Latest news with #Mormons
Cosmopolitan
3 hours ago
- Cosmopolitan
Who is Ruby Franke? The true story of the abusive parenting influencer covered in harrowing Disney+ series
She was once a hugely popular parenting influencer who attracted over two million followers and numerous brand details. However, Ruby Franke's fame merely disguised abuse against her own children that has since been described as "horrific and inhumane". The 42-year-old gained a significant online following fronting her '8 Passengers' YouTube channel, where she shared parenting tips and general day-to-day life with her husband, Kevin, and their six children. The channel, launched in 2015, gained 2.3 million followers before it was shut down in 2023. Alongside business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, the pair admitted to four counts of aggravated child abuse. Franke was sentenced to four consecutive prison terms of 1 to 15 years. Now, a documentary on Disney+ details the horrors that the family were subjected to. The Utah native gained a significant following as a YouTuber, with 8 Passengers discussing life with her six children. Ruby and husband Kevin also discussed their faith as Mormons, and home-schooling. The channel courted controversy; Ruby was criticised by viewers after one video saw Ruby's eldest son reveal he slept on a beanbag for seven months as 'punishment' for teasing his brother. Ruby defended her actions at the time; in an interview with Insider, she claimed her son chose to sleep on a beanbag instead of an airbed. Her style of discipline came under further criticism after one video saw her threaten to throw away her children's toys, and for not giving them any privacy or personal space. The 8 Passengers channel has since been deleted and in a statement issued to TIME magazine, a spokesperson for YouTube wrote: 'We can confirm that we have terminated two channels linked to Ruby Franke in accordance with our creator responsibility guidelines. Additionally, Ruby Franke will no longer be able to use, own, or create any other YouTube channels, in accordance with the repeat infringer policy in our Terms of Service.' In August 2023, Ruby's 12-year-old son was staying with Ruby and her business partner, Jodi Hilderbrant. He managed to escape out a window and ran to a neighbour's house, before asking them to call the police. His appearance was described as thin, and was reportedly covered in wounds. He also had duct tape around his legs and wrists. He reportedly told officers that his wounds had been dressed with cayenne pepper. Ruby was arrested alongside Jodi, and both were charged with six felony counts of aggravated child abuse. In December, both pleaded guilty to four of the counts, with the plea deal accepted by prosecutors. Jodi was also charged alongside Ruby. The pair were friends and business partners, and had met at church (they were both Mormons). Having initially trained as a mental health counsellor, the 55-year-old's focus shifted onto her life-coaching programme ConneXions. After counselling the Frankes, who were having marital problems, Ruby started working alongside Jodi on an Instagram post called Moms of Truth. Jodi even briefly lived with the Frankes until early 2022. After that time, Ruby and her two youngest children moved to Jodi's Utah home. Jodi agreed to plead guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse in December 2023. After the plea deal, details emerged around the extent of Ruby's abusive behaviour towards her two youngest children. Ruby admitted assaulting her son by forcing him into hours of physical tasks and outdoor work between May and August without sufficient drinking water. The boy also suffered serious sunburns that resulted in blisters. He was forcibly isolated from others, given meagre food, and was not allowed access to books, games or electronics. After he tried to escape in June, he was regularly bound – on some occasions, even in handcuffs. Ruby also admitted to kicking her son while wearing boots, holding his head under water and smothering his mouth and nose with her hands Her youngest daughter was forced to work outside, run barefoot, and go without food and water. Ruby reportedly told her children that they were 'evil' and the punishments 'were necessary for them to be obedient and repent'. In Utah, aggravated child abuse is defined as an act that "inflicts upon a child serious physical injury" or "causes or permits another to inflict serious physical injury upon a child"– with each count carrying a sentence of up to 15 years. None of Ruby's children attended the sentencing, but she did address them with an emotional plea. "I'll never stop crying for hurting your tender souls," she said. "My willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly. I took from you all that was soft and safe and good. "For the past four years, I've chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion. My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone who challenged me." Ruby