A Utah mother whose harsh parenting advice made her a YouTube influencer has been sentenced to up to 60 years in prison for child abuse. Ruby Franke, 42, tearfully apologised in court as she learned her fate, having previously pleaded guilty to starving and abusing her children.
Franke appeared alongside her former business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, 54, who received an identical sentence. The judge imposed four terms of one to 15 years each, to run consecutively. The sentences are the maximum for each count under Utah law, with the ultimate time served to be determined by the state's parole board.
In court, prosecutor Eric Clarke described the conditions endured by two of Franke's children, aged nine and 11 at the time, as a “concentration camp-like setting”. He said the children were regularly denied food, water, beds and virtually all forms of entertainment, and called Franke a significant threat to the community.
Franke, in tears, apologised to her children, saying: “I was so disoriented that I believed dark was light and right was wrong.” She added: “I 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.”
The pair were arrested in August 2023 after Franke's malnourished 12-year-old son climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt's house in Ivins, Utah, and asked a neighbour for food and water. Police found lacerations on the child from being tied up with rope. Franke's YouTube channel, 8 Passengers, which had more than two million subscribers, was deleted in 2022 after years of concerning content, including forcing a son to sleep on a bean bag for seven months and “cancelling” Christmas as punishment.
According to police records, the abuse included tying the children up, beating and kicking them, neglecting to feed them, and forcing them to work outdoors in summer without sunscreen. Hildebrandt's plea agreement stated she either tortured the children or was aware of the abuse, and forced one of Franke's daughters to “jump into a cactus multiple times”. Franke's ex-husband, Kevin Franke, had called for the maximum sentence, describing the abuse as “horrific and inhumane”.
