Ruby Franke, the mother of six behind the family YouTube channel “8 Passengers,” has been charged with six counts of felony child abuse by the Washington County Attorney in Utah, a spokesperson for the attorney’s office confirmed to NBC News on Tuesday.
Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested last week after law enforcement found Franke’s 12-year-old son emaciated and with open wounds and duct tape on his wrists and ankles. The boy had climbed out of a window of Hildebrandt’s home and ran to a neighbor house for help, according to a probable cause affidavit acquired by NBC News.
Franke’s 10-year-old daughter was found at Hildebrandt’s home in a similar malnourished condition, according to the affidavit. Officials said the condition of the children was so severe that they were transported to a local area hospital. Franke’s other four children were taken into the care of Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services.
Hildebrandt was also charged with six counts of felony child abuse. Each count carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $10,000, the county attorney told NBC News in an emailed statement.
Monstrous woman, and sadly she infected many dumb mothers with her bullshit.
What’s even crazier, from some of what I have seen online, she was/is Mormon and many/good portion of her viewers seem to be too… they all claim this lifestyle as normal and it is quite frankly scary and jarring to see some of the comments saying she was just a ‘strict parent’.
Just reading about some of her, “parenting advice” it was obvious that she was a terrible person. And to think some people actually listened to her
Do you have an example? I dont really want to go rooting around in that rabbit hole trying to find out.
Withholding meals as punishment was one example I saw in a different article.
In comparison, the Geneva Convention literally forbids doing this to enemy POWs.
Ahhh child abuse. What a great parenting technique.
Missing one lunch is hardly abuse. I forgot to grab my lunch on many occasions when I was a kid and nobody even called my parents about it. I was fine.
That doesn’t make her not a bad parent for all the other shit she did but if it was just this one thing it wouldn’t be that bad.
There are some things that should never be used in punishment. Food, safety/security, water, sleep, education, housing, and love. She broke several of those rules when she refused to bring her kid lunch.
Child protection caseworker and previous child of abuse here: this is absolutely correct. Punishment should NEVER involve removal of a basic necessity. It should always amount to removal of a want, not a need. Taking away dessert, access to video games etc. are the only acceptable forms of punishment. This follows research that shows that taking a child’s basic necessities from them doesn’t improve behaviour, it merely adapts their attachment style to dysfunctional.
Wanted to add, most elementary schools have a policy that requires students to eat lunch. Kids don’t learn on am empty stomach.
Forgetting it accidentally or not having any food does not make you a bad person. Purposely withholding food from someone in your care without the means to get their own certainly is abusive.
I agree, she shouldn’t have her kids taken away for making them skip one meal. It’s bad, but not horrific Tied up and injured on the other hand…
Were you six years old?
Roughly, and my parents worked an hour away from the school too so it’s not like they could have brought me a lunch in time anyway if they’d been notified.
Not defending her other actions, but the case I heard on NPR this morning they are using against her, was her daughter was assigned to make her own lunch to take to school. She didn’t do it and then had the school call this woman to bring her lunch. Mom said the natural consequence of failing to make your lunch and bring it was to not have lunch. On this ONE incident, the mom is right. We have to teach our children there are natural consequences for bad decisions.
But it sounds like this one incident is the least of her charges.
If your 6 year old goes to school without lunch that’s on you, not her. It might be appropriate for a 12/13 year old to be responsible for their own school lunches, but no way in hell is a first grader mature enough.
IMO it’s good and fine for a 5+ year old to make their own lunch, but at that age it’s absolutely important and necessary for parents to double check that it’s fine and they’ve got it with them.
Yeah, the punishment for forgetting to make your lunch at 5 should be mom or dad makes you something boring and bland instead, not they let you starve for a day.
I don’t even think there should be a punishment. Children aren’t tiny adults with the same kinds of obligations we have. If they don’t make their lunch their parents should make them a nice lunch, it should just be part of the kids routine of learning life skills to make lunch.
