YouTuber Ruby Franke once posted about why being a “loving parent” can bring out the “monster” inside before she was arrested for aggravated child abuse.
In the resurfaced Instagram clip from July 2022, the mom of six ranted about “what love sounds like” and acknowledging someone when they’re hurting.
“If your kid came to you on fire, would you say, ‘I’m so glad you trusted me to tell me you’re on fire. But if I put out the fire, that’s going to really hurt and you’re going to end up with scabs anyway, so I’m just going to love you where you are right now,'” she began in the video.
“No! You throw them on the ground and you start rolling them,” Franke, 41, continued. “You get a blanket and you start hitting the flames and they’re going to say, ‘You’re hurting me. You’re beating me.’
“It’s like, ‘No, dear, hold still. I’m getting the fire out.’ That’s what a loving parent does because nobody will do it. It looks to the world crazy and because they’ve never been loved before, it looks like I’m angry. To them, it looks like I’m controlling, it looks like I’m militant, it looks like I’m a monster, it looks like I’m mean, it looks like I’m full of hate, it looks like I’m not accepting it.”
She concluded, “Because they don’t know what love looks like or sounds like.”
The clip resurfaced on Reddit two days after Franke was arrested in Utah under suspicion of child abuse after a minor escaped through a window and fled to a neighbor for help.
Her business partner and ConneXions co-founder, Jodi Hildebrandt, was also arrested on Aug. 30 under the same suspicions.
The neighbor discovered the “emaciated” child had duct-tape bindings around their limbs and called police, who searched Hildebrandt’s home and found another sick child.
Franke is being held in Washington County jail without bail.
Her husband, Kevin Franke, told Pvnew via his attorney, Randy S. Kester, Thursday that his “urgent focus is simply to keep his children together under his fatherly care.”
Following Ruby’s arrest, her sisters, Ellie Mecham, Bonnie Hoellein and Julie Deru, released a joint statement stating that justice “needed to happen.”
“For the last 3 years we have kept quiet on the subject of our sister Ruby Franke for the sake of her children. Behind the public scene we have done everything we could to try and make sure the kids were safe,” the statement began.
The sisters said they “wouldn’t feel right” about posting “regular content” without addressing the video blogger’s arrest.
“Ruby was arrested which needed to happen. Jodi was arrested which needed to happen,” the statement continued. “The kids are now safe, which is the number one priority.”
Ruby had previously denied abusing her children after her eldest son, Chad, claimed he slept on a beanbag for seven months.
In a since-deleted video from 2020, Chad told the more than 2 million “8 Passengers” channel subscribers that he was punished after he played pranks on his younger brother, Russell.
“My bedroom was taken away for seven months,” he claimed. “I was sleeping on a beanbag since October.”
Ruby Franke arrest: What you need to know
Ruby Franke was a “momfluencer” who had one of YouTube’s biggest channels, “8 Passengers,” which documented her and her husband, Kevin, and their six kids.
Franke was arrested on Aug. 30, 2023, on two counts of aggravated child abuse and could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Franke’s arrest came after an emaciated child with duct tape around their extremities escaped and ran to a neighbor’s house for help.
Franke’s sisters released a joint statement saying they did everything they could to protect their nieces and nephews “behind the public scene” and that the arrest “needed to happen.”
Through a lawyer, Franke’s husband denied having any part in the abuse.
Franke in court accused one of her own children of sexually abusing a sibling for years.
YouTube has deleted Franke’s account and banned her from the platform.
Ruby also faced backlash when she refused to drive a packed lunch to her daughter Eve’s school because the 6-year-old had forgotten it at home.
“I responded [to Eve’s teacher] and said, ‘Eve is responsible for making her own lunches in the morning, so the natural outcome is she is just going to be hungry, and hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her lunch,’” the momfluencer said in a since-deleted video.
Ruby and her husband, Kevin, ran the “8 Passengers” channel, which followed their lives and their six children: Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve.
At one point, the channel had over 2 million subscribers.
