(via Ruby Franke, Popular Parenting YouTuber, Arrested for Alleged Child Abuse)

According to Salt Lake City’s Fox 13, arresting documents describe a child climbing out of a window and running to a neighbor’s home to ask for food and water. The neighbor noticed that the child had duct tape on their wrists and ankles and called the police. Another child was found at the home the first one escaped from, which belongs to Franke’s business partner and therapist Jodi Hildebrandt.

Viewers of “8 Passengers” and investigative vloggers have flagged Franke’s concerning behavior around feeding and withholding food from her children for a long time. In one video, Franke brags about not feeding her kids breakfast until they do their chores, despite them being “literally starving.” In another, Franke explains the reasoning behind not bringing her hungry 6-year-old lunch at school, because it’s actually the kid’s responsibility to pack her own lunch. It’s all deranged.

Why do people that hate kids ever have kids? And why do they have such strong urges to share their evil with others? I guess it’s...ATTENTION and MONEY.

One can’t help but notice the unfortunate pattern of Youtubers or parenting influencers on any platform who’ve compromised their children’s wellbeing. Remember Myka Stauffer, who “rehomed” her adopted child with special needs in 2020? Or the “FamilyofFive” parents, who were convicted of child abuse in 2017 for the elaborate and cruel “pranks” they pulled on their children? The parenting choices these people made are upsetting enough, but their incessant need to capitalize off of them for content at their children’s expense is horrific.

EAT SHIT AND ROT IN PISS YOU EVIL BITCH!!!!!

so happy that bitch youtuber mom is in jail for child abuse i fucking hate family vloggers with a fkn passion

The way everyone is feeling about the Nickelodeon documentary is exactly how people are going to feel about exploitive ‘family-bloggers’ in less than 10 years once those kids are old enough to speak out on it.

We have seen it with the TLC Kate plus 8 and Duggar bullshit already.

This abnormal culture of celebrity worship and the perpetuation of this ‘sponsored by late stage capitalism’ lifestyle as one of the only means left to secure a comfortable living is unconscionable.

We banned circus freak shows in like the 20s and it took less than 100 years to rebrand them - except instead of a desperate man biting the head off a chicken to shock a crowd, now we scare small children for engagement on reaction vids on your FYP.

I feel like the family vlogger thing is inherently exploitative, in part because when it begins the people who will be the most impacted can’t really consent to being involved because of how young they are. Still, I see a lot of people saying they found 8 passengers so sweet and wholesome and the truth is that Ruby Franke being an abuser isn’t shocking if you recognize that children are people. No good parent takes away their kid’s bed for nearly a year over a prank. Or threatens to cut up a preschooler’s favorite stuffed animal as a punishment. What that woman showed for her own children wasn’t tough love, it was contempt and it wasn’t well hidden.

I have a lot of feelings about the whole Ruby Franke thing obv, primarily that she is an awful mother and deeply sick/irresponsible individual, but I find some irony in the way people are talking about her in the sense that she did the things she did because she's just pure "evil". And I get that a lot of times when we're faced with these situations where we can't even fathom how and why someone would do something, sometimes there just aren't a lot of words that feel fitting enough for the situation.

I'll also say that I think Ruby and Jodi both have some serious mental health issues that contributed to all this (morality OCD for Ruby on top of.... many other things) and that their religion alone didn't contribute to their actions. But it did introduce the black and white perspective that life is primarily a struggle between good evil whose outcome will affect where your soul is for eternity.

And you can hear in that clip that that's exactly where Ruby's thinking was/is in regards to the situation with her kids. People are comparing her a lot to Lori Vallow bc they were both Mormons who got into the fringe areas of the religion, which is very frustrating as someone who can name at least 5 similar situations that involve other flavors of Christian, it is *not* an exclusively Mormon issue, it is conservative Christian issue.

And it just really feels like we're missing the point if we boil Ruby down to just being "evil" and ignore all of the influences in her life that made her what she was, like being a part of a religion that gives little attention or care to: 1. children's individuality and autonomy 2. mental health 3. nuanced conversations regarding morality.

So I just feel like we'll all benefit from having a deeper conversation about why and how this happens as opposed to just writing Ruby off as a one off evil mother, because she absolutely is not a one off. And children can't stop being mistreated in this way until we understand how these parents actually come about in the first place.

the 8 passengers mom is finally arrested!!!

i just wish the kids to be healthy and eat all they can and get the proper treatment because she and that jodi woman are big dunces

man i hope ruby franke having to serve 30 years (up to 60) in prison changes something in the way youtube allows parents to exploit their children for views. she’s not the first family blogger to abuse her children and she certainly won’t be the last

Love and light to the child who fled their home to seek help from a neighbor, thus finally bringing forth the full power of the state of Utah down on the human excrements that are Ruby and Kevin Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt.

