YouTuber Ruby Franke once denied allegations of child abuse after her son Chad came forward and said he had slept on a beanbag for seven months.
In a since-deleted video from 2020, Chad told 2.5 million “8 Passengers” channel subscribers that the punishment came 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 and her husband, Kevin Franke, sought advice from a therapist who advised the brothers should not sleep in the same room.
The couple claimed they gave Chad, now 18, the option to sleep on a pullout guest bed, an inflatable mattress or somewhere else in the house. Chad allegedly chose the beanbag because it was the most comfortable.
Kevin later claimed to Insider that the video titled “What We Haven’t Told You” showed Chad’s “victory over the challenges that he’s faced” after engaging in “physical and emotional damaging behavior.”
Viewers, however, believed that Chad had slept on the beanbag as punishment for the pranks and accused his vlogger parents of child abuse.
The claims became more severe when Ruby 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,'” Ruby, 41, said in a since-removed video.
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.
Viewers launched a petition to send Child Protective Services to the Frankes’ house in Utah, but after speaking to all six Franke kids — Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve — the case was closed, citing insufficient evidence.
“It was just so malicious. They knew what they were doing was out of context. They were purely seeking to throw hate. That was their only objective,” Ruby told Insider.
“A reasonable person would not have seen [the Eve lunch video] and thought, ‘She is a child abuser.'”
The videos resurfaced after Ruby and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested in Utah Wednesday under suspicion of aggravated child abuse after a child escaped through a window and fled to a neighbor for help.
The neighbor discovered the “emaciated” child had duct tape bindings around his or her extremities and called police, who searched Hildebrandt’s home and found another sick child.
Ruby is being held in Washington County jail without bail.
Kevin told Pvnew via his attorney, Randy S. Kester, Thursday that his “urgent focus is simply to keep his children together under his fatherly care.”
Ruby’s sisters, meanwhile, said they “kept quiet” about the alleged abuse “for the sake of her children.”