added after sentencing: "It is important to me to demonstrate my remorse and regret without blame. I take full accountability for my choices, and it is my preference that I serve a prison sentence." Ruby is thought to now be pursuing a degree while serving her sentence at the Utah State Correctional Facility. Her first parole hearing will take place in December 2026. Meanwhile, Jodi said at her hearing: "One of the reasons I did not go to trial is because I did not want [the children] to emotionally relive the experience which would have been detrimental to them. My hope and prayer is that they will heal and move forward to have beautiful lives." Kevin, who filed for divorce from Ruby in December, has since distanced himself from his ex-wife. A lawyer for Kevin said the couple had been living separately for 13 months and Kevin Franke was "distraught" after hearing about the alleged abuse in an interview with Good Morning America. "No one's ever made any allegations that he's ever physically abused those kids, or anyone else," the attorney told the programme. The four younger siblings, aged between 11 and 17, were in care in 2014 according to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune. Kevin was reportedly granted custody of his children in March 2025, per People. Ruby's older daughter, Shari, has since spoken out about what life was like. The 22-year-old previously cut ties with her family in 2022. Upon news of Ruby's conviction, Shari wrote and then deleted an Instagram post which read "finally". In another post, she wrote: "Me and my family are so glad justice is being served." In January 2025, Shari released a book providing insight to life with Ruby. In The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom, Shari recalls that Ruby was always tough on her and her siblings. "Anything less than unbridled enthusiasm would trigger Ruby into a rage," Shari writes, in an excerpt shown to The Guardian. "One hint of displeasure on my face, and whack! … But no matter how much I twisted and turned, no matter how much I achieved or accomplished, it would never be enough. There would always be some new hoop to jump through, some new standard to meet." Shari is now also campaigning against family vlogging and the potential impact on children. "I've witnessed the damage of what happens when your life is put online," Shari told People. "There's no ethical way to do it." Chad, 20, has also vocally criticised his mother. A report from Page Six suggested he was seen leaving the courtroom smiling after Ruby was sentenced. In August last year, he took to Snapchat, writing: "Happy Prisonversary" and sharing a picture of his mother before she was arrested. The docuseries Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke is available to watch now on Disney +. Kimberley Bond is a Multiplatform Writer for Harper's Bazaar, focusing on the arts, culture, careers and lifestyle. She previously worked as a Features Writer for Cosmopolitan UK, and has bylines at The Telegraph, The Independent and British Vogue among countless others.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Tim Stanley on Jacinda Ardern's virtue-signalling memoir: It's like one long therapy session
Don't read this book. You won't, anyway: it's by Jacinda Ardern. But if I tell you that it's a memoir dedicated to 'the criers, worriers, and huggers,' you'll have an idea of the nightmare you've dodged. A Different Kind of Power reads like a 350-page transcript of a therapy session: 'My whole short life,' the author writes, 'I had grappled with the idea that I was never quite good enough.' Regrettably, she persisted, rising through the two or three ranks of New Zealand society to become prime minister at the age of 37, from 2017 to 2023. And yet the practicalities of the job don't interest her: this book hinges on how everything felt. Large sections are dedicated to an uneventful youth in Murupara, a one-horse town on the north island – the Maori name translates as 'to wipe off mud' – where Ardern was born in 1980. Her father was a cop, her mother a school catering assistant. The Arderns were Mormons, a fact that threatens to make the author remotely interesting – until we learn that she lost her faith after watching a romcom, about a gay Mormon missionary who gives up God for love. Lucky Ardern didn't watch Top Cat, or she might have embarked upon a life of crime. In these passages, our impressionable hero regales us with fascinating accounts of grocery shopping; Nana's funeral; her first job in a chippy ('There was always a steady routine to my Friday night shifts at the Golden Kiki'). As for what drew her into politics: was it Marx? Or Mahatma Gandhi? Well, one influence came early on: she saw a newspaper cartoon of a Tory stealing soup from children and thought, 'that definitely didn't feel right.' Burdened by a 'constant compulsion to be 'useful'', Ardern concluded that 'the world is so big and life could be fragile… but not so big that one person can't do something