Mum who gave parenting tips on YouTube admits abusing her own children
A mummy blogger who made her name offering advice on looking after children is facing jail after admitting she starved two of her children.
Ruby Franke, who ran the 8 Passengers YouTube account, appeared in court yesterday to answer four counts of child abuse.
She was arrested in August after her desperate 12-year-old son knocked on a neighbour’s door to ask for food and water.
He was injured and had duct tape on his ankles from where he had been restrained. He later told police in Ivins, Utah, that he had been tied with ropes on his ankles and wrists. She used cayenne pepper and honey to dress the wounds.
Franke, 41, appeared in court alongside business partner Jodi Firebrandt who the son had said tied him up.
The son was taken to hospital because of the deep lacerations on his body and because he was so malnourished. When police raided the home they found another child in a similar state of starvation and they also taken for treatment.
Four of her six children were taken into the protection of child services.
Franke was also accused of trying to convince her two younger children they were evil, possessed and needed to be punished to repent.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes before admitting to the first three charges that were put before her.
Answering the fourth, she appeared emotional before saying: ‘With my deepest regret and sorrow for my family and my children, guilty.’
A court heard that the abuse happened while Franke was influenced by relationship counsellor Jodi Firebrandt who led her to a ‘distorted sense of morality’.
She believed that he ‘had the insight to offer a path to continual improvement’ but ‘took advantage of this quest and twisted it into something heinous.’
For three months, the 12-year-old boy was forced to carry out physical tasks, summer work without enough water, and repeated and serious sunburns that blistered.
He was denied food a lot of the time, but when he was given nourishment it was plain.
He was tortured between May and August, and when he tried to escape in July his hands and feet were regularly bound, often with handcuffs.
She kicked him while wearing boots, held his head under water and covered his mouth and nose with her hands. He was manipulated into thinking the punishments were acts of love.
Her nine-year-old daughter also suffered similar abuse, working outside and running around barefoot.
She told her she was evil and possessed and the punishments were ‘necessary for her to be obedient and repent.’
When the 12-year-old made it to the neighbour’s house, he initially wouldn’t say why he was emaciated and had tape around his ankles.
The neighbour called 911 saying: ‘I think he’s been … he’s been detained. He’s obviously covered in wounds.’
The Franke family was criticised online for its ‘8 Passengers’ video blog showing parenting decisions including banning their oldest son from his bedroom for seven months for pranking his younger brother.
In other videos, Ruby Franke talked about refusing to take lunch to a kindergartener who forgot it at home and threatening to cut the head off a young girl’s stuffed toy to punish her for cutting things in the house.
In one video, Franke said she and her husband told their two youngest children that they would not be getting presents from Santa Claus one year because they had been selfish and weren’t responding to punishment like being kept home from school and cleaning the floorboards.
The YouTube channel, which started in 2015, ended after seven years.
Franke will be sentenced on February 20.