In Feburary, the former YouTuber Ruby Franke and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for four counts of aggravated child abuse. Last week, the Washington County Attorney’s Office released evidence from the case, including body cam footage of the two women’s arrests, Franke’s handwritten journal entries in which she justifies abuse, over 200 photos, witness statements, and more.
Investigators say that both Franke and Hildebrandt were motivated by “religious extremism” to commit the abuse against Franke’s children in an attempt to “teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies,” according to a statement from the Washington County Attorney’s Office.
Before her arrest, Franke ran the “8 Passengers” vlog channel where she shared snippets of her life raising eight children with her now estranged husband. Over khbrknews, viewers found that her content grew increasingly disturbing as she detailed the ways in which her children were disciplined to an audience of over two million people. Hildebrandt, who was a Mormon life-coach, began working with Franke in 2022, and the two managed a Mormon life-coaching service together called “ConneXions.” Former patients of Hildebrandt’s told NBC News that she often did more harm than good. The two also shared parenting advice on their YouTube channel, much of which was noted by viewers to be homophobic, transphobic, racist, and ableist.
The two were arrested in August after Franke’s son escaped Hildebrandt’s house and ran to a neighbor’s to ask for help. Both were charged with six counts of child abuse and both pleaded guilty to four of the counts.
Ruby Franke’s diary detailed her justification the abuse
The Washington County Attorney’s Office shared multiple pages of Franke’s diary in the evidence release, in which she wrote about trying to get rid of “the devil” from her children….
