What Did Ruby Franke Do? Abuse, Sentence, and Utah Law Changes

Ruby Franke, the former YouTube personality behind the family channel “8 Passengers,” severely abused two of her six children over roughly a year inside the Utah home of her business partner, therapist Jodi Hildebrandt. The two women starved, beat, bound, and psychologically tortured a 12-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, believing the children were possessed by demons and that the cruelty would purify them. The abuse ended on August 30, 2023, when the boy escaped through a window and asked a neighbor for help. Franke pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse in December 2023 and was sentenced in February 2024 to four consecutive prison terms totaling up to 30 years.¹

Who Ruby Franke Was Before the Arrest

Franke and her then-husband Kevin launched “8 Passengers” in 2015, documenting the daily life of their family of eight. The channel grew to more than two million subscribers on content about homeschooling, routines, and discipline.²

Public concern about her parenting began years before any criminal charge. In one video, Franke said she had refused to bring lunch to her six-year-old daughter after the child forgot it, hoping no one would feed the girl so she would “learn.” In another, she threatened her sons with losing dinner for play-fighting. A 2020 video revealed that her then-15-year-old son had been sleeping on a beanbag chair for seven months after being banned from his bedroom over a prank.³⁴ Viewers filed petitions and called child protective services. No intervention followed. Franke stopped posting to the channel in 2022, and YouTube terminated her remaining channels in September 2023 after her arrest.²

Her eldest daughter, Shari Franke, later reported calling Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services twice before the 2023 arrest: once after Ruby left younger children home alone for five days, and once after a neighbor reported the children had been pulled from school. Neither call led to intervention.⁵

What Ruby Franke Did to Her Children

Prosecutors described a sustained regime of physical and psychological abuse directed at Franke’s two youngest children, identified in court records by their initials. In Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah, the children were regularly denied food, water, and beds. They were forced to carry loaded boxes up and down stairs, perform manual labor outdoors in extreme summer heat without shoes, stand on a cement patio for hours or days at a time, and hold wall sits until they physically collapsed.⁶ They were beaten.

After the 12-year-old boy tried to escape in July 2023, he was bound with ropes and handcuffs. Hildebrandt’s plea agreement showed she had coerced the 9-year-old daughter to jump into a cactus multiple times and had treated the boy’s open wounds with a mixture of honey and cayenne pepper rather than seek medical care.¹⁷ The children were hidden during home visits, forbidden to speak with anyone outside the house, and denied “virtually all forms of entertainment.” Prosecutors said the emotional abuse was so pervasive that both children came to believe they deserved what was being done to them.⁶

Franke’s own journal, released after her sentencing, documented her shaving her daughter’s head, forcing her son to sleep outside, and submerging his head underwater while plugging his nose.⁸ The daughter, denied food for three days, reportedly told someone, “My mom starves me, calls it fasting.”⁹

Why She Did It

Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke called the case one driven by “religious extremism.” Franke and Hildebrandt believed the children were possessed and that the abuse was necessary to make them “properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies.”¹⁰

Franke’s 60-page handwritten journal, covering roughly late June through late August 2023, laid out that worldview. She wrote that her son was “in and out of possession” and that his behavior was “Satanic chaos.” She labeled one day “Big day for evil.” Explaining why she withheld food, she wrote, “I will not feed a demon.” She dismissed her daughter’s pleas during outdoor labor in desert heat as a “manipulative ploy.”⁹¹¹

The religious framing came largely through Jodi Hildebrandt, a licensed Utah mental health counselor who ran a coaching program called ConneXions Classroom. The Franke family first met her around 2019 through their shared membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when Ruby and Kevin sought her out as a therapist for one of their children.¹²¹³¹⁴

At Hildebrandt’s urging, Ruby asked Kevin for a separation in 2022. He moved out and lost contact with his wife and children. Later that year, Ruby and the four youngest Franke children relocated roughly 300 miles south to Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins. The abuse escalated there.¹³

How It Was Discovered

The case broke on the morning of August 30, 2023, when Franke’s 12-year-old son climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt’s house and walked about a block to a neighbor. He rang the doorbell at 10:46 a.m. and asked, “If you could take me to the nearest police station.”¹⁵ The boy was emaciated. He had duct tape on his wrists and ankles and open wounds on his body. The neighbor’s wife gave him a banana and water while they called 911. Investigators later determined he had been conditioned to believe he was possessed and had to turn himself in to police to be absolved.⁷

When officers reached Hildebrandt’s home, they entered without a warrant under exigent circumstances after the boy told them his younger sister was still inside. They found the 9-year-old girl sitting cross-legged in an empty closet. She was initially unresponsive, and officers spent about four hours coaxing her out, eventually offering her pizza.⁷¹⁶ A search of the home turned up handcuffs, ropes, and Franke’s journal. Both women were arrested at the scene.

