US parenting guru admits to torturing her children
Youtube ‘Mumfluencer’ breaks down in court as she and business partner are jailed for 60 years
A “MUMFLUENCER” who posted parenting videos on Youtube has been sentenced to up to 60 years in prison after admitting abusing and starving two of her children.
Ruby Franke, 42, and Jodi Hildebrandt, 54, her former business partner, were yesterday handed four consecutive sentences of up to 15 years in prison.
The pair admitted inflicting or allowing another adult to injure Franke’s children between May and August 2023.
Franke broke down in tears before sentencing, telling the Utah court: “My charges are just. I … believed dark was light and right was wrong.”
As if addressing her children, she added: “I would do anything in this world for you. I took from you all that was soft, and safe, and good.”
Franke said she 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.”
“I take full accountability for my choices, and it is my preference that I serve a prison sentence.”
The duo were arrested on Aug 30 last year after Franke’s 12-year-old son climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt’s house and told a neighbour he had been abused.
He begged for food and water and later told police that his mother would bind him with ropes and when the restraints cut him the wounds would be treated with cayenne pepper by Hildebrandt. Her 10-year-old daughter was also found at the home and both children were taken to hospital.
Eventually, Franke’s four youngest children were taken into care. The “mumfluencer” rose to internet fame with her Youtube channel “8 Passengers” which documented the lives of her husband and six children in Utah.
Franke, who racked up more than 2.5million followers, later admitted to torturing her children and forcing them to do hard physical labour.
Her son was made to work barefoot outside in the summer heat for several days resulting in “repeated and serious sunburns with blistered and sloughing skins”, ABC News reported.
He was denied adequate nourishment for several days and punished when he “secretly consumed water”.
His hands and feet were “regularly bound” with duct tape after he attempted to run away, resulting in injuries to his wrists and ankles.
Between 2015 and 2020, the Franke family was criticised online for her parenting techniques.
In one video, she spoke of refusing to take lunch to one of her children who left it at home and threatening to cut the head off a young girl’s stuffed toy to punish her for destroying things in the house.
Lawyers for Kevin Franke, her estranged husband, described the abuse as “horrific and inhumane, both physically and psychologically”.
Hildebrandt said yesterday: “I sincerely love these children. I desire for them to heal emotionally. One of the reasons I did not go to trial is I did not want them to emotionally relive experiences which would have been detrimental to them.”
Franke also punished one of her sons by banning him from his bedroom and forcing him to sleep on a bean bag in the living room for months.
The two women initially pleaded not guilty to six counts of felony child abuse – but both later admitted four counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse.