What happened to Ruby Franke? Disney+'s Devil in the Family explained

Yahoo

10-03-2025

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Ruby Franke is the subject of new Disney+ documentary Devil in the Family, which explores the crimes of the parenting influencer against her six children.
The matriarch launched YouTube channel 8 Passengers in 2015, catapulting to fame during a boom in social media influencers sharing their family life online. She would post five days a week at one point and amassed 2.5m subscribers at the channel's height as well as 1bn views.
Franke's videos sparked widespread concern over the strict treatment she would enforce, but it was only later that the true extent of the abuse she subjected her children to was revealed.
Franke would document aspects of her family life in YouTube videos, some of which were disturbing for viewers. In one video she told her sons they would "lose the privilege to eat dinner" if they continued to play-fight with each other, for example. In another video she claimed her six-year-old daughter "needed" to go hungry because she forgot to take her lunch to school.
Other abusive behaviour included making her children stand or sleep outdoors, making them work outdoors without proper protection which resulted in sunburns, and making them do wall sits. She also shaved one of her daughter's heads, and would even withhold food, water or oxygen from them.
Franke's teenage son once revealed in a video that he was sleeping on a beanbag after his bedroom was taken away from him for seven months because he had played pranks on his sibling.
In June 2022 Franke and Hildebrandt, her business partner and counsellor, launched a YouTube channel called ConneXions where they gave advice to other parents.
Franke and her husband Kevin separated in 2022, and he later called for Franke to be given the maximum possible sentence for the abuse she inflicted on their children. He filed for divorce in November 2023.
In August 2023 Franke's 12-year-old son knocked on a neighbour's door asking for food and water, he was covered in open wounds and had been found with duct tape still on his ankles. Police later confirmed that he had escaped his home by climbing out of a window and running to a nearby house for help.
An arrest report showed that the boy suffered malnourishment and had "deep lacerations from being tied up with rope". Police found Franke's ten-year-old daughter in the family home, she was also malnourished and both were taken to hospital.
This prompted Franke to be arrested, her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt was also arrested. In total four children were put into care when Franke was taken into custody.
Franke was charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse, and ultimately pleaded guilty to four of those counts. Hildebrant also pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse.
In February 2024 Franke and Hildebrandt were sentenced, with the former vlogger sentenced to serve one to 15 years for each of the four counts of abuse she pled guilty to — in Utah if a person is given consecutive sentences then the maximum prison sentence served is 30 years. This means that she will serve between four and 30 years in prison.
Hildebrandt was sentenced to four consecutive terms of one to 15 years in prison for each count of aggravated child abuse, she will similarly serve between four and 30 years in prison as a result.
During her sentencing, Franke told the court: "I was so disoriented that I believed dark was light and right was wrong."
Franke's eldest daughter Shari has written a memoir of her experience, The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom. In it she discusses her and her siblings' experience of abuse at the hands of their mother.
Shari was included significantly on the family YouTube channel and has explained that she has since realised she was "coerced" into sharing embarasing and intimate details about her life online. She also explained that when she went to college Franke cut all ties with her daughter, leaving her in fear of her siblings' safety which led to her calling family services to assist.
Speaking to People in January 2025, she said: "Part of me feels guilty if I don't forgive. But I've come to realize that forgiveness for me just means that I don't let her actions consume my thoughts.
"I'm still angry about what she did, of course, and that's never going to go away, but I am living my life and I am not letting her take any more of that from me than she's already taken."
Franke's four youngest children have since been taken into custody by the Division of Child and Family Services, and will "remain in professional care for the aggravated psychological and emotional injuries suffered." Kevin Franke filed for custody for his children, the case is ongoing.
Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke is out on Disney+ now.
If you feel you have been the subject of child abuse you can contact Childline on 0800 1111 or via 1-2-1 chat on www.childline.org.uk.
You can contact the NSPCC Helpline by calling 0808 800 5000, emailing [e-mail]