On YouTube, Ruby Franke was a wholesome blonde Mormon wife whose idyllic life as a mom to six young children attracted millions of subscribers.
But in a new memoir, her eldest daughter lifts the veil on the fake exterior Franke created, instead painting her as an abusive tyrant who alienated her husband for a seemingly romantic relationship with another woman.
The story of Ruby Franke is a cautionary tale to those who are gullible to believe that what they see on their screen is real — and comfort to those who are often made to feel inadequate because their lives aren’t as perfect as those they are watching.
“[They] condemned queerness very publicly … while embodying it privately,” Shari writes of her mother and her business partner and alleged lover, Jodi Hildebrandt — in “The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom” (Gallery Books; Jan. 7).
The book details how both Ruby and her siblings were smacked around, starved and had their wrists and ankles bound with duct tape at the hands of the two women. Both were eventually arrested and pled guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse.
In 2015, Ruby started a YouTube channel called “8 Passengers.” She posted videos documenting her family’s day-to-day life in the suburbs of Springville, Utah, a metropolis about 50 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
A camera always in hand, the pretty young mom, now 42, seemingly captured every move her young children — Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell, and Eve — made.
The kids ranged in age from about 1 to 11 when Ruby started creating the candid vlog — short for video blog — style videos, making her an early pioneer of the “mommy vlogger” trend. Subject matter included “Summer Morning Routine with Six Kids,” “Julie’s First Swim Practice,” and “Chad’s 14th Birthday Party.”
Her husband, Kevin Franke, a former assistant professor of civil and environmental at Brigham Young University (BYU), appeared only sporadically.
The family YouTube channel quickly amassed 2.5 million subscribers and 1 billion total views. But for Shari, who was a preteen when the channel launched, having her adolescence chronicled online by her mother was scarring.
“Puberty is brutal enough, let alone with an audience,” Shari writes, reflecting on a time her mother posted a video of her crying and mortified after an attempt at eyebrow-waxing ended in disaster.
But the ugliest moments were behind the camera. When Shari was 11, her mother began to use disciplinary techniques from West Point military academy.
“Punishments … took on a more elaborate, almost theatrical quality,” she writes. “These often involved grand gestures or prolonged periods of deprivation.”
When one of her brothers, Chad, then about 9-years-old, didn’t put away his laundry, all of the children were made to run around the block five times.
At other points, she withheld food from the children and banned them from their bedrooms to instead sleep on bean bags — sometimes for 200 nights straight.
Shari recalls being hit when she was as young as nine.
“Ruby’s hand would often find its way to my face, a sharp sting of displeasure delivered with precision,” she writes. “Her slaps were calibrated — never hard enough to leave visible bruises, at least to me, but always sufficient to instill fear … In her twisted logic, she was molding obedience, sculpting compliance with each stinging blow.”
In 2020 fans started questioning the disciplinary measures Ruby would casually mention in her “8 Passengers” videos.
Some viewers circulated petitions calling for Ruby to be investigated because she had “shown signs of being neglectful and abusive towards her children.”
But, according to Shari, her mother brushed off the scrutiny and marched on.
“In her mind, she wasn’t a controversial figure being held accountable; she was a martyr, crucified for her unwavering dedication to tough love,” she writes.
In 2022, Ruby began working as a mental health coach for ConneXions, a parenting coaching company run by counselor Jodi Hildebrandt, now 55.
The two hit it off and created an Instagram page called Moms of Truth where they promoted parenting classes and shared platitudes with more than 300,000 fans.
But, while both women were outwardly devout, conservative Mormons, Shari alludes heavily to a “fascinating and horrific” romantic connection between the two.
She writes of how Hildebrandt moved into the Franke family home ahead of her parents’ separation in late 2022.
Shari had started college at BYU by then and Hildebrandt took over her bedroom. At some point, she alleges her mom started sharing the room with her while not allowing her father in certain parts of the home.
At one one point, Shari recalls coming home to her old bedroom to retrieve an old belonging and emerging “confused.”
“The room was bathed in the soft glow of candles,” she writes. “The air was heavy with the scent of lavender and vanilla wafting from the massage oils on the dresser … I quickly grabbed what I needed and got the hell out of there, feeling like I had just walked into someone else’s honeymoon suite. The only thing missing was rose petals on the bed.”
She recalls seeing Ruby leave the room the following morning looking “mischievous” with a “strange smile” on her face.
“What the hell was going on? Why was Ruby sneaking around in the middle of the night like a teenager trying not to get caught by her parents?” she writes. “Were they really doing candlelit massages in my bedroom?”
Things came to a head in September 2023, when Shari’s then-12-year-old brother Russell escaped the family home and asked a neighbor for food.
The police were called when the neighbor noticed visible wounds on his body and tape marks on his wrists and ankles.
Shari’s sister, Eve, then just 10-years-old, was found to be malnourished.
Ruby and Hildebrandt were arrested and each plead guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse.
Ruby was sentenced to up to 60 years, Hildebrandt for up to 30 years. Both women are serving their time at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City.
Shari’s father Kevin, 46, was not charged with any crimes, though his four minor children —Abby, 17, Julie, 15, Russell, 13, and Eve, 11, — are currently under the care of the Division of Child and Family Services.
He told the Salt Lake Tribune that his ex-wife was able to abuse their children under the authority’s radar, thanks to Hildebrandt’s knowledge of the child welfare system in Utah as a licensed therapist.
“All they had to do [was] keep the children isolated from the world, ignore all the phone calls from caseworkers, [and] not answer the door when [welfare caseworkers] and/or police officers knocked.”
Shari is studying comparative politics at BYU and is engaged to be married.
On Instagram last week, she announced that, with her memoir’s publication and her upcoming nuptials, she would be pulling back from social media.
“This is the end of me sharing my private life,” she wrote on the platform with a picture of her engagement ring. “I’ve had my voice and agency taken for so long … I’m not going to talk about my wedding, future husband, or future kids… This is closure for me. I’m moving on with my life.”
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