to change it.' So, Ardern completed a very useful degree in 'Communication Studies', joined Labour and entered Parliament in 2008. This utterly normal person seems to have done almost nothing outside of politics. What about her greatest flaw, then? Probably that she cares too much. Ardern recalls, in those early days of the legislature, feeling overwhelmed by her emotions – and another MP saying, 'Promise me you won't try to toughen up, Jacinda. You feel things because you have empathy, and because you care.' You and I might laugh, but the Kiwis seemed to love it: when Labour entered an unwinnable election in 2017, the party dropped its leader at the last minute and swapped in Ardern – whose nervous smile and boundless compassion, not hindered by having been photographed in Spanx, pushed Labour into office. She lost the popular vote but entered a coalition with a Right-wing party that had previously called her a 'meatless hamburger'. 'Yes, I was the prime minister,' she writes. And yet: 'I was also pregnant.' Plot twist! Don't get me wrong: it's good to be reminded that politicians are human beings, and healthy that a modern woman can both have a baby and run New Zealand. But between all the paragraphs on childrearing and pump-sterilising – 'I expected breastfeeding to be a lot more straightforward than it was' – one gets the impression that there was little else to do. During her time as leader, New Zealand saw a natural disaster and a terror attack, both of which brought out Ardern's best: authoritative and sensitive, she has a fine temperament. But so much ink is given to relationship talk and cake baking – she wants us to know, too, that she replied to every child who wrote to her – that it starts to feel as though the author's self-doubt lies not in her leadership skills, but in a fear that people can't see how nice she really is. As she embraced a volcano victim in 2019, she heard the cameras click and imagined cynics saying it was all for show: 'That's fine, I thought, as I hugged [them] tight… I would rather be criticised than stop being human.' The author's virtue may be signalled brightly enough to be seen from the moon – and yet this empathy curiously doesn't extend to every critic of her Covid policy. You'll recall that when the pandemic began, New Zealand cut off the outside world: the obvious, and easy, thing to do when your country sits in the middle of nowhere. Restrictions and mandates were applied off and on, sometimes severely, through to early 2022. Ardern acknowledges the psychological effects of lockdown via a letter from a woman who 'couldn't see her daughter's body after she died in a farm[ing] accident' – but this happens to be a citizen who 'understood why we had the rules we had, no matter how hard they felt.' How convenient for the author. By contrast, the anti-lockdown crowd Ardern describes protesting outside New Zealand's Parliament, wore 'literal tinfoil hats', flew 'swastikas' and 'Trump flags'. This is exactly how centrist dads (and mums) subtly vilify their opponents: set a perfect example and imply a comparison. I am so kind that anyone who disagrees with me must be nasty; so reasonable that my critics must be nuts. Yet despite the impression here that Ardern merely emoted throughout her time in office, as though manning the phones at the Samaritans, she implemented real, controversial policies that ended in a property bust, bad finances and a crime wave. And in a move that showed almost zero compassion to her colleagues, she quit office before they were due to be judged in a general election – thus avoiding the worst defeat for an incumbent government in decades. Post-office, Ardern became a fellow at Harvard University, teaching a course in… you guessed it: 'empathetic leadership'. The principle that the world would be a better place if we just empathised with each other is nice in theory, but codswallop in practice. How does that work with Vladimir Putin or the boys in Hamas? On the contrary, true leadership is about making tough judgments, guided by sound philosophy: St Jacinda bungled the former, lacked the latter. By reducing all government to thoughts and prayers, she transformed humility into vanity – a softly photographed carnival of her own emotions. But there is one wonderful moment of zen. It comes when Ardern meets the late Queen in 2018, and asks whether she has any advice on raising children. 'You just get on with it,' said the monarch. It must have been a put-down; it sounds like a put-down – and yet Ardern is too naive to notice.
Wall Street Journal
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Jan Shipps, Methodist Who Brought Credibility to Mormon Studies, Dies at 95
Jan Shipps showed up unannounced one day in 1971 at the office of a history professor in Indianapolis. When he asked how he could help her, she blurted out: 'You can give me a job. I'm tired of sex and I want to get back to history.' Specifically, she wanted to get back to teaching history. And studying Mormons.
