Newly released evidence in the case of Ruby Franke, the disgraced “momfluencer” sentenced to prison for child abuse, reveals chilling details of the torture her children faced.
Franke, who became known for her popular YouTube channel “8 Passengers,” was arrested last summer after her 12-year-old son snuck out of a window of a home in Ivins, Utah and asked a neighbor for help.
In December, both Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. They were sentenced late last month to serve four to 30 years in Utah State Prison, the maximum sentence for that offense.
New evidence released Friday by the Washington County Attorney’s Office reveals the extent of the “horrific abuse” the two women inflicted on the children.
The evidence includes 29 videos, crime scene photos, handwritten journal entries, and audio of phone conversations the women had while in Washington County Jail.
One video shows Franke’s bruised and frail 12-year-old son asking a neighbor to take him to “the nearest police station.”
Another shows police going into Hildebrandt’s home to search for other victims. One visibly scared 10-year-old girl is found sitting on the floor of a dark closet, as bodycam footage shows.
The girl initially doesn’t want to step out of the closet. Police then bring her pizza and a drink, which she doesn’t touch for a while. The video shows her later cautiously opening the pizza box and taking a bite.
Images of Franke’s journal, which she used to detail the ongoing abuse, were also released by authorities on Friday.
In some of the entries, the vlogger writes about starving two of her kids and forcing them to work in the summer heat for hours.
A police investigation found that Franke and Hildebrand were motivated by “religious extremism” to inflict such “horrific abuse” on the kids.
“The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies,” the attorney’s office said in a statement.
The children were regularly denied food, water and even beds to sleep in. They were also prohibited from interacting with others and kept isolated from the outside world.
