Over the past few years, the internet has obsessed over family YouTuber Ruby Franke and her channel titled 8 Passengers. Ruby would vlog about her family and give tips to fellow mothers. However, many viewers did not watch her because of her good advice and happy family, but because of her questionable parenting choices and intense aggressiveness towards her young children.
Her family trace her immense switch to when she became closely intertwined with Jodi Hildebrandt, a mental health life coach with whom Franke had begun a YouTube channel where they shared self improvement advice. Franke’s husband, Kevin, explains that she had become obsessed with becoming the image of the “perfect mom.”
The internet had long claimed that Franke was abusing her children due to some of the bizarre discipline she would use on them, but without proper evidence there was no way to actually get her in trouble. However, this changed on August 30, 2023 when one of Ruby’s young children had escaped Hildebrandt’s home in Utah in which he was duct taped, starved, and locked in the basement.
Once he was able to escape, he went to a neighbor’s house and asked them to call the police for help. Police then came and arrested Jodi and Ruby shortly after. Upon searching the home they also found Ruby’s young daughter locked in a closet.
After the arrest, there were many rumors spreading about the family that have now been addressed in the documentary, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke. The docuseries includes testimonials from Ruby’s husband, their neighbors, and their two oldest children, Chad and Shari.
In the docuseries, Shari and Chad recount how it was to grow up in the household with Ruby constantly vlogging and pressuring them to perform in front of the camera. In one unedited clip Ruby tells Chad, “I need you to fake being happy.” There is over 1,000 hours of footage of Ruby threatening, verbally, and physically abusing her children. Shari recounts once when Chad had been beaten so badly she had to help him scrub blood off the walls.
Shari explained that even their house began to feel more like a set than a home, explaining that Ruby would have them constantly clean the house and change every lightbulb to bright white for filming purposes. The lives of all of the Franke children revolved around filming and they were given $10 for every video they helped with.
The one question that me and a lot of other viewers had was, where was the children’s father when all of this abuse was happening? Kevin, speaking for the first time since the arrest, explains that he got very blinded by the money her vlogs were making, recounting they were at one point in time making $100,000 a month. He explained that just interacting with her wasn’t enough, he had to interact with the camera too.
He was asked if he had ever exploited Chad for his outgoing personality and admitted that he and Ruby had definitely done so. But, during the time of her arrest Kevin had not been in contact with Ruby or their children for over a year. He has since filed for divorce and custody of their children. It is unclear if he was granted custody; as of April of last year the children were still under care of the state.
The children have obviously been through immense amounts of abuse and viewers of those of us spectating on the outside can only pray that they will be able to get over the mental obstacles associated with healing.