Ruby Franke charged with 6 counts of felony child abuse after children were discovered with open wounds, malnourished

YouTuber mom Ruby Franke has been charged with six counts of felony child abuse after her 12-year-old son was found with open wounds and duct tape on their limbs.

Ruby, 41, who runs the 8 Passengers YouTube page, was arrested on two counts of aggravated child abuse along with business partner Jodi Hildebrandt on August 30. 

The Mormon mom’s son climbed out of a window of Hildebrandt’s home and ran to a neighbor for help, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by NBC states. 

In addition to his wounds, the boy was found in an emaciated state. Ruby and husband Kevin Franke’s 10-year-old daughter was found in a similar condition. 

Hildebrandt is also charged with six counts of felony child abuse in Washington County, Utah. Each count carries a sentence of up to 15 years and a $10,000 fine. 

At the time that Ruby’s children were discovered, authorities said that Russell, 12, and Eve, 10, were so malnourished they needed to be taken to a hospital for care. 

Investigators said ‘evidence consistent with the markings found on the juvenile’ was located inside the home upon a search. 

The woman’s other four children – Shari, Chad, Abby, and Julie – were taken by the Utah Division of Child and Family Services. 

In a statement to NBC News, the Washington County attorney said the two women are believed to have caused or permitted ‘serious physical injury’ in three ways.   

‘(1) a combination of multiple physical injuries or torture, (2) starvation or malnutrition that jeopardizes life, and (3) causing severe emotional harm,’ they said. 

According to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office’s website, both women are still in custody as of September 5. 

Ruby and her business partner will next appear in court on September 8. 

The Mormon woman first rose to fame for her strict parenting style which blew up on YouTube and made her ‘millions’ of dollars, she claimed. 

She racked up more than 2.2million subscribers for documenting their day-to-day endeavors on social media, along with husband Kevin. 

The pair stopped uploading videos in January 2022 and the page was taken down completely from the website earlier this year. 

When asked why she left YouTube behind months later, she said she opted to stop uploading videos because she wanted to ‘save her kids.’

In July, she was called out online after video surfaced of her allowing Eve to go hungry after the young girl had forgotten to make her own lunch before school. 

In a video posted to in 2020, Ruby said her daughter’s teacher had texted her, telling her that the youngster didn’t have anything to eat for lunch.

She said all her kids are responsible for preparing their own lunches in the morning, so she would not be dropping off any food for Eve to teach her a lesson. 

Franke said: ‘My hope [is that] she will be hungry and come home and be like ‘that was really painful being hungry all day I’ll make sure to always have a lunch with me.”

‘The natural outcome is that she is just going to have to go hungry.’

It was this parenting style that helped the woman to gain a massive following on YouTube and shine a spotlight on herself and her family. 

After her arrest, one of Ruby’s adult children spoke out on social media and shared that she was excited to see justice finally served to her mom. 

In an Instagram story after her mom’s arrest, Shari, 20, celebrated her mom’s arrest and said she had been ‘trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this.’ 

Shari also said that she is ‘so glad they finally decided to step up’ and that her siblings are safe, DailyMail.com reported. 

The 20-year-old shared an image of police officers outside the family’s Springville, Utah home along with the caption ‘Finally.’ 

On Sunday, Kevin was spotted outside his home by DailyMail.com for the first time since his wife and her business partner were arrested last week. 

Kevin was seen pacing around the property as a man came to remove the YouTube branding from a van parked outside the house. 

The man is believed to have been kicked out of the family home last year. 

He said last week he is ‘trying to keep his children together’ following the arrests. 

Kevin’s attorney, Randy S. Kester, told Page Six his client’s ‘urgent focus is simply to keep his children together under his fatherly care’.

Neighbors said they had been concerned about the children’s wellbeing, and once saw the kids outside pulling weeds for hours during triple-degree heat. 

DailyMail.com spoke to one of Hildebrandt’s neighbors whose home is also in the Kayenta Community located at the base of the Red Mountains in Ivins, Utah. 

They recalled seeing Franke’s van, which had an ‘8 Passengers’ sticker and license plate, regularly parked in front of the home at the time.

‘One thing we noticed and we told the police the same thing, six to eight weeks ago when it was really hot I was outside in the late morning, afternoon pulling weeds and over at Jodi’s home several kids were also outside her home pulling weeds. 

‘Over the course of the day the temperature was over 100 degrees and I gave up after a while because it was so hot but I noticed that the kids stayed out there,’ the neighbor explained.

After Kevin had departed the family home, one neighbor said it appeared the children stopped going to school. