What did Ruby Franke do to her children? Concerning footage of detailed abuse surfaces 

A disturbing footage of Utah mom YouTuber Ruby Franke’s 12-year-old son asking a neighbor for help was released on Friday, March 22. The Washington County Attorney’s Office released body camera video, crime scene photos and interrogation tapes a month after Ruby was sentenced.

In the latest video, a bruised and malnourished boy was seen walking up to a neighbor’s door and politely asking them if they could take him to a police station nearby.

After finding the emaciated boy, the neighbor Danny Clarkson asked him to have a seat while his wife Debi fetched the 12-year-old some water. Their conversation was recorded on the Ring camera outside the couple's door.

Soon after, police arrived at Jodi Hildebrandt, Ruby’s business partner house in Ivins. Both women were arrested on aggravated child abuse charges in August last year. In February, they pleaded guilty to the charges and were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.

The women were accused of keeping Ruby Franke’s two youngest children in home confinement. The siblings were subjected to manual labor and fasting that lasted for days.

Investigations concluded religious extremism to be the driving force behind the women’s actions, leaving the Mormon community shocked.

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Ruby Franke refuses to "feed a demon" in newly surfaced court documents

In the footage where Ruby Franke’s son was seen shoeless, wearing torn socks while plastic wraps and duct tape wrapped around his bruised ankle. When his neighbor, the Clarksons, asked him about the lacerations on his body, the 12-year-old said:

“I got these wounds because of me.”

After the worried couple contacted 911, the boy informed first responders of his young sister, who was still in Jodi Hildebrandt’s house, from where he escaped.

On arriving at Jodi’s house, police found the 9-year-old girl with a buzzcut, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside a dark bathroom closet. The officer carefully approached her:

“I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

He pointed to his badge and said:

“See this right here? It’s a badge. It tells me that I don’t hurt people. I’m just here to make sure you’re OK.”

Another officer brought a small pizza and a drink for the girl, still sitting inside the closet. Two female medics tried to talk to her as she was hesitant to touch the food and eat from it. They tried to coax her out of the place and told her:

“We helped your brother, and we got him some help too. That’s what we want to do for you. We want to get you some help too. We are safe. We will not hurt you, and we won’t do anything to hurt you.”

She voluntarily walked out of the closet and the room about four hours after the police found her.

Inside Jodi Hildebrandt’s home, police found what they described as a “panic room” behind a locked vault door from Liberty Safe — a small room in the basement.

Inside the room, there was a Murphy bed, an empty fridge, a sink and a toilet. Police also found handcuffs and ropes in a drawer.

Ruby Franke’s son later told investigators that Jodi used to bind his arms with rope and hang weights on his feet on the ground.

As per reports, a mixture of honey and cayenne pepper was used by the 54-year-old to dress his wounds. The boy said Ruby and Jodi told him that whatever they were doing to him was out of love.

The mom YouTuber's handwritten journal entries were also released on Friday, where she claimed the devil possessed her son. She forced the young siblings to work in the summer for hours and isolated them from the outside world. The children were often made to sleep on hard concrete floors and were sometimes locked in the “panic room” in the basement.

In a journal entry made in July 2023, Ruby Franke described holding her son’s head under the water while suffocating his nose and mouth with her hands. She titled the entry “Big day for evil”.

Ruby Franke told her son the devil would try to lie to the boy by telling him his mother was hurting him, but it was an act of love where she was trying to save him. She justified staving her son in her journal, writing:

“I will not feed a demon.”

Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke compared the living conditions of the siblings to that of a concentration camp. He said:

“The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies.”

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Ruby Franke and her husband Kevin created the YouTube channel “8 Passengers” in 2015 and gained a large following, especially from people in the Mormon community.

They documented their life with their six children living in Springville. However, viewers soon started noticing the disturbing ways in which the parents, mostly Ruby, often approached the kids and tried to “teach them a lesson”.

Ruby Franke teamed up with Jodi Hildebrandt to launch their counseling brand ConneXions Classroom, where they discussed parenting methods and held seminars. They later launched their Instagram page "Moms of Truth" where they posted similar content.