YouTube mother Ruby Franke case: Neighbours tried to help for at ‘least a year’ before child abuse charge

Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt were charged with six felony counts of aggravated child abuse. Photo / Instagram

A Utah mother of six who gave parenting advice via a once-popular YouTube channel called “8 Passengers” is scheduled to make an initial court appearance on charges that she and the owner of a relationship counselling business abused and starved her two young children.

NBC News reported that neighbours in the close-knit community had previously alerted the Utah Division of Child and Family Services.

“Everyone is just breathing a collective sigh of relief, because we thought they were going to come out of that house with body bags,” a neighbour said.

The neighbour said Franke’s 10-year-old daughter, Eve, would wander the local neighbourhood while Franke was away for prolonged time periods.

Another neighbour said she and others in the area had tried to get local authorities to intervene for at least a year.

“I’m really angry, because I spoke up. Other people spoke up,” she said. “And nothing happened.”

Franke’s husband Kevin was kicked out of the home last year, a source with knowledge of their relationship told NBC.

Neighbours claimed that after Kevin was no longer in the home, Franke would leave the house for weeks at a time, with her children left inside.

Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt were charged with six felony counts of aggravated child abuse after their arrests on August 30 at Hildebrandt’s house in the southern Utah city of Ivins.

Franke’s 12-year-old son escaped the house that morning and asked a neighbour to call police, according to the 911 call released by the St. George Police Department.

The boy was emaciated and had duct tape around his ankles and wrists, but wouldn’t say why, the caller reported.

Ruby Franke, with her husband, is well-known for her strict parenting style on the channel. Photo / Instagram / abbeyfranke_8passengers

“I think he’s been ... he’s been detained,” the caller said, his voice breaking up. “He’s obviously covered in wounds.”

As the dispatcher was asking questions, the boy said he didn’t know where his mom was and that his dad was not in the area. The boy said two siblings, ages 10 and 14, were still at Hildebrandt’s house.

“He says everything’s fine with them,” the caller told the dispatcher. “He says what’s happened to him is his fault.”

While waiting for police and paramedics, the caller expressed concern that Hildebrandt might come looking for the boy.

Prosecutors allege the women either caused or allowed someone to torture Franke’s son and injure her 10-year-old daughter. Both children were starved and harmed emotionally, court records said. It’s unclear why the children were at Hildebrandt’s home.

The 12- and 10-year-old were taken to the hospital, police said. They, along with two other of Franke’s children, were taken into the custody of child protective services.

Both Franke, 41, and Hildebrandt, 54, have been held without bail since their arrests that night.

Their attorneys — Lamar Winward for Franke and Douglas Terry for Hildebrandt — did not return phone messages from The Associated Press seeking comment on Thursday.

Franke was known for sharing her family’s life on their video blog.

She and her husband received criticism over their parenting decisions, including banning their oldest son from his bedroom for seven months for pranking his younger brother. In one video, Ruby Franke talked about refusing to take lunch to a kindergartener who forgot it at home. Another showed her threatening to cut the head off a young girl’s stuffed toy to punish her for cutting things in the house.

Ruby Franke, left, who ran the 8 Passengers YouTube channel, was arrested along with her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt. Photo / Tiktok / utahvloggersyas

In one video, Franke said she and her husband told their two youngest children that they would not be getting presents from Santa Claus because they had been selfish and weren’t responding to punishment like being kept home from school and cleaning the floorboards.

“It’s because they’re so numb, and the more numb your child is, the bigger the outcome they need to wake them up,” Franke said in a video.

Some critics started an online petition asking child protective services to get involved. The Franke’s oldest daughter, Sherri Franke, cut ties with her parents, she has said in social media posts. The YouTube channel, which was started in 2015, ended after seven years.

Police records from Springville, Utah — where the Franke family lived — show Sherri Franke called police on September 18, 2022, to report her brothers and sisters had been left home alone for days. Police also spoke with neighbours, but were unable to contact the children. A report was made to Child and Family Services, according to the police report.

Records show officers stopped by the house four more times from September 22 to October 3.

Hildebrandt owns a counselling business called ConneXions. The business’ website said Franke provides content for social media and podcasts. ConneXions videos featuring Hildebrandt and Franke were removed from YouTube after the women were charged.

- Additional reporting NZ Herald