Sicko YouTube mama faces 60 years in prison
Ruby Franke, the YouTube influencer and mother of six whose parenting practices got her charged with child abuse, was sentenced Tuesday to four consecutive terms of one to 15 years by a Utah district court.
Her business partner, mental health counselor Jodi Hildebrandt, was sentenced to the same amount, also to be served consecutively. The terms could total 60 years.
Both had been held without bail since their arrest last summer on six counts each of child abuse. In December they each pleaded guilty to four of those counts, with two dropped as part of their plea deals.
Before Franke’s 12-year-old son escaped Hildebrandt’s home through a window and asked a neighbor to call police on Aug. 30, Franke was a popular YouTube vlogger who doled out parenting advice to 2.3 million followers on her channel, “8 Passengers.” She also gave seminars at ConneXions Classroom, the mental health counseling company owned by Hildebrandt. The two launched another YouTube channel and published content on a shared Instagram account, “Moms of Truth.”
When authorities found Franke’s son, he was malnourished, emaciated, bound in duct tape and covered in wounds. He told police Hildebrandt had dressed those wounds with cayenne pepper and honey. A girl was found at the home, equally malnourished and mistreated. In all, four minor children were taken into child protective services.
Upon pleading guilty, Franke admitted she had kicked the boy while wearing boots, held his head under water and closed off his mouth and nose with her hands. She also said she forced him to labor for hours in the heat of summer without enough food or water. He suffered dehydration and sunburns that blistered. Franke and Hildebrandt told him it was all being done in the name of love, and that he and his sister were evil and were being punished in order to repent.
The youngest daughter was 9 when Hildebrandt forced her to leap into cactus numerous times and run barefoot along dirt roads to the point of blistering her feet, the mental health counselor admitted in her own guilty plea.
The kids’ environment amounted to a “concentration camp-like setting,” state prosecuting attorney Eric Clarke said.
Franke tearfully apologized to her kids during sentencing Tuesday after expressing gratitude to the “angels” — police officers, doctors and social workers — who had saved her children from her bad mothering.
“I’ll never stop crying for hurting your tender souls,” Franke said in addressing her children, who did not attend the sentencing hearing. “My willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly. I took from you all that was soft and safe and good.”