Ruby Franke is a Mormon mother of six from Springville, Utah. She is widely known for her popular 8 Passengers YouTube channel, which was created in 2015 and had over 2.5 million subscribers. On this channel, she documented the daily lives of her husband and her children. 

Ruby wanted to be seen as the most perfect mom, but she wasn’t receiving enough attention or praise from her community. Which led to her decision to create a YouTube channel. Her main goal was to be bigger and better than everyone else. In the early years of this channel, Ruby made videos of her parenting style, demonstrating punishments for her children’s behavior, childcare, and marriage. After the first YouTube paycheck of $85 was received, the children began to be treated like employees. Ruby found that if the eldest children were posted as the thumbnail to a video, it received more attention. After paychecks began to increase, so did Ruby’s desire to film everything. Ruby filmed every second of her life and that of her family. At its peak, they were bringing in over $100,000 a month just from YouTube revenue. After receiving such income, they were able to move. 

After moving, Ruby’s children started to behave differently, saying they felt controlled and didn’t want to be filmed. In 2020, Ruby’s eldest son, Chad, said in a video that he was made to sleep on a beanbag in the basement for seven months as a punishment. After the video received multiple comments and backlash, Ruby removed the video. Chad was expelled from school for not listening to his teachers. In the same way, he didn’t want to listen to his parents at home. 

The Frankes brought in a therapist, Jodi Hildebrandt, who a family friend recommended to help Chad. Jodi Hildebrandt had her license suspended in 2012 after she reportedly told Mormon church leaders about a patient’s “porn addiction.” Jodi was also divorced with children who wanted nothing to do with her. However, the family didn’t know of this at the time. The Frankes began meeting with Jodi weekly, and Ruby began training as a coach in ConneXions, a mental fitness and relationship coaching curriculum. She and Hildebrandt also posted to an Instagram account called “Moms of Truth.” Ruby’s eldest daughter, Shari, started to research Jodi online and found that the counselor had lost her therapy license and was the subject of numerous complaints by former patients. Ruby shrugged off those concerns, believing Hildebrandt had been sent to the family for a reason. “To get me back in line, they needed to take everything away from me. All electronics, no access to sports, they even sent me to a wilderness camp,” said Chad in the documentary Devil in the Family. 

In August 2021, when Shari left for college, Jodi moved in with the Frankes and took Shari’s room. After a while, Ruby and her husband Kevin became convinced that Jodi was under the influence of demonic possession. “Jodi would go into these possessed trances,” Kevin tells filmmakers in the documentary. “She would start speaking in other voices.” Ruby was so concerned that she began sleeping in Hildebrandt’s bedroom. People around them started noticing something strange between Jodi and Ruby. “It was much more than a friendship,” Kevin tells filmmakers. “Much more than a sisterhood. It was uncomfortably intimate.” 

Not long after, Ruby instructed Kevin and Chad to move out of their house. Ruby also disowned Shari, who was attending Brigham Young University, after finding out that she had tried to contact Kevin. After Kevin moved out, neighbors in Springville began to voice concern about what might be happening in the Frankes’ home. Ruby appeared to be spending more and more time at Jodi’s house in Ivins, leaving the young kids between ages 9 and 15 alone. Shari was still in touch with the neighbors and decided to call the police and ask for a welfare check on the kids. However, the police were unable to enter the Franke home without a warrant, which a judge declined to sign off on. Neighbors attempted to reach out to Kevin about his children, but he blocked and ignored calls and messages, holding out hope that Ruby would let him back into the home. 

Meanwhile, at Jodi’s house in Ivins, Ruby was convinced her two youngest children were possessed. She documented her attempts to “exercise” them. She forced her youngest son to do wall sits for hours on end, and she buzzed her youngest daughter’s hair so she didn’t have any more “distractions.” They were starved and forced to fast for days on end. Her son was forced to stand outside in the sun for hours and even days. When he would run to the shade, Ruby would poke him with a cactus poker; he wouldn’t even react. The abuse in Jodi’s home started around the beginning of May, when they moved, and lasted until late August 2023. The worst of the abuse involved: towel and belt beatings, being kicked with boots, tied in a closet, starved, and taken to the desert and forced to run. 

On August 30, 2023, Ruby’s youngest son escaped the home. He went to a neighbor’s house and can be seen on the Ring doorbell saying; “Hi, I was just wondering if you could do two favors. Taking me to the nearest police station.” The man who answered told him to take a seat while he called the police. “I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help. He’s emaciated, he’s got duct tape around each ankle, he’s hungry and he’s thirsty,” says the man on the call. He began getting emotional saying the boy had been detained and was covered in wounds. When the ambulance arrived, Ruby’s son told them he had been tied up and in handcuffs. Police were able to enter the house in search of his little sister, whom he hadn’t seen in months. Ruby’s youngest daughter was found in a closet with a shaved head and boyish clothes on. She was extremely skinny and malnourished. 

Meanwhile, Kevin received a call from his wife, Ruby. She told him their two youngest children had been “demonically possessed,” claiming they confessed to it and their youngest son escaped. She “could only imagine the lies he was telling the police.” He went to the Ivins police station to pick up his children, where they asked him questions about the situation. It had been over a year since he had any contact with his kids, and he was unaware of everything that was happening. Ruby was detained and taken to the station for questioning, where she refused to respond. Meanwhile, Jodi was determined to manipulate officers saying, “I’m a therapist, I’m with you guys in this. I would love to share, but my attorney has told me not to.” After this, police were able to search the home a second time. Here they found a blue folder full of Ruby’s pages that she wrote in every day justifying the abuse.

Ruby and Jodi were each charged with 6 counts of child abuse and will spend up to 30 years in prison. They are both sentenced to 4 consecutive prison terms which could range between 1-15 years each. Cases like this one bring to light issues surrounding children being exposed on social media. This has become such an issue that a law has been passed in California providing protection for children on social media, called The Coogan Law. This law was originally passed in 1939 and was expanded on September 26, 2024, and became effective on January 1, 2025. The Coogan Law ensures that a minor’s gross earnings of 65% will be placed in a trust account for when they reach adulthood.