I think you misheard. This NPR article https://www.npr.org/2023/09/01/1197289217/ruby-franke-utah-youtube-child-abuse from 5 days ago mentions that as part of the controversy over her, but doesn’t mention it in connection with the charges. There’s another short one from 2 hours ago that doesn’t bring up the lunches at all.
She threw their homework and other things in the trash. Said they had until the end of the day to pay cash or do chores to get it back so they could learn the real value of their things.
She took her son’s bed away for seven months, apparently because he played a prank on his brother.
Oh, and the kids had to make their own school lunch in the morning. The school calls one day because her 6 year old daughter didn’t have any food. She let the girl go hungry. Quote:
My hope is that she’ll be hungry and come home and go, ‘oh man, that was really painful, being hungry all day. I will make sure to always have lunch with me.
Having grown up poor, nothing pains me more than the idea of a kid, especially my kid being hungry or cold. This woman is a monster.
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She sounds like she has “I don’t really gie a fuck about my kids and don’t actually want them” disease.
The only cure for which is an ass whipping. Well, she’s getting jail time where that sort of thing is par for the course, so there’s that.
one time as punishment she cancelled christmas for the younger 2… the older 2 got presents like usual. another time she didn’t allow her oldest son to sleep in his room for 6 months oh and he slept on a bean bag during those months… when he did have a room he wasn’t allowed to have a door. if you want to see examples check out mormon stories podcast. they go into detail.
There are a bunch on this tiktok page: https://www.tiktok.com/@got2bviral/video/7273876424195312938
That probably means they’re also terrible.
This is very common homeschooling education.
Homeschooling doesn’t automatically mean child abuse. I was homeschooled and knew a lot of homeschooled kids, and none of us were ever abused.
A child abuser will abuse children and good people don’t. It’s as simple as that.
Not every homeschooled child is abused, but when I worked for CPS, a HELL of a lot of abusive families used it as a means to keep their kids away from those pesky mandatory reporters.
That’s fair. I definitely think it needs better oversight, if it’s to exist at all.
Absolutely, not only for child welfare, but for basic education standards. I’ve seen homeschool be everything from structured classes for 8 hours, to sit here and read the Bible for 8 hours.
none of us were ever abused.
That you know about. You can’t speak for what other kids in other families might have been going through.
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For sure, socialization is super important, and you need to be very intentional about it with homeschooling. Personally, I grew up with both a very tight-knit group of friends from other homeschooling families (and actually a few that weren’t homeschooled). I also went to what’s called a “co-op” for a time, which is basically like a school run by a bunch of parents that take turns teaching classes and such. I also did attend a normal school until I was 9, which I’m sure affected my early development of social skills. And on top of all that, I went to university and worked a number of very social jobs, all of which helped a lot.
But yeah, homeschooling is certainly not without its own issues and personally I’m not planning on homeschooling my own son, which I’m sure tells you plenty.
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As someone who was homeschooled and now holds a master’s degree, I will proudly own the ‘weirdo’ title and make no claims to normalcy. And I suspect most of my 7 siblings would do the same.
But saying we’re all ‘likely retarded’ is a bit peculiar to me. Most homeschoolers I’ve met (which I suspect is more than most folks, being from inside the community) come from high-functioning or highly-religious families, with very few notably ‘retarded’. How many homeschool kids have you actually known?
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I’m very against homeschooling. It breeds religious zealotry, stunts communal empathy, an open mind, and critical thinking skills.
All this talk about grooming, and that’s what I see homeschooling as (though not really in the sexual sense).
Eh… I see where you’re coming from, and I’m generally against homeschooling as well. For various reasons, I wish I hadn’t been and wouldn’t do so for my child.
That said, I’m inclined to disagree. It only promotes what the parents put into it - which, yes, often is a lot of religion, but it isn’t intrinsic to the practice. The religious component I suspect is where you get the stunting of open-mindedness and critical thinking ideas, but fwiw I and several of my siblings have since left the faith for atheism, and even those who still participate in religion are mostly rather progressive. I do fully recognize that I and my siblings are probably the exception in this regard, so in those aspects I think your opinion generally represents the actual outcomes of homeschooling as it exists in the US, and probably is not that unpopular outside of homeschooling circles - but I would reiterate that I don’t think it’s intrinsic to homeschooling; rather, I think it’s a result of who in the US tends to choose to homeschool.
