All the Disturbing Takeaways From Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke
Hulu’s docuseries dives into how the seemingly perfect family devolved into a home of chaos and abuse.
admin
When Ruby Franke’s 12-year-old son managed to escape from counselor Jodi Hildebrandt’s Utah house in August 2023 by crawling out a window and ringing a neighbor’s doorbell, the wounds on his hands and feet were covered with bloody duct tape. He asked his neighbors to take him to the police so he could tell the true story of what had been happening in the Franke home. The discovery of the abuse shocked the internet — at the time, his mother had amassed almost 2.5 million followers on her YouTube channel, 8 Passengers, which was dedicated to her life as a Mormon mommy blogger raising six kids in Springville, Utah’s “Happy Valley.”
While Franke portrayed herself as a near-perfect mother and caregiver in her many videos, the reality shown in Hulu’s three-part documentary Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which was made from more than 1,000 hours of unseen footage, shows she was anything but. Franke is seen bullying her children, demanding they appear happy for the cameras, and threatening them with severe repercussions if they do not comply.
Police examined her son and determined he was severely malnourished with bones sticking out and bruises and lacerations on his body from being tied up. When police raided the home, they found his malnourished 10-year-old sister hiding in a closet, her head shaved. Ruby and Hildebrandt, her counselor–spiritual-relationship coach, were arrested and charged with six counts of felony child abuse. They later pleaded guilty to four of those counts and are currently in prison serving a maximum of 30 years. Three months after Ruby’s arrest, her husband, Kevin, filed for divorce; she had prohibited him from having any contact with the family after she kicked him out a year earlier. Hulu’s docuseries dives into how the seemingly perfect family devolved into a home of chaos and abuse.
Ruby became obsessed with the attention when her YouTube channel, 8 Passengers, grew in popularity.
In July 2015, the Frankes had their first viral video, “baby crawls out of the crib” (which no longer appears to be online), and Kevin said they were elated when the first paycheck for $85 arrived. From that moment, he and Ruby were addicted. Kevin said the paychecks quickly grew to $2,000, then $8,000, and later $20,000 a month. At their peak, the family earned $100,000 a month.
Ruby became incensed when her children refused to film.
When her eldest son, Chad, now 20, became a fan favorite, Ruby would lash out at him if he didn’t act enthusiastic or interact with the cameras. One of his punishments was losing his bedroom and being forced to sleep on a bean bag for seven months. He also said he was spanked and whipped with a belt by his mother.
“There were times that she blew up off-camera,” Chad said. “She would spank, whip, take the belt out and whip my butt, pull down my pants, whip me.”
“He got beat really bad one time, and I helped him clean blood off the walls,” said Chad’s sister Shari, now 21, the oldest of the six Franke children. “Looking back, I don’t think she was a good person.”
Shari also shared that the house had to be kept immaculate at all times for filming and that even the lightbulbs were changed to a glaring bright white so their home felt more like a set. All the children were shown in videos scrubbing the house. “Our entire schedule revolved around YouTube,” Shari said.
Ruby turned to religion when the family got “canceled” online.
After the video posted of Chad talking about being made to sleep in the basement on a bean bag for seven months, the public turned on the Frankes, and the family started to lose brand deals and followers. Chad said they were effectively canceled, but Ruby refused to make an apology video. Instead, she discovered Hildebrandt’s counseling sessions and became hooked.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, followed by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Utah, Hildebrandt convinced the Frankes the world was going to end and they should start stockpiling supplies. Kevin said they believed her.
“Everyone is going to burn, but we felt like we were on the right side of it,” he said.
Jodi Hildebrandt convinced Ruby and Kevin that Satan was out to get her.
Hildebrandt told the Franke family she was being haunted by “hooded shadow figures” that surrounded her bed at night. Ruby and Kevin believed Hildebrandt was “called by God” and they needed to protect her, so they moved her into their house, kicking their daughter Shari out of her room.
“I thought it was weird that a therapist would move in with her patients,” Shari said of being asked to give up the room.
Kevin said after Hildebrandt moved in she would go into possession-like trances and speak in other voices. He thought they could help her “cast the evil spirits out.” He said he would say the name of Jesus Christ and Hildebrandt would “hiss and wail.”
Ruby’s oldest child, Shari, believes Ruby and Jodi were lovers.
Ruby began to check on Hildebrandt at night, then one day told Kevin she had decided to just stay with Hildebrandt in her room. Shari said she came back from college and went into her old room and found massage oil and melted candles. When asked if she thought the women were lovers, Shari said, “I do think that they were.”
Kevin said Ruby’s relationship with Hildebrandt felt as if it were “much more than a friendship … It was uncomfortably intimate.” Kevin added that he felt Hildebrandt turned on him at this point and that Ruby eventually banished him from the house with the then-17-year-old Chad.
“I think she wanted Ruby to herself, but to do that, she needed me out of the picture,” Kevin said.
Ruby thought her young children were possessed by “demons” and “devils.”
Around this time, Ruby changed the name of her channel to Moms of Truth With Jodi & Ruby and began to preach about a child being a “walking zombie.” The abuse endured: Jodi’s son told police he was forced to stand in the sun all day while tied down by weights; at other times, he would have to jump on a trampoline all day or be told to run for hours in the hot desert.
After Ruby’s arrest, police found a blue folder in her bedroom that documented in detail the intentionally painful punishments she meted out to her son in her efforts to free him from “demons.”
Shari made desperate pleas for officials to intervene.
Ten months before Ruby’s and Hildebrandt’s arrests, Shari became nervous about her four younger siblings and made a 911 call to the Springville police station. She told police the neighbors had informed her that the other kids were being left home alone for days.
A group of concerned neighbors met with the police outside the Franke house. Police told neighbors that they needed a warrant before going inside but that the judge would not sign off on it. Shari said a caseworker told her there was nothing they could do.
Handcuffs, rope, bloody gauze, and a mixture of cayenne pepper and honey were found in a locked safe.
When the house was raided, Hildebrandt told police she didn’t know the code to open the door of the basement room. Once officials were able to access it, they found an assortment of items that appeared to be used to punish the children, including bloody medical gauze, a paste made of cayenne pepper and honey that was put on the children’s wounds, and duct tape.
Kevin said he still loves Ruby.
Kevin said he feels angry and guilty about leaving his younger children in Ruby and Hildebrandt’s care, explaining that he was their “last line of defense.” Despite saying he felt he had been brainwashed by the two women, Kevin said he still loves and misses Ruby.
“I’ve always loved her,” he said. “The actions that she did are atrocious, but I still feel a longing. I miss her. All of the delivery rooms, all of the moments holding our children. It is easy for the world to hate that woman, and so many people want me to join in the chorus, and I cannot turn off all of those other memories.”
Chad said he doesn’t think his mother should be released from prison until all his siblings reach the age of 18. Shari, who now advocates for more restrictions on family vlogging, said she will “never talk” to her mother again.
Related