Fox News
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Secret Lives of Mormon Wives' star braces for more hate ahead of explosive second season
As "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" gears up for its second season, one breakout star is bracing for the next wave of criticism. In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Layla Taylor — who famously threw herself a divorce party during the Hulu show's first season — opened up about the backlash the show has received from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She also revealed the "intense pressure" she often feels about oversharing aspects of her life on TV, and explained why she foresees "more hate" and judgment to follow this explosive second season. "It's been pretty positive for me," Taylor, 24, said of the public's response so far. "I was pretty quiet season one. I was a little bit more reserved, so I feel like there wasn't necessarily much room for people to say much about me. But for the other girls, I know that they're definitely under some heat after season one came out." "I think with each season there will be more and more voices that become more active and more vocal," she added. "And I could see that after season two, I could see some more hate on my end. But I think overall I felt good about my intentions and what I did throughout the seasons." Given the title of the show, one major wave of criticism came from the LDS Church, Taylor recalled. WATCH: 'SECRET LIVES OF MORMON WIVES' STAR BRACES FOR MORE HATE AHEAD OF EXPLOSIVE SECOND SEASON "I think that they've definitely kind of calmed down from their initial scare," she said of the LDS Church's reaction to the first season. "I think when the show title was released before the initial show came out, definitely everyone was a little bit alarmed, and then the trailer came out and they're like, 'Oh, it's worse' in their brains. And then I think they finally saw the show and they're like, 'Okay, they're not misrepresenting. I think that they're just showing members at different levels within their faith that still have a genuine basis of relationship with God and a relationship with Jesus.'" "And that's what it comes down to," she added. "I just feel like we weren't trying to come at the church in any way. I think they were maybe afraid that we were going to drag them. I don't think that's anyone's intentions. Even the people like myself that aren't active Mormons and Jessi [Ngatikaura] and a couple of the other girls, I think that we just wanted to show what our journey within their religion has been." This idea of fitting the LDS mold was a constant topic of conversation during the show's first season. This next season will see certain cast members struggle with the repercussions of their actions from last season. Jen Affleck's husband, Zac — who received backlash after mistreating his wife during the first season — admitted to having some "nasty" interactions with churchgoers over the past year. "Jen still wants to go [to church] and I think eventually we will," Zac admitted. "I feel not accepted. I also feel honestly embarrassed. We've had a couple nasty interactions with people [at church]." "I had 50 to 100 DM's saying, 'You deserve to die', 'If I saw you in person, I'd kill you,'" he related. "If you have a good relationship with God and you're trying to figure it out with Him, I don't think anything else matters," Dakota Mortensen, Taylor Frankie Paul's on-again, off-again boyfriend, told Zac. The first season of the Hulu series followed the dramatic aftermath of the swinging sex scandal exposed by Paul, the self-proclaimed creator of #MomTok. Paul and her ex had agreed to a lifestyle that included having multiple partners, although the pair decided as a couple that they "wouldn't go all the way." When the scandal broke, she admitted that she "did step out of the agreement" and cheated on her ex with Mortensen. "I want people to have a better understanding of who I am," Paul told People magazine at the time. "I wanted to be vulnerable and show people that when you hit rock bottom, there is hope." Ahead of the series premiere last year, some of the stars voiced their intentions of exposing their lives as "Mormon wives." "I hope when the show comes out that the church members will be a little more open-minded and realize that we're not against them, we're with them — we're just showing our sins publicly," Jessi Ngatikaura told the Daily Mail ahead of the premiere. "I feel like it's a lot of projection," Paul added. "At the end of the day we're not representing those people, we're representing ourselves and our stories — and our message is that we're not all the same and we don't all live the same. There's different spectrums of Mormonism and it's unfortunate that we're getting judged so harshly before they've even seen it." From exposing their deepest, personal secrets to facing bouts of betrayal and jealousy, Taylor said putting their lives on reality television has come with "intense pressure." "There is definitely intense pressure to share everything. And then if you don't share everything, then you're hiding things," she told Fox News Digital. "And then I get comments all the time about the plastic surgeries I've done to myself, or I get comments from people saying like, 'Oh, I didn't even know you're a mom. You don't share your kids. Why do you hide them?' And my perspective on that, I'm like, I'm protecting them actually from people who make unnecessary comments." Taylor, who is a divorced mom of two, said she quickly