The “power” and “public image” of disgraced Utah parenting blogger and mom of six Ruby Franke, who is facing up to 30 years in prison for child abuse, allowed her crimes against her children to go “unchecked,” according to a criminal defense attorney.
Franke, 43, and Jodi Hildebrandt, a 55-year-old mother of two, ran a joint parenting and lifestyle YouTube channel called ConneXions Classrooms before they were arrested and pleaded guilty to four of six counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse in a St. George courtroom in December 2023.
“Cases of child abuse are unfortunately familiar, but this one stands out for how power, public image and systemic failures allowed it to go on unchecked,” Jamie E. Wright, a Los Angeles millennial trial attorney and founder/CEO of the Wright Law Firm, told Fox News Digital. “Over the years, Franke built up an online persona as the perfect mom, giving parenting advice to millions. But behind the carefully constructed smiles was a darker truth — a world of starvation, isolation and brutal punishment.”
Wright added that the Franke/Hildebrandt case is “a sobering reminder that social media can mask dysfunction with a gleaming facade.”
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Prior to meeting Hildebrandt, Franke ran a successful parenting video blog, or vlog, on YouTube called 8Passengers, representing herself, her husband and their six children. The vlog was a success, with more than 2 million followers, generating the majority of her family’s income for years.
But the 8Passengers empire came crumbling down once users started to notice Franke’s unusual behavior and punishments for her children. The story of Franke’s downfall is captured in a new Hulu documentary called “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.”
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“I want our channel to be a ray of sunshine in a world where people just criticize each other and make each other feel bad,” Franke said in one early video shown in the documentary. “We’re here to show that happy families are reality.”
But other clips shown in the series are not the happy, edited versions Franke posted to social media. They show another side of the mommy blogger — one that had a short temper when her children or husband did things she didn’t like.
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In one clip, Franke ordered her eldest son, Chad Franke, to “fake being happy.”
“All of a sudden, it wasn’t enough to just interact with her,” Franke’s husband, Kevin Franke, said in the documentary.
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“I had to interact with the camera … and she would pull it out and say, ‘Kevin, this camera is millions of people watching us.’”
Brannon Patrick, a clinical therapist who briefly worked under Hildebrandt and who is featured in the documentary series, said it was “fascinating” to watch Franke go from “happy” to “upset and angry” in the unedited videos.
“The reality is, everybody has issues and everybody has struggles, and nobody is perfect, and nobody can be perfect. And so on one hand, we’re presenting this ideal thing. On the other hand, the reality is something completely different,” Patrick said.
“Immediately when it all blew up, it was crazy. All these anti-Mormon podcasters … were just going off about it and how the church was complicit in it and just the church’s teachings about sexuality and those types of things … really became front and center,” he explained. “And this triggered those talks … about perfectionism and being fake — acting like you’re one way in front of people but when the doors are closed, it’s actually quite the opposite.”
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Chad started to see a change in his mother once large checks started rolling in from her constant content creation. His mother had a shorter circuit and would lash out when her children were not behaving the way she wanted them to behave or responding how she wanted them to respond — particularly while she was recording and trying to portray a certain perfect image of her family.
The popularity of 8Passengers began to dwindle after Chad admitted nonchalantly in one of the videos she posted to her account that he had been sleeping on a beanbag for seven months as punishment for his behavior, and Franke’s followers lashed out. Hildebrandt entered Franke’s life after 8Passengers fell apart, and the two pals decided to create ConneXions Classrooms.
“I think we have a culture of perfectionism and shame in many ways, and … [the Franke case] just illustrated it.”
“Jodi just threw fuel on the fire and the fire that was already burning and took it to the extremes,” Patrick said.
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ConneXions Classrooms sold counseling sessions, packages and retreats ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
In one ConneXions Classroom episode, Franke told her viewers, “If your child comes to you on fire, you don’t pat them on the head and say, ‘It’s OK, I’ll help you.’ No, you beat them, and you kick them, and you hit them with a rod. You cannot put welts on your child’s legs and then lovingly apply gauze and expect healing.”
Patrick said he would diagnose Hildebrandt with clinical narcissism.
“She was really lonely.”
“I don’t use that word lightly because I know it’s thrown around way too much,” he said. “But she was a narcissist. … She was charming enough to draw people in, but she still, to me, felt very disconnected as a human being. She was very convincing in her speech, but she was disconnected. Her family life wasn’t good. She didn’t have any really close friends.”
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In 2023, Utah authorities arrested the two pals and business partners for abusing Franke’s two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy. Some of the abuse occurred in Hildebrandt’s home.
The allegations against Franke and Hildebrandt only came to light after Franke’s son fled Hildebrandt’s Ivins home and ran to a neighbor, who called 911 after seeing the malnourished boy with duct tape on his wrists and ankles.
“Social media helped Ruby Franke build a brand around extreme parenting, which likely made it harder for people to see the red flags,” trauma therapist Malka Shaw, founder of Kesher Shalom Projects, told Fox News Digital. “When someone presents as the authority on family values, there’s often a reluctance to question them—even when the content itself is unsettling.”
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Wright noted that when “a family’s life becomes abrand, perception triumphs over wellness.”
“And thus secrecy thrives, and controltightens,” she said. “Ruby’s oldest daughter, Shari, has since spoken out about the damage that was done, joining a growing chorus of former child influencers and reality stars who have recently discussed the dangers of living their lives without protections in the public eye.”
Shari explained in the documentary how her mother’s company, 8Passengers LLC, listed Franke’s six children as “employees.”
“When children are treated as commodities, they are vulnerable in every way, shape and form — whether living in a suburban home or in Hollywood.”
Wright said the “most haunting question of all” in the Franke-Hildebrandt case is why the abuse was not “halted sooner.” Shari Franke has also talked about how she tried for years to get the Department of Family and Child Services to take action against her mother in her memoir.
“Child protectionagencies are often under-resourced, hesitant to intervene in cases where the accused is a respected member of the community. A good image can be carefully curated, and a cover for an abuser for years,” Wright explained.
She added that for many Utah locals, the case was a “betrayal.”
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“Franke wasn’t just another influencer; she was a sort of moral authority,” Wright said. “Her fall has sparked a conversation about how child welfare regulations should apply to content creators, and what ethical obligations content creators have to the subjects of their work. How do we protect children in digital media How do we ensure that they’re protected and that their rights and privacy are protected?”
Franke and Hildebrandt were both sentenced to serve four consecutive terms between a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison.
Ruby Franke spoke publicly for the first time at her sentencing hearing last year.
“For the past four years, I’ve chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion,” a teary Franke said in a statement at the time. “My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone who challenged me. I was led to believe 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, children who need abuse.”
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She continued: “To my babies, my six little chicks, you are part of me,” she continued. “I was the momma duck who was consistently waddling you to safety. … In the past four years, I was consistently leading you to danger.”
The case has prompted discussions about how parenting and lifestyle blogs often present only a sliver of a person’s or family’s reality, as well as children’s rights to their own privacy if their parent is a social media star.
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