By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | December 28, 2023 |
By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | December 28, 2023 |
Ruby Franke is a YouTube parenting influencer arrested in August and charged with six counts of felony child abuse. Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested after cops found the emaciated 12-year-old son of Franke with open wounds and duct tape around his wrists and ankles. He had climbed out of a window and had run to a neighbor for help. Another child of Ruby Franke, a 10-year-old, was found at home equally malnourished, and both children had to be hospitalized.
Authorities had apparently been warned numerous times about the danger that Franke posed to her children, and even her YouTube channel, 8 Passengers, detailed some of her “parenting tricks.” Hacks like: Punishing children by depriving them of meals, taking away a teen child’s bedroom for seven months because he played a prank on his sister, withholding breakfast from a child for not giving Franke a back massage, threatening a small child with decapitating their favorite stuffed animal, and multiple instances of emotional abuse. And this is just what’s online.
Last week, Ruby Franke took a plea deal while confessing to child abuse, as detailed in Rolling Stone:
[Franke] confessed to detailed instances of physical and emotional abuse against her two children, including forcing her son to do physical labor for “hours and days at a time,” making him stand in direct sunlight for several days resulting in sunburns, denying him adequate water and food, isolating him from other people and entertainment, and subjecting her daughter to similar physically tasking work resulting in injuries, including being forced to work outside and run barefoot on dirt roads.
Franke’s lawyers blame Franke’s business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, who also accepted a plea deal yesterday. Franke’s lawyers say that Hildebrandt “systematically isolated Franke from her extended family, older children, and her husband, Kevin Franke. This prolonged isolation resulted in Ms. Franke being subjected to a distorted sense of morality, shaped by Ms. Hildebrandt’s influence.”
Apparently, that is Hildebrandt’s M.O., as other Hildebrandt clients have claimed they were treated similarly.
Again, the details of the plea deal are not yet known, but Franke faces up to 60 years in prison. Her sentencing is scheduled for February.
Source: Rolling Stone