Husband of YouTuber and convicted child abuser Ruby Franke tells his side of the story: ‘A nightmare’

Ruby Franke, the disgraced Utah vlogger serving time for child abuse, has written her eldest son Chad letters from prison. He doesn’t respond.

The letters “stopped on their own,” Chad Franke, 20, tells TODAY.com in an interview. “I think her not getting a response back was a sign to her that I’m not interested in talking right now.”

Kevin and Chad Franke spoke to TODAY.com ahead of “Devil In the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke,” a three-episode Hulu docuseries airing Feb. 27.

Chad Franke says his mother’s letters from prison in the past year have been “very spiritual” in nature.

“I don’t really want her to talk about spirituality anymore, because that’s something she fed me for so long in her own way,” Chad says. “It felt like she was still trying to teach me and still trying to mother me, which really bothered me and put me on edge. The last two I received — and again, it’s been a long time — were more apologetic and she described her healing process.”

Kevin Franke, Ruby’s husband, tells TODAY.com that no one in his immediate family — himself and their six children — is in contact with Ruby.

“I requested in April or May of last year that any communication she tried to send to me or to the children be prevented,” says Kevin.

Ruby Franke, a stay-at-home mom, and Kevin Franke, a former university professor, ran the viral YouTube channel “8 Passengers,” showing life as a wholesome Mormon family. Over time, viewers raised concerns about their discipline style. On camera, Ruby Franke threatened to withhold food from her children, canceled Christmas for her two youngest children and said that she had denied Chad a bed for seven months.

In December 2023, Ruby and her former business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, a mental health counselor with whom she created parenting videos on social media, each pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse toward Ruby and Kevin’s two youngest children. The women were sentenced to four to 30 years in prison.

The pair were arrested in August 2023 when one of the younger Franke children, then 12, escaped from Hildebrandt’s Utah home, where he and his younger sister lived in what one prosecutor called “concentration camp” conditions. According to police, the neighbor whose home the boy ran to for help said he “appeared to be emaciated and malnourished, with open wounds and duct tape around the extremities.” His sibling, said police, was “in a similar physical condition of malnourishment.”

According to court documents viewed by TODAY.com, Ruby Franke’s son suffered “physical torture” with forced manual labor, including without shoes and in the summer heat. The documents stated he was forced to stand under direct sunlight for days and without enough food and water; he was punished when he “secretly” drank water.

According to the documents, Ruby’s other child was treated similarly and “forced to run barefoot on dirt roads for an extended period of time,” among other abusive punishments.

When Ruby Franke was arrested, Kevin Franke had been estranged from the family and living separately from his wife and children. According to NBC News, Kevin filed for divorce a few months after Ruby’s arrest. He has said that he was not aware that his children were being abused. Police have not charged Kevin Franke with any crime.

In hindsight, Kevin Franke says that he and Ruby practiced “bad parenting” and says he regrets taking parenting advice from Hildebrandt.

“Devil In The Family” director Olly Lambert tells TODAY.com he was granted access to “the entire Franke family archive of video footage.”

Kevin Franke says he is ready to tell his story.

“There’s going to be a lot of people who see the raw footage … of ‘8 Passengers’ and say, ‘That was horrible’ and ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so disturbing the way they’re talking to their children’ and ‘That looks exploitative,” Kevin tells TODAY.com. “I’m telling you: there will not be a single family content creator on social media that watches that and does not cringe — because that is representative of every single one of them. And I don’t say that lightly.”

TODAY.com has reached out to the attorneys for Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt for their response to the documentary, and has not heard back.

Who are Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt?

Eldest child Shari Franke, 21, recalled In her memoir, “The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom,” that she felt like she was under “constant surveillance” as the daughter of a YouTube family content creator.

Shari Franke wrote that Ruby was convinced God had given her a platform to help people by their family’s example.

Ruby and Kevin Franke sought parenting advice from a woman named Jodi Hildebrandt.

Hildebrandt was a mental health counselor who ran a life-coaching program called ConneXions. The Franke family jumped into Hildebrandt’s orbit.

Ruby and Jodi started creating parenting videos together, posted to the Instagram account “Moms of Truth.”

Eventually, Shari Franke wrote, her mother invited Hildebrandt to move into their home. Kevin Franke tells TODAY.com that allowing Hildebrandt into his home “was the moment when everything really started going crazy.”

“I think about it often and I wish that I really would have put my foot down,” says Kevin Franke, adding, “I was adamantly opposed to it. I felt like she needed professional help.”

He says, “Once you’re on a roller coaster, and you start down that hill, there’s no going back.”

In the docuseries, Kevin Franke described one of Hildebrandt’s religious episodes.

“Jodi would go into these possessed trances and she would start speaking in other voices,” he said. Footage from the docuseries shows Hildebrandt in an apparent state, grumbling to herself, “She’s mine!” and “I own her!”

In the docuseries, Kevin Franke said he and Ruby Franke believed they could help Hildebrandt by “casting the evil spirits out.” During these episodes, Kevin Franke recalled that Hildebrandt would “thrash and hiss and wail and growl.”

Ruby Franke started sleeping in Hildebrandt’s bed, Kevin Franke says in the docuseries, and he was slowly iced out of the family,

When Ruby Franke asked him to move out and cut off contact with their children, he says, he complied. In the docuseries, Kevin Franke recalled telling his kids he was leaving to “work on himself” in order to return as a better husband and father. Kevin Franke took Chad, then 17, with him, as he said was ordered by Ruby Franke.

Kevin Franke tells TODAY.com that living apart was “a nightmare within a nightmare.”

“I literally thought I was going crazy, that I was like a spawn of Satan, an evil man, because I couldn’t get it, right, no matter what I did,” Kevin Franke says. “It did a lot of damage to me psychologically, spiritually, emotionally. That was a very dark time in my life.”

Kevin said in the docuseries of the relationship between Ruby and Hildebrandt, “I don’t know the extent to which their interactions went. It was much more than a friendship, much  more than a sisterhood. It was uncomfortably intimate.”

What’s happening with the Franke family now?

On Feb. 20, Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for child abuse.

In court, Ruby Franke tearfully acknowledged her family.

“Kevin, my husband of more than 23 years,” said Ruby. “You are the love of my life. So sorry to leave to you to finish what we both started together. The ending of our marriage is a tragedy.”

Ruby Franke said of her children, “To my babies, my six little chicks. You are part of me. I was the mama duck who was consistently waddling you to safety. I can see now that over the past four years, I was in a deep undercurrent that led us to danger.”

Kevin Franke tells TODAY.com that listening to her testimony “felt like getting stabbed.”

He adds, “Because I believe it and I do still love her. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not as angry as can be at her. I don’t want to be hurt and abused by her anymore. And so, it’s a painful decision to say, ‘No. I love you and I love you enough to walk away from you and to leave you so you can get the help that you need.’”

Kevin Franke says his family has undergone therapy and that he is re-negotiating his relationship to religion.

“Religion played a major role in this — Jodi took religious beliefs that I held throughout my life and she exploited them and Ruby exploited them,” Kevin Franke tells TODAY.com.

Kevin Franke says his estranged wife’s sentencing was “absolutely” fair.

Chad Franke agrees, telling TODAY.com of his mother, “At least until the kids are all adults and able to make their own choices, she shouldn’t have any kind of …. interaction at all.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

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