-year-old boy, skinny and half-starved, made a dramatic escape through a window at Hildebrandt’s house and ran to a nearby home, begging for water and food. The shocked neighbour saw deep cuts from where he had been trussed up, took off the duct tape ringing his bony wrists and ankles and called police.
It was Franke’s younger son.
The boy was taken to hospital to have his malnourishment treated and wounds dressed. Then officers headed to Hildebrandt’s where one of Franke’s daughters was found malnourished. Two of her other children were placed with child protection services, as her son told his story. It was one of out-and-out abuse. After an earlier attempt to run away, he said, he’d been regularly tied-up and handcuffed. His hands and wrists would be injured as he was hauled up by the cuffs.
Stone-hearted Franke admitted to kicking her boy while wearing boots, holding him under water and clamping his mouth and nose with her hand as she suffocated him. The world was stunned. Relieved Shari, took to Instagram to celebrate her mum’s arrest. “Today has been a big day,” she posted. She added: “Me and my family are so glad justice is being served. We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this.”
Horrified Kevin, 45, who is divorcing Franke, called for his “horrific” wife and Hildebrandt to be jailed for decades as they admitted the crimes. But what could have made this vlogger so vicious? “In some cases mothers abuse a child or children to get attention, somewhat akin to Munchausen’s by proxy,” says psychologist and relationship expert Dr Pam Spurr.
“They look like the saviour when they present their baby or child at hospital. In other cases, the mother may be a sadist and the child is the nearest person they can mete their sadism on,” she says. “Although we think of sadists as men, women can also be cruel and sadistic. “While the majority of us parents can’t even fathom that such abuse is possible, tragically it is far more common than one would guess. They derive a very dark and cool delight from inflicting pain..”
So which is it with Ruby Franke? Attention? Sadism? Or was it all just for eyeballs and clicks?
In a plea agreement, she admitted torturing her son by forcing him into hours of hard tasks, working outside in the unbearable heat of summer without adequate water all of which led to “repeated and serious sunburns” that blistered.
Food was withheld, and meals were basic. He was isolated and deprived of entertainment, books and electronics. Hildebrandt roped his wrists and ankles, and the two women dressed the red-raw wounds with honey and cayenne pepper.
All of this was “acts of love” said Franke. The boy’s nine-year-old sister, also given back-breaking tasks in the summer heat and made to run, barefoot, on rough roads, was told the punishments were to help her because she was “evil and possessed ”.
At her sentencing Franke blamed Hildebrandt, saying: “For the past four years I’ve chosen to follow counsel and guidance that led me into a dark delusion. I was led to believe this world was evil, filled with … children who needed to be abused.” She insisted she was taking full responsibility for her heartless crimes, adding: “Thank you to the officers in Santa Clara and the Ivin City Police… You were the angels who came and saved my children.”
In a cringe-making appeal of her abused children, she added: “To my babies, my six little chicks, you’re a part of me. I was the momma duck who was consistently waddling you to safety. I can see now, over the past four years, I was in a deep undercurrent that led us to danger, led you to darkness.”
Is this all true regret or another exercise in manipulation? Was it her latest show?
“No abusive mother, or father, is ever the victim,” says Dr Pam, firmly. As she sits in a cell, serving her four sentences of one to 15 years for the four counts of aggravated child abuse she admitted, will she continue to blame Hildebrandt, who was handed down the very same fate?
Or will Ruby Franke, disgraced mum and vlogger, face up to what she has done?
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
