Inside the downfall of mommy vlogger Ruby Franke: 8 takeaways from the Hulu docuseries

LOS ANGELES — A year after mommy vlogger Ruby Franke was convicted of child abuse, her husband, Kevin Franke, and two oldest children, Shari and Chad Franke, are sharing their story in Hulu’s new docuseries “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.”

What started in 2015 as “8 Passengers,” a family YouTube channel chronicling their daily lives, turned into a source of child exploitation, the family claims. The three-part documentary — streaming now — explores how Ruby, whose channel had amassed 2.5 million subscribers and yielded more than $100,000 monthly, turned from a strict Mormon mother into an “instrument of God,” as Kevin describes it.

The documentary uses interviews with former neighbors and friends, and 1,000-plus hours of unreleased footage — where Franke can be seen threatening her children and pressuring them to perform for the camera. The eldest children recount their public childhoods and the shifts they began to see in their mother. (The four youngest children’s identities are obscured in the series.)

Ruby and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested in August 2023, shortly after Ruby’s youngest son showed up at a neighbor’s house. He was extremely emaciated, had duct tape around his wrists and ankles and told the neighbor to take him to the nearest police station.

Ruby and Hildebrandt both pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse and were each sentenced to four one-to-15-year terms in prison.

Here are some key takeaways from the docuseries.

Vlogging wasn’t about the money for Ruby, she wanted to be “America’s mom”

According to Kevin, Ruby wasn’t in it for the money — she wanted to be “America’s mom” and felt like she had a higher calling. Brannon Patrick, a local therapist who had worked with Hildebrandt, says in the doc that Mormons strive for perfection, and showing the world how perfect their lives are can be considered missionary work. So, to Ruby, documenting and sharing her family’s life was akin to doing God’s work.

Kevin was the opposite, he says. Before their first $85 YouTube paycheck, he found the camera to be “uncomfortable.” “It wasn’t enough to interact with her. I had to interact with the camera,” he says. However, he continued to willingly participate in the video content.

Their house felt more like a “set than a home”

The family lived in the small community of Springville, Utah — dubbed “Happy Valley.” As the children got older and their channel grew in popularity, their oldest daughter, Shari, alleges that their house turned into a set. They had to constantly clean the house and change every light bulb in the home to bright white for filming purposes, she said.

During peak filming, every family member’s schedule revolved around the YouTube videos. The children started to get annoyed by the constant camera presence and pressures to perform, Kevin says. In one clip from “8 Passengers,” the children appear frustrated to be on camera while sitting in the family van. Ruby yells at them, “Do you know that this is what we do? And everyone gets $10 for a video that they help with. Do you want $10?”

Never-before-seen footage reveals Ruby’s verbal abuse

The three-hour series features raw, unaired footage from Ruby’s vlogs that shows her threatening the children. In one video, she holds her daughter’s stuffed cat toy up to her face and tells her, “If you cut one more thing in my house, I am going to cut your [toy] cat’s head right off.”

Other videos demonstrate the great lengths she would go to for content. In another vlog, Ruby’s talking to the camera when one of her younger daughters sits on her lap and starts to talk over her. Franke grabs her, covers her mouth and says, “You get down and you be quiet. This isn’t your turn, now sit. … We’re gonna cut that out.” In another clip, she yells at her daughter for looking directly into the camera’s lens, saying, “Hold on, what was that look for?” The girl responds, “Sorry, I just get nervous,” to which Franke says, “Just be yourself.” When the child replies, “That is myself,” Ruby bluntly states, “Well then change it.”

The oldest children allege that Ruby was always an abusive mother

Since the inception of the channel, Chad, the eldest son, was considered by the family to be the audience’s favorite. As a child, he was a good sport about being on camera, but he began to rebel in his teen years. He admits there was a year when he “truly hated” his mother. He dreaded doing brand deals and would make things hard for her when filming. An unedited video of him and his mother sitting and talking to the camera highlights how she forced him to be more talkative and told him to “fake being happy.”

