The Rise and Fall of Ruby Franke: Hildebrandt, Abuse, and Sentencing

The Ruby Franke case is the Utah criminal matter in which a popular YouTube mother and her business partner, licensed therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, were convicted of torturing two of Franke’s children at Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah. Both women pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse and were sentenced on February 20, 2024, to four consecutive prison terms of one to 15 years each, the maximum penalty available under Utah law.¹

Who Ruby Franke Was

Franke built her public identity on YouTube. She launched the 8 Passengers channel in 2015 to film life with her husband Kevin and their six children, and at its peak the channel had more than two million subscribers. Viewers increasingly objected to what they saw as a harsh parenting style. One widely shared video featured Franke’s teenage son saying he had slept on a beanbag for seven months as punishment. Another showed her refusing to bring a forgotten lunch to a daughter.² A petition demanding an investigation gathered thousands of signatures, and reports were filed with child protective services.³ The channel was discontinued in 2022. YouTube permanently banned Franke from the platform in September 2023.⁴

Jodi Hildebrandt and the Shift Toward Abuse

Hildebrandt was a licensed clinical mental health counselor who founded a life-coaching service called ConneXions in 2007. Rooted in her interpretation of LDS teachings, the program centered on concepts of “truth” and “deception” and treated personal wants and experiences as “distortion.” Former clients described being pushed to cut off anyone not “living in truth,” including spouses and family.⁵

Franke’s involvement with Hildebrandt deepened in stages. In 2019, Hildebrandt began counseling one of Franke’s sons. By 2020, Franke was paying Hildebrandt as a personal mentor. After 8 Passengers ended and Ruby separated from Kevin in 2022, she moved into full-time collaboration with Hildebrandt on ConneXions content.² Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke later said Franke “accepted Hildebrandt as her leader and followed her instructions and guidance.”⁶

What the Children Endured

Between approximately May and August 2023, Franke’s 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter were subjected to what prosecutors described as a “concentration camp-like setting” at Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah.⁶ The children were regularly denied food, water, and beds. They were forced to perform manual labor for hours in extreme summer heat without shoes, resulting in severe sunburns with blistered and sloughing skin. They were made to do wall sits for hours and stand on a cement patio for days at a time. Both children were beaten. The son’s hands and feet were regularly bound with handcuffs and ropes that cut through his skin and damaged muscle and tissue. His wounds were treated with cayenne pepper and honey, then covered with duct tape before he was restrained again.⁷ The daughter was forced or coerced into jumping into a cactus multiple times. Both children were hidden when visitors came to the home.¹

The psychological component was equally severe. Franke and Hildebrandt told the children they were “evil and possessed” and that the treatment was necessary for them to repent for “imagined sins” and to “cast the evil spirits out of their bodies.”¹ Prosecutors called the case one of “religious extremism.”⁶

Franke’s own handwritten journals, released by the Washington County Attorney’s Office in March 2024, documented the abuse day by day. On June 12, 2023, she wrote that her daughter was “fasting” and that Hildebrandt had helped “intervene” because the girl’s desire for food gave “the devil a platform.” On June 14, after the daughter dropped a box during forced labor, Franke wrote, “I put her in the dog wash and shaved her head.” A June 15 entry described tying a rope between herself and her son after he tried to run away. Later entries documented kicking her son while wearing boots and whipping both children with a belt. Officers also recovered duct tape, plastic wrap, rope, cayenne pepper, honey paste, medical gauze, and handcuffs attached to a rope from a basement safe room at Hildebrandt’s residence.⁸

How the Abuse Was Discovered

The case broke on August 30, 2023, when Franke’s 12-year-old son climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt’s home and ran to a neighbor for help. The neighbor saw duct tape on the boy’s ankles and wrists, severe wounds, and obvious malnourishment, and called law enforcement. When questioned, the boy initially said the tape and injuries were “personal business” and “his fault.”⁹ Officers who went to the property found Franke’s 9-year-old daughter hiding in a closet, emaciated and terrified. Both children were hospitalized for severe malnourishment.¹⁰ Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested at the scene. It was not the boy’s first escape attempt; he had tried to run away in July 2023 and was caught and bound afterward.²

The Charges, Pleas, and Sentence

Both women were initially charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse, a second-degree felony in Utah carrying one to 15 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine per count.⁶ The case was prosecuted by County Attorney Eric Clarke in the Fifth Judicial District Court in Washington County.¹

Franke pleaded guilty on December 18, 2023, to four counts, with two counts dismissed in exchange for her agreement to testify against Hildebrandt.¹¹ Hildebrandt pleaded guilty on December 27, 2023, also to four counts, with two counts dismissed.¹²

