AP Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City
Updated Tuesday, February 20, 2024-20:05
LOC YouTuber mother Ruby Franke pleads guilty to abusing two of her children
LOC YouTuber mother Ruby Franke arrested for "abuse and malnutrition" of her six children
A Utah judge will set prison sentences for
Ruby Franke
, a mother of six who gave motherhood advice through a popular YouTube channel called "
8 Passengers
," and her partner, after they admitted to physically and emotionally abusing them. Franke's children.
At the sentencing hearing, Franke and mental health counselor
Jodi Hildebrandt
were able to speak for the first time since each pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse for trying to convince Franke's two youngest children that they were evil. , they were possessed and needed to be punished to repent.
Judge
John J. Walton
has accepted plea agreements from both women, in which they agree to serve prison sentences and describe in detail their crimes.
Franke's 12-year-old son escaped through a window of Hildebrandt's home in the southern Utah town of Ivins on Aug. 30, 2023, and asked a neighbor to call the police, according to a released 911 call. by the St. George Police Department. The boy was thin, covered in wounds and had duct tape around his ankles and wrists. He told investigators that
Hildebrandt had put ropes on his limbs
and used cayenne pepper and honey to heal the cuts, according to a search warrant.
The two women were arrested at Hildebrandt's home and each charged with
six felony counts of aggravated child abuse
. Franke pleaded guilty to four of the six counts and not guilty to two at a hearing on December 18, 2023. Hildebrandt also pleaded guilty to four counts, and two counts were dismissed as part of his plea deal. Each charge carries a prison sentence of one to 15 years, which could be served consecutively.
Controversial parenting
Franke admitted in his guilty plea
to kicking his son with his boots on
, holding his head underwater, and closing his mouth and nose with his hands. She and Hildebrandt said they also forced the boy to do physical labor for hours in the summer heat, without much food or water, causing dehydration and blistering sunburn.
Hildebrandt admitted to coercing Franke's youngest daughter, then 9, to repeatedly jump onto a cactus and run barefoot on dirt roads until her feet blistered.
The boy and girl were taken to the hospital
after the arrests and placed in state custody along with two other of their siblings.
Franke and her husband, Kevin Franke, launched
"
8 Passengers
" on YouTube in 2015
and amassed a large following while documenting their experiences raising six children.
Before her arrest in 2023, Ruby Franke was already a controversial figure in the world of
parenting
vlogs
. The Frankes were criticized online for certain parenting decisions, such as banning their oldest son from her room for seven months for playing pranks on her little brother. In other videos, Ruby Franke talked about refusing to bring lunch to a daycare child who had forgotten it at home and threatening to cut off the head of a little girl's stuffed animal to punish her for cutting things at home.
The YouTube channel no longer exists and Kevin Franke has filed for divorce.