The Charges and Sentence

Franke and Hildebrandt were each initially charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse, a second-degree felony carrying one to 15 years per count.¹ On December 18, 2023, Franke pleaded guilty to four counts under a plea agreement that dismissed the remaining two in exchange for her testimony against Hildebrandt.¹⁷ Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to four counts nine days later.⁶

On February 20, 2024, Judge John J. Walton of Utah’s Fifth Judicial District Court sentenced both women to four consecutive terms of one to 15 years in prison. Utah law caps consecutive sentences at 30 years, so that is the maximum either can serve. The actual length will be determined by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.¹⁸⁶

Where Ruby Franke Is Now

Franke is incarcerated at the Utah State Correctional Facility in the women’s general population unit. She has no listed disciplinary actions and is reportedly taking college courses. Hildebrandt is housed in the same unit but kept separate from her.¹⁹

Both women are scheduled for their first parole hearing in December 2026. The Board of Pardons and Parole has ordered each to complete cognitive behavioral therapy and a comprehensive mental health evaluation before that hearing. After it, the board will decide within weeks whether to set a parole date, schedule a later hearing, or require them to serve the full 30 years. If Franke serves the maximum, her release date would be August 30, 2053.²⁰¹⁹

Four of the six Franke children were placed in child protective services after Ruby’s arrest. Kevin Franke, who was not charged and whose attorneys said he had separated from Ruby more than a year before the arrest and had no knowledge of the abuse, later regained custody of the four youngest. Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke said in March 2024 that the two youngest children were “interacting, happy and healthy” and “light-years better” than during the abuse.²¹

How the Case Changed Utah Law

The case produced two significant Utah laws. Shari Franke, who was 22 when her memoir The House of My Mother was published in 2025, testified before a Utah Senate committee in October 2024 against family vlogging, telling lawmakers that “family vlogging ruined my innocence long before Ruby committed a crime.”²² Her testimony contributed to the passage of Utah’s HB 322 in March 2025, which requires parents to compensate children who appear in at least 30 percent of monetized content and gives those children the right to request deletion of content once they turn 18.²³

In spring 2025, the Utah legislature also passed SB 24, the “Child Abuse and Torture Amendments,” which created a new criminal offense for child torture, defined as causing serious injury “in an exceptionally cruel or exceptionally depraved manner.” The law classifies child torture as a violent felony, adds it to the state’s sex and child abuse offender registry, and requires mandatory imprisonment on conviction.²⁴ The law does not change Franke’s existing conviction, but prosecutors said it signals to the parole board how such crimes should be treated going forward.¹⁹

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CBS News. Ruby Franke Jodi Hildebrandt Sentenced
2
Biography.com. Ruby Franke Story and Conviction
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BBC News. Ruby Franke Child Abuse Case
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NPR. Ruby Franke Utah YouTube Child Abuse
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Today. Shari Franke Book About Mom Ruby Franke
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Washington County Attorney’s Office. Utah vs. Franke/Hildebrandt Case Page
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ABC News. Momfluencer Ruby Franke Jodi Hildebrandt Child Abuse
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Time. Ruby Franke Child Abuse Footage Evidence
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People. Ruby Franke Diary Details Child Abuse Rooted in Religious Extremism
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Axios. Ruby Franke Jodi Hildebrandt Religious Extremism
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CNN. Ruby Franke Child Abuse Police Video
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People. Did Jodi Hildebrandt and Ruby Franke Have a Relationship
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Yahoo News. Ruby Franke Jodi Hildebrandt Timeline
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NBC News. Kevin Franke Claims About Jodi Hildebrandt
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People. Ruby Franke Video of Son Asking Neighbor for Help
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KUTV. Body Cam Shows Franke and Hildebrandt Led Away in Handcuffs
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CNN. Ruby Franke YouTube Mom Guilty Plea
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NBC News. Ruby Franke Sentenced in Child Abuse Case
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Biography.com. Ruby Franke Now
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ABC4 News. Ruby Franke Jodi Hildebrandt Parole Hearing Scheduled for 2026
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Biography.com. Ruby Franke Kids and Husband Now
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ABC News. Ruby Franke’s Daughter Speaks to Lawmakers About Family Vlogging Dangers
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KSL NewsRadio. Utah Protecting Child Influencers
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Utah Legislature. SB 0024 – Child Abuse and Torture Amendments