As for the idea that it stunts communal empathy, I’m a little bit baffled. I work in a mental hospital, one of my sisters has spent a year volunteering at orphanages in Ghana, one of my cousins (who was also homeschooled) runs a rural mission hospital in Bangladesh, etc… My observation is that most homeschooling families are rather pro-social and fully embrace the concepts of community and communal support of one another (even if they have eaten the socialism-is-bad propaganda; their rationale then is just that charity should come from the community itself rather than being subject to government mandate and bureaucratic inefficiency), so I’m curious what gives you that idea.
not the person you replied to, but someone with similar opinions: of your 3 examples, only you are still working in the community you presumably grew up in and live in. homeschooling can make it difficult to feel tied to your local community; often, they are perceived as “other” and feel themselves separate, at least the ones I’ve met. you may all feel driven to work for “communal good”, but it seems like it’s often done as an outsider to the community. there’s no “communal empathy” because you(generally, the home schooled) aren’t part of the community.
I have awful social anxiety - when I was little it was just called “painfully shy” - and my mother considered home schooling as an alternative. my grandmother was an elementary school teacher in the local public school system, and said the most valuable thing they taught in school was how to navigate socially. everything else can be taught outside school, but it’s extremely difficult to give kids the opportunity to learn societal norms and how to deal with peer groups when they aren’t interacting with people outside their small group on a daily basis. I’m honestly not sure how well I’d function in society as an adult if my mother hadn’t listened to my grandmother. I learned a lot of my social skills at school, more than I could in church or clubs where the peers were fewer and our similarities greater.
Appreciate the reply. Perhaps my view of homeschooling is all hyper-religious families who tend to be the evangelical type, as a whole I see that population of people as lacking empathy, critical thinking skills, etc.
I just don’t see the need for homeschooling as it just perpetuates this evangelical religious fervor. Besides, we live in a society of different backgrounds, religions, and ethnicities. Schools are a good place to meet people who are different than you.
Probably the “highly-religious” part.
Being around other kids helps kids learn social skills.
Most of us do that in school. Homeschooled kids can lack that depending on how the parent socializes their kids. Some homeschooling parents realize that they have to socialize their kids. Those parents put their kids in sports or scouts or other places where the kid can socialize. Other parents are oblivious that social skills are learned, then you can end up with some really awkward people out there.
I get you’re going for the literal “retarded”, like the “developmentally delayed” kind… but man that was a bold choice to use the word literally in the same sentence as calling them weirdos lol
On my feed the thumbnail for this is a multiple picture’s of a mouse eating a cherry tomato…
I found this so funny, I mean what a tragic news story but such a cute sounding collage of photos, such contrast.
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It’s scary to think that some dumbasses took parenting advice from this psychopath. There really should be some sort of test one has to take before becoming a parent.
What is this a chatgpt story? There is almost no substance…
Are we really as society going to look at websites like this that are 1% story content? 99% add content that frankly I visually dont even process?
Am I the only one? I literally wouldn’t click on an add link even if it was something I want!
This is why I love pi-hole. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I see no ads on that page.
This isn’t the entire story, just a snippet that was copied from the full story, which is linked in OP.
Bro go skim YouTube shorts.
Stock footage, reddit posts, AI voiceover.
It’s making money. It’s a weird era.
The article contains quite a big error too. Her two eldest children are over 18, have moved out and and are estranged from their mother. The eldest daughter actually helped the police, she posted on Instagram (or maybe TikTok) from outside the house when her mother was arrested. Initial reports said two of the children found in the house weren’t hers but I don’t think they’re the other lady’s either, she’s in her late 50 iirc.
Yewb
Ahhh AI!!!
-_-
