Woman who hosted YouTube parenting channel arrested on suspicion of child abuse
National News
Ruby Franke of Utah was arrested on suspicion of aggravated child abuse Wednesday.
A Utah mother who chronicled her strict parenting style on YouTube and other social media channels was arrested on suspicion of aggravated child abuse Wednesday after a child was found malnourished with open wounds and duct tape on their extremities, officials said.
Ruby Franke and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested in Ivins, a city in southern Utah. Franke hosted the now-defunct YouTube channel “8 Passengers,” where she posted videos about her parenting approach with her six children, including refusing them food as a form of punishment.
The Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department said in a statement that they had received a report about a child who appeared to be emaciated and malnourished and was asking for food and water. The child had duct tape on their ankles and wrists, as well as open wounds.
Police responded to a nearby home and found another child in similar condition. Both children were taken to a hospital.
Police contacted the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, and a total of four children were taken into its care.
Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested on suspicion of two counts of aggravated child abuse, although charges have not yet been filed, according to court records. A judge Thursday denied bail for Franke and Hildebrandt because of “the severity of the injuries of her two kids located in the home,” according to The Associated Press.
At one point, Franke had nearly 2.5 million subscribers to her channel, following the lives of her six children: Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve. In 2020, Chad, then 15, told YouTube viewers in one family video that he had been sleeping on a beanbag for months and that he had lost his bedroom after playing a prank on his little brother, according to Insider.
In a video recorded by Franke and reposted to TikTok, she said her daughter Eve’s teacher had called her to say Eve had come to school without a lunch. Franke said the teacher was “uncomfortable with her being hungry” but that Eve was responsible for making her own lunch and that “the natural outcome is she is just going to be hungry.”
“Hopefully, nobody gives her food, and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch, because then she’s not going to learn from it,” Franke said.
The YouTube channel appears to have been taken down. A request for comment from Google, YouTube’s parent company, was not immediately answered.
Franke now appears on social media channels on behalf of Hildebrandt’s counseling business, ConneXions Classroom, which on its website claims to empower people by “educating them with principles of truth (learning to be honest, responsible, and humble).”
The two appeared frequently together on an Instagram account called “Moms of Truth.”
It was not immediately clear who was representing Franke or Hildebrandt. A lawyer for Chad Franke did not immediately return a request for comment.
Shari Franke, now a junior at Brigham Young University, posted about her mother’s arrest on Instagram, saying “justice is being served.”
“We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up,” she wrote, referring to the Division of Child and Family Services. “Kids are safe, but there’s a long road ahead.”
She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Elle Mechem, Julie Griffiths Deru and Bonnie Hoellein, who claimed on Instagram to be Franke’s sisters, said in a statement Thursday that they had done “everything we could to try and make sure the kids were safe” over the past three years. The sisters also document their own family lives on social media.
“Ruby was arrested which needed to happen. Jodi was arrested which needed to happen,” the statement said. “The kids are now safe, which is the number one priority.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Originally posted 2023-09-01 19:21:03.