learned that she's not going to have the approval of everyone. "I feel like it's just you are never going to have everyone be your fan," she said. "I feel like I just try to drown out everything because you don't want the ego side of yourself to get too high, but then you don't want to get overwhelmed by all the hate. And I just try to remember that at my core, who I am, and they show such— even though we're filming for months at a time, they're still showing such minimal parts of our lives. Just the big things and the big crazy moments and the moments that you lose your cool one day or the moments that you're crying. So they don't show everything as vulnerable as we can be." "You just have to remember that it's a very small percentage that the world's seeing, and if they jump to conclusions off of that small percentage, and that's on them, but the people in your life know who you are," she added. WATCH: 'SECRET LIVES OF MORMON WIVES' STAR CONFRONTS CHURCH BACKLASH AHEAD OF EXPLOSIVE SECOND SEASON While being on a reality show has its ups and downs, Taylor said she's learning so much about herself and applying those lessons to everyday life. "I feel like I'm still learning so much about myself. I am only 24, so young, and I got married at a young age, and I feel like I was thrown into being a wife and then thrown into motherhood very fast and abruptly. Blessed, obviously from my babies. But I think that I'm still learning myself and learning who I am as a person and learning to not shift myself because of who I'm with," she explained. "And that's something that I was experiencing in my [last] relationship," she added of her recent and now ex-boyfriend, Cameron. "And I was kind of molding myself into what he wanted for a partner. And looking back, I am never going to do that again. You either like me for who I am or you don't like me at all. And that's something that I'm learning and growing with time is accepting myself for who I truly am at my core, and my right person will like me for who I am." The second season of "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" is now streaming on Hulu.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'No one is illegal': Mormon women stage patchwork protest in Washington
At the base of the Capitol in Washington, dozens of Mormon women gathered Tuesday for a unique type of protest: meticulously sewing together giant quilts to call on legislators to protect the US Constitution as Donald Trump gets closer and closer to ignoring it. The assembly involves thousands of quilt squares submitted by women across the country, all of whom are concerned about the political situation in the United States as Trump cracks down harshly on illegal migration, fires tens of thousands of civil servants, challenges institutions like the news media and universities, and seemingly tramples the rule of law. Organized by members of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, a nonpartisan faith-based political advocacy group, the patchwork included messages like "No one is illegal," "We are all immigrants," and "A government of laws and not of men." Although Mormons -- formally called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- generally align with the US religious right, the women who came to Washington felt compelled to defend the Constitution, regardless of their party affiliation. "I think as Latter-day Saints, participating in the process is kind of an extension of our faith," said Chelsea Robarge Fife, a 49-year-old woman from Salt Lake City, Utah. "We believe in shared principles of kindness, of respect, of doing our part, and so engaging with our elected officials is kind of an extension of the principles we try to live anyway," she continued. Robarge Fife said "many of us have very different politics" about the women quilting in protest, "but the one thing we all agree upon is that the Constitution keeps us strong." - Speaking through fabric - "The Constitution is our common thread, and so preserving the checks and balances that are outlined there is the surest way to ensure a healthy democracy." Since his return to office in January, Trump has sought to expand executive power to an extraordinary extent, undermining the checks and balances inherent in America's co-equal branches of government. Among other things he has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of judges who rule against him and ignored some of their rulings. On Sunday, when asked whether he would respect the Constitution, Trump replied: "I don't know." The group will deliver 68 quilts to a variety of elected legislators, asking each of them to take action. One quilt destined for the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson from Louisiana, addressed the Trump administration's anti-migrant policies: "You cannot take dignity from others because you have none." "Let's revive this tradition of speaking through fabric," said Jessica Preece, 44, from Utah. "I think that part of the reason it works so well is because so many women are very comfortable with fabric. "They're comfortable with this, with this craft and so it feels very safe and normal and authentic to do this," she continued. Jennifer Thomas, another Mormon woman standing next to Preece, nodded in agreement. She said the best way to be heard politically is to remind lawmakers "that the best way to defend that is together, not alone." "We've become so polarized, and this has just been, I think, an experience for people to depolarize and say, what do we actually share in common?" pno/ev/jgc/dw