He alleges that Ruby would “whip” him with a belt and “spank” him off-camera. Shari, the oldest, claims that her mom would beat Chad until he bled and that she had to help Chad clean blood off the walls.

After Chad was expelled from school, his parents forced him to do therapy with Hildebrandt, sent him to a wilderness program and took away his “privilege” of having a bedroom — making him sleep on a beanbag for seven months. When she mentioned this in her vlogs, everything changed for the “8 Passengers” channel.

Viewers were outraged that the Frankes didn’t allow him to sleep on a bed. The channel lost subscribers, views tanked and 90% of their income disappeared. They turned to a lawyer for legal advice about how to avert a total cancellation. He advised Ruby to apologize, but she refused, saying, “No, I want to show the world what real parenting is like,” according to Kevin.

Hildebrandt moved into the Franke household to escape a “Satanic presence”

After losing a mainstream audience, Franke shifted her content to be more focused on religion. During this time, she and her husband became heavily involved with Hildebrandt’s life-coaching service, Connexions. This group is described in the documentary by neighbors and former members as a “church within the church, and Jodi was the prophet.” It was “excellent at exploiting Mormon anxiety,” they added. Ruby and Kevin quickly rose within the group’s ranks and became the voice of the therapy community.

During the pandemic, the Frankes thought the world was truly ending and they felt like they were on the “right side of it,” according to Kevin. They welcomed Hildebrandt into their home when she told them her own house had a satanic presence. Kevin says Hildebrandt became possessed and would speak in other voices and beat herself. They attempted in vain to exorcise the spirits.

Ruby kicked Chad and Kevin out of their home and disowned Shari

Before police intervention, Ruby isolated herself with her four youngest children and Hildebrandt. She kicked then-17-year-old Chad out of their home, blaming him for Hildebrandt’s demonic possession because he admitted to watching porn and kissing girls. Later, Ruby got rid of her husband, citing marital problems. She told him to cut all contact with the children and isolate in order to work on himself, according to Kevin. When asked why he left, he said, “I was going to support her over all my children, period.” Ruby also disowned her daughter Shari, who was away at college.

During this time, Ruby and Hildebrandt’s online content became more and more extreme. In one video, Franke says, “I love principles more than my child and that’s the truth.” According to neighbors, Ruby would often travel to film in St. George, where Hildebrandt lived. She left the kids alone for days, said the neighbors, who saw the children peeking out the windows. Shari called the police for a welfare check on her siblings and neighbors contacted Utah’s Department of Health and Human Services, but they were unable to act because there was no physical evidence of neglect or abuse.

Ruby believed her two youngest were possessed and kept a journal detailing how she treated them

When the police raided the home, they found a journal on Ruby’s nightstand that detailed her treatment of her children. She wrote that she believed that her two youngest were possessed by demons and by mistreating them, she would get closer to God.

In addition to starving the children, she kept them in separate parts of the home. She shaved her young daughter’s hair, tied the kids’ arms and legs to weights and applied a mixture of cayenne pepper and honey on their wounds. She also made them jump on trampolines and stand under the sun all day.

Kevin, who hadn’t been in contact with the family for over a year, admits, “I was the last line of defense for these children, and I packed my bags and walked away.”

Kevin has filed for divorce but admits to still loving Ruby

Shari, who has been campaigning against family vlogging, says she will never talk to her mom again. Chad has started his own career as an influencer. He says he “misses a mother figure … but I think what she’s going through is deserved.” Kevin has filed for divorce. When asked if he still loves Ruby, he says yes. Since Ruby’s arrest, Kevin has been heavily criticized for leaving his children and allegedly turning a blind eye to Ruby’s actions. He says he made no effort to reach out to his kids during the estrangement because he was focused on improving himself so that he could rejoin the family.

“The actions are atrocious, but I still have a longing. I miss her,” Kevin says in the doc. “It is easy for the world to hate that woman and so many want me to join in that chorus, and I cannot turn off all of those other memories.”

He is also actively lobbying for laws in Utah to better protect child influencers and actors.