On February 20, 2024, Judge John J. Walton sentenced both women to four consecutive terms of one to 15 years, for a combined potential sentence of up to 30 years. The court noted this was the maximum available under Utah law.¹ Under Utah’s indeterminate sentencing system, the actual time served will be set by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

Franke addressed the court at sentencing. “My charges are just. They offer safety to my family, accountability to the public,” she said, describing four years of following “counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion.”¹¹ She called the officers who rescued her children “angels.”⁶ In a pre-sentencing statement, she described the worldview Hildebrandt had instilled: “I was led to believe that this world was an evil place filled with cops who control, hospitals that injure, government agencies that brainwash, church leaders who lie and lust, husbands who refuse to protect, and children who need abuse.”²

Where Franke and Hildebrandt Are Now

Both women are incarcerated at the Utah State Prison. Their first parole hearings, originally set for September 2024, were rescheduled to December 2026 after a review by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. Before the hearings, both have been ordered to attend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and undergo a complete mental health evaluation, with the psychological review due by November 1, 2026.¹³ After the hearing, the Board will decide whether to set a release date, schedule a rehearing, or require them to serve the remainder of their sentences, with decisions expected by January 2027.¹⁴

Hildebrandt voluntarily surrendered her counseling license in September 2023, and Utah’s Division of Professional Licensing later formally revoked it, citing her convictions and their “substantial relationship” to her ability to safely practice.¹⁵ In April 2025, she filed a petition for post-conviction relief, claiming her attorney was ineffective, her plea agreement was unlawful, and her due process rights were violated.¹⁶ Restitution hearings in both cases are pending.¹³

Aftermath for the Family and the Law

Kevin Franke had begun living apart from Ruby in September 2022. He filed for divorce in November 2023, and the divorce was finalized in March 2025, with Kevin awarded full custody of the four minor children and full ownership of the family’s Springville, Utah home.¹⁷ In July 2024, he testified before Utah’s Child Welfare Legislative Oversight Panel, calling the state’s child welfare system “broken” and pointing to 15 visits to the home between 2019 and 2023 that did not result in intervention. He also called for the regulation of “life coaches” like Hildebrandt.¹⁸

The couple’s eldest daughter, Shari Franke, has said publicly that she reported the abuse to authorities multiple times before her mother’s arrest and that no action was taken.¹⁹ In October 2024 she testified before a Utah Senate committee, arguing there is “no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger.”²⁰ On January 7, 2025, she published a bestselling memoir, The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, which described Hildebrandt as “our family’s very own cult leader.”²¹

The case also drove new legislation. On March 25, 2025, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed HB 0322 into law. Online creators earning more than $150,000 annually from content featuring children must set aside 15 percent of those earnings in a trust fund accessible to the children at age 18, and children are given a legal pathway to remove media they are featured in from the internet. Both Kevin and Shari Franke testified in support of the bill, with Kevin telling lawmakers that “vlogging my family… was wrong.”²²

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Washington County Attorney’s Office. Utah vs. Franke Hildebrandt
2
Biography.com. Ruby Franke Story and Conviction
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BBC News. Ruby Franke YouTube Child Abuse Case
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KUTV. 8 Passengers Ruby Franke Removed From YouTube
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NBC News. Jodi Hildebrandt Ruby Franke ConneXions Therapy Former Clients Share
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CBS News. Ruby Franke Jodi Hildebrandt Sentenced Child Abuse
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ABC News. YouTube Vlogger Ruby Franke Sentenced in Child Abuse Case
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Global News. Ruby Franke Journal Child Abuse
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TIME. Ruby Franke Child Abuse Footage Evidence
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Fox 13 Now. Evidence Released Shows Severity of Abuse in Franke and Hildebrandt Case
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CNN. Blogger Ruby Franke Sentenced Four Consecutive Prison Terms
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NBC News. Jodi Hildebrandt Pleads Guilty to 4 Counts Child Abuse
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CBS Austin. Franke Hildebrandt Initial Pardons Parole Hearings Scheduled for 2026
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ABC4. Ruby Franke Jodi Hildebrandt Parole Hearing Scheduled for 2026
15
Utah Division of Professional Licensing. Disciplinary Action, Case No. DOPE 2024-96
16
KUTV. Jodi Hildebrandt’s Attorneys Make Attempt to Reduce Her Time in Prison
17
People. Ruby Kevin Franke Finalize Divorce
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Biography.com. Ruby Franke Kids and Husband Now
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People. Why Shari Franke Is Speaking Out Against Family Vlogging
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ABC News. Ruby Franke’s Daughter Speaks to Lawmakers on Family Vlogging Dangers
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BYU Universe. BYU Student Shari Franke Releases Bestselling Memoir
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CBS News. Utah Children Influencer Protections Ruby Franke Child Abuse