Content Warning: This article contains mentions of abuse.
Before its discontinuation earlier this year, the family vlog channel, 8 Passengers, boasted nearly 2.5 million subscribers. Founded by matriarch Ruby Franke, the YouTube channel chronicled the quotidian of the six Franke children, and sought to share the family’s Mormon values and parenting strategies with a wide digital audience. However, despite this focus on family and piety, Ruby Franke’s severe parenting methods — and her proclivity for filming, and thus profiting off, her six children’s most vulnerable adolescent moments —have long sounded warning bells in the minds of viewers. And this summer, those warning bells turned into blaring sirens as Ruby Franke was arrested and charged with six counts of felony child abuse.
This past August, in Ivins, Utah, Ruby Franke’s youngest son knocked on a neighbor’s door begging for food and water. The twelve-year-old had escaped from the residence of Franke’s business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, and according to the 9-1-1 call made by the neighbor in question, “[the child] is emaciated. He’s got tape around his legs. He’s hungry and he’s thirsty.” Upon searching Hildebrandt’s house, authorities also discovered Franke’s youngest daughter similarly emaciated, and both Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested.
While this abuse is horrific, it’s unfortunately not entirely shocking. In the aforementioned 9-1-1 call, Hildebrandt’s neighbor asserted that he knew “there’s been problems at [Hildebrandt]’s house.” In 2020, fans created a change.org petition calling for Child Protective Services to launch an investigation into the 8 Passengers family, and it received over 17,000 signatures. Furthermore, in a since deleted post following the August arrests, Shari Franke — Ruby’s eldest child — posted to Instagram saying, “[w]e’ve been trying to tell the police and C.P.S. for years about this, and I’m so glad they finally decided to step up.”
What’s more, since the inception of 8 Passengers Ruby Franke herself has posted countless videos displaying concerning behavior — including, but not limited to, harsh punishments she’s doled out to her children and intense religious morality that she expects them to adhere to. In one anecdote, Ruby’s oldest son reveals he’d been relegated to sleeping on a beanbag chair for seven months after losing privileges to his bedroom because he played a prank on his younger brother. In another clip, Franke threatens to take away the same son’s dinner “privileges” for play wrestling with his brother. In the caption of a video, posted to Franke and Hildebrandt’s shared Instagram @moms_of_truth, Franke says that when parents “make decisions based on how the child will react” or “anything/anyone other than God” they are committing idolatry — essentially saying parents must prioritize religious truths over their children. And in yet another, Franke refuses to bring her six-year-old daughter her forgotten lunch so that she learns a lesson about responsibility, saying “[h]opefully no one gives her food, and no one steps in and gives her a lunch.”
However, though these videos are cause for major concern, those close to Franke allege that her behavior only got worse as her relationship with ex-mental health counselor Jodi Hildebrandt developed. According to her sister Julie Deru, Ruby Franke began receiving counseling from Hildebrandt, and then (though Deru does not explicitly outline causality) cut off contact with her family. Another Franke sister, Bonnie Hoellein, describes Jodi Hildebrandt’s company ConneXions as “complete indoctrination.” This assertion is supported by sources obtained by NBC who said the counseling company was “cult-like,” and that it “methodically separated spouses, pathologized patients’ behaviors as evidence of various addictions and encouraged people to cut off others who weren’t living in accordance with [Hildebrandt’s] teachings.” Furthermore, Jodi’s own niece alleged they suffered “brutal abuse” at the hands of Hildebrandt. And, despite all of these red flags, Ruby Franke, willingly and loudly connected herself to such a problematic figure, and as it seems, began using Hildebrandt’s extremist teachings against her own children.
As of now, a court date has not been scheduled for the trials of Jodi and Ruby, so in other words, no verdict has been reached. In mid-October, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that a status review hearing had been scheduled for September 18th, but that the court postponed it saying they needed “additional time needed to review copious amounts of discovery.”
So, while we don’t yet know the outcome of Ruby Franke’s trial, this case does act as a very real wake-up call; even though there were an abundance of warning signs and whistle blows, and indications of abusive behavior were literally recorded and shared with an audience of over two million people, it took the extremes of August for authorities to intervene. What’s more, this case sheds light on the dangerous ways that religion —specifically fundamentalist demands for unconditional respect and purity — can be used as a tool for abuse and weaponized against our most vulnerable citizens: children.