I wish nothing but misery and misfortune on Ruby’s all star family of Mormon Influencers who acknowledge that they have know for years there was criminal abuse happening to their own nieces and nephews but chose to keep up appearances rather than seek justice. Ellie, Bonnie, and Julie can eat shit and die.

I wish further pain and suffering upon anyone who believes that informal, behind-the-scenes “church justice” is sufficient to address systemic abuses. Fuck you. It doesn’t work, it’s never worked, and choosing not to involve the proper authorities is why numerous children had to suffer in silence while the world applauded their abusers.

I just watched this video that shows police arresting Ruby Franke and Jodie Hildebrandt and it's really sad to watch

There was body an footage showing a girl (I believe Ruby's youngest daughter) sitting motionless in a closet. You can tell by her arms that she's really skinny. According to the video, it took hours of them (police) talking to her and trying to get her out of the closet because she was too scared to talk

And then a picture was shown of the son (not showing his face) where his arms had duck tape on them

I'm doing a post on her (Ruby) because some people are seriously trying to defend her ("she needs help" "she probably had a breakdown")

Ruby Franke has pleaded guilty to abusing her children, depriving them of food, water, duct taping their mouths and restraining them via weights, handcuffs and other methods that sicken me too much to describe. Her jail sentence can be anywhere from 4 to 60 years.

Yet she puts all the blame on Jodi, yet both of them have not only boasted about their abuse against the children in what I can only describe as religious/ritual/cult abuse but actively advocating for it and potentially coercing other parents to do it as well.

Spread the word about her crimes. Contact the officials with your concerns. Raise awareness. Ruby Franke cannot get away with this. She will burn in hell for what she did to those kids.

This is where it ends.

I will be linking the Reddit post with the legal documents regarding her plea deal below, but please be careful, the account of her full abuse is very graphic and distressing. If you cannot handle it, be careful.

As always, Family Channel YouTubers are pieces of shit.

CW: Ruby Franke

I really really want people to know that I think, perhaps, the child that she’s saying was SA-ing a sibling & is, apparently going to be placed in a home w/out other kids, is likely the 12yr old & I think it’s more likely this is her attempt finding a way to abuse him further from behind bars than that he SA-Ed his sibling.

This will further isolate him from his siblings, kids he may have known in his previous neighborhood, and any other children for the foreseeable future.

A 3 year old cannot find porn on their own.

If he has the, what, nearly 2 dozen victims, did none of the parents call the police?

It's so hard not to truly blossom to hate Christianity when you come out of it. The obsession with evil, and the devil and his presumed role in the behavior of children.

I grew up in a corporal punishment home.

All my friends in the church we were part of were out through physical discipline. I don't believe Christians make good parents. They treat children like objects and animals.

And now, I've found myself seeing the ruby franke case and I'm just so sick and devastated. Those poor babies. Those poor babies.

The diary of this woman calling these children possessed, tormenting them.

It's not at all suprising that she considers herself a good Christian woman.

I hope she gets tortured to death in prison for what she put her kids through.

God I hope she does. Christians shouldn't be allowed to have kids if they're going to abuse them and project their weird moral system onto them before they've even grown old enough to develope impulse Control.

Sick sick sick

People saying Ruby Franke's arrest is evidence that family vlog channels are going to start crashing and burning is just like, completely ignoring the facts. She's being charged with aggravated child abuse for denying her kids access to food and water and basic necessities. The only reason the vlog is involved is because it provides evidence that there's a history of harsh punishments and mistreatment. She is not being arrested for exploiting her kids for content.

It would be nice if that behavior started getting legislated but that's not what's happening here. This is not a landmark case foreshadowing the fall of family vlog channels, as some have said. Her kids were found starving and with open untreated wounds. She's being accused of torture. Please stop saying her abuse crimes were just filming her kids, that is not what happened.

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If anyone else is kinda hyperfixated on the 8 passengers story, Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrante stuff, there are multiple episodes of Mormon Stories podcast on YouTube that are very long but really good listens/watches. Well, calling them "good" is strange given the heavy nature of the topic but, hopefully you get what I mean.