Evidence in Ruby Franke case includes new video showing child after escape, asking neighbors for help

New details have been released in the child abuse case against former family vlogger Ruby Franke.

The Utah mom was arrested back in August 2023 on multiple charges of child abuse after one of her kids escaped her oversight and ran to a neighbor asking for food and help. Franke later pleaded guilty to four felony counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse and was sentenced to one to fifteen years in prison per count.

Jodi Hildenbrandt, her business partner and co-founder of parenting advice YouTube channel and service "ConneXions," received the same charges and sentence.

Now, footage has been released of the child's escape to find help from neighbors, along with other details about the days and weeks leading up to Franke's arrest.

Watch the video of the child seeking help

In the video, recorded by home security cameras, a noticeably thin pre-teen can be seen walking up to a home and ringing the doorbell. The child almost leaves when no one answers, but a man eventually opens the door and calls out to the child.

“I was just wondering if you could do two favors?” the child asks. “If you could take me to the nearest police station. Well, actually just one [favor] is fine.”

The man appears to become concerned at this point, asking, “What’s going on?"

A woman later comes outside and speaks reassuringly to the child, handing them water. Meanwhile, the man calls the police to report an "emaciated" child with "tape around his legs" who is "hungry and thirsty" arriving at their door to ask for help.

Police would later find out that a pre-teen had climbed out the window of Hildebrandt's nearby home where the child had been held captive by Franke.

Both Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested hours later.

Ruby Franke's diaries reveal more details about the abuse

Also released on Friday were handwritten entries from a journal Franke kept in the months leading up to her arrest. In them, she details the abuse she and Hildebrandt committed against their children, justifying the acts through extremist religious theories.

In them, she describes forcing her pre-teen son and daughter to sleep on hard floors, work hours in the summer heat without food or water and admits to locking them in a concrete bunker. The children were kept isolated from the outside world and often starved, something Franke justified in her entries by writing “I will not feed a demon.”

In one July 2023 entry, she describes forcing her son's head underwater while holding his mouth and nose closed and telling him that she was trying to save him from the devil, who would lie to him and say he was being hurt.

She details other acts like shaving her daughter's head for "whining" and dousing her in water in the "dog wash" as punishment for asking to eat and break a two-day fast imposed by Franke.

"These selfish, selfish children who desire only to take, lie, and attack have zero understanding of god's love for them," Franke wrote in her journal.

The Washington County Attorney's Office said the children suffered such severe abuse, they came to believe they deserved it. "The investigation found that religious extremism motivated Ms. Franke and Ms. Hildebrandt to inflict this horrific abuse," a case summary read. "The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined 'sins' and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies."

Who is Ruby Franke?

Ruby Franke is a Utah mother of six and a formerly popular family vlog YouTuber. One of the stars of the "8 Passengers" YouTube channel that once raked in millions of views and followers, she became the subject of widespread criticism online for her parenting choices.

"8 Passengers" started in 2015 and documented the lives of mom and dad Ruby and Kevin Franke and their six children. At its peak, it boasted 2.5 million subscribers and was known as one of the most famous - or infamous - family video channels.

The channel was removed from YouTube last year following several years of increased scrutiny. Viewers began circulating petitions and reporting what they saw as evidence of child abuse and neglect to local authorities.

The pushback intensified when Franke co-founded the parenting advice and support program "ConneXions," which has been called a "cult" by some online. Many found the parenting style promoted by Franke and Hildebrandt to be extreme and harsh. The frequent inclusion of what has been called homophobic, racist and transphobic comments did not help their popularity.

In one oft-referenced example, Franke told viewers that children do not deserve and should not receive unconditional love.

In another, she took Christmas away from one of her young children as punishment for being "selfish." In many instances, she could be seen threatening to withhold food or otherwise punishing her children in a way viewers criticized as too severe.

Ruby Franke arrest, charges and sentence

In late August of 2023, Franke was taken into custody along Hildebrandt, her friend and business partner, following the discovery of a "severely emaciated and malnourished" child.

Police were called to the home of Hildebrandt after one of Franke's children climbed out a window and went to a neighbor's house asking for food and water. Noticing duct tape wrapped around the child's wrists and ankles, the neighbor called authorities, who arrived to find one child who was "severely emaciated and malnourished, with open wounds" and another Franke child in the home who was also malnourished, according to court documents.

While serving a search warrant, police found evidence in the home "consistent with the markings found on the juvenile." Franke was likewise accused of mistreating her kids.

She pleaded guilty in December 2023 to four felony counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse. Hildenbrandt, also pleaded guilty to the charges. In a February sentencing, both were given four prison terms of one to 15 years each, meaning each woman will face four to 60 years in prison on charges of child abuse.

The actual jail time served will now be up to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

In a public apology read to the court through tears at the time of sentencing, Franke, who has largely placed the blame for the abuse on Hildebrandt's alleged brainwashing, said in part, “I’ll never stop crying for hurting your tender souls,” referring to her children who were not present in the courtroom. “My willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly. I took from you all that was soft and safe and good.”