On YouTube, Ruby Franke was a bubbly blonde Mormon mommy vlogger with millions of subscribers. But behind the scenes, she was a tyrant who abused her six children with extreme disciplinary measures.
Ruby’s eldest daughter Shari Franke, 21, details how she and her siblings were smacked around, starved and had their wrists and ankles bound with duct tape in her new memoir “The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom” (Gallery Books; Jan. 7). Ruby was ultimately arrested and plead guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse.
“She was an adult who had made a conscious choice to inflict unspeakable harm upon those she was meant to protect,” Shari writes.
In 2015, Ruby started a YouTube channel called “8 Passengers” that detailed her devout family’s life in the suburbs of Springville, Utah, a metropolis about 50 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
The channel quickly amassed 2.5 million subscribers and 1 billion total views, with goofy videos of wholesome family activities, such as morning routines, getting braces, going to the grocery store, surfing on vacation, and the like.
An early pioneer of the “mommy vlogger” trend, Ruby succeeded in making her subscribers feel like they had a seat at the Franke family dinner table, seemingly constantly filming spontaneous content of her children’s antics, while portraying herself as an ideal stay-at-home mom.
But for Shari, who was a preteen when the YouTube channel launched, having her adolescence chronicled online by her mother was scarring.
When she was 13-years-old, Ruby accidentally waxed half of one of her eyebrows while taping.
Undeterred, the mommy vlogger posted the video of her mortified daughter to YouTube and used an unflattering screenshot of Shari crying as the thumbnail.
“Our lives … revolved around nonstop content creation, whether we liked it or not. You couldn’t sneeze without it being immortalized from multiple angles,” Shari writes. “Puberty is brutal enough, let alone with an audience.”
But, behind the scenes, Shari and her siblings were enduring far worse than the cringe-inducing social media posts.
When Shari was 11, her mother began to use disciplinary techniques from West Point military academy.
“Punishments … took on a more elaborate, almost theatrical quality,” she writes. “These often involved grand gestures or prolonged periods of deprivation, all designed to make us truly ‘feel’ the weight of our transgressions.”
When one of her brothers, Chad, then about 9-years-old, didn’t put away his laundry, he was made to run around the block five times. At another point, he blew off clearing the table, and both he and Shari had to do pushups.
Physical abuse was common, and Shari recalls being hit when she was as young as nine.
“Ruby’s hand would often find its way to my face, a sharp sting of displeasure delivered with precision,” Shari writes. “Her slaps were calibrated — never hard enough to leave visible bruises, at least to me, but always sufficient to instill fear … In her twisted logic, she was molding obedience, sculpting compliance with each stinging blow.”
Shari left for college at Brigham Young University in 2021, and things further devolved.
The family’s once loyal audience started to question what they were seeing on the “8 Passengers” channel.
On YouTube, Ruby posted casual videos of her discipling her children by withholding food, sending them to wilderness camps, and banning them from their bedrooms to instead sleep on bean bags — sometimes for many months at a time.
The vlogs eventually inspired petitions to get the family investigated for child abuse.
Things came to a head in September 2023, when Shari’s then-12-year-old brother Russell escaped and asked a neighbor for food. The police were called after the neighbor noticed visible wounds on his body and tape marks on his wrists and ankles.
Shari’s sister, Eve, then just 10-years-old, was found to be malnourished. Ruby was arrested for child abuse.
But, Shari writes, her mother still didn’t see herself as an abuser.
“In her mind, she wasn’t a controversial figure being held accountable; she was a martyr, crucified for her unwavering dedication to tough love,” she writes.
She eventually plead guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse and was sentenced to up to 60 years in prison in February of 2024. She is currently serving time at Utah State Correctional Facility.
Life coach Jodi Hildebrant, who Ruby hired to help discipline her children, was also convicted of child abuse and is serving up to 30 years in prison.
Shari’s father Kevin, was not charged with any crimes, though she doesn’t speak kindly of him.
“[He was] another person who … turned their back when I needed them most,” she writes. While he was initially featured heavily in the 8 Passengers YouTube, his appearances dropped off over time.
He filed for divorce from Ruby in November of 2023 and has filed a petition for custody of his four minor children — Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve, ages 11 to 17 — who are currently under the care of the Division of Child and Family Services.
The second oldest child in the family, Chad, 19, is currently going to real estate school, according to his Instagram.
Shari is studying comparative politics at BYU and is engaged to be married.
On Instagram last week, she announced that, with her memoir’s publication and her upcoming nuptials, she would be pulling back from social media.
“This is the end of me sharing my private life,” she wrote on the platform with a picture of her engagement ring. “I’ve had my voice and agency taken for so long … I’m not going to talk about my wedding, future husband, or future kids… This is closure for me. I’m moving on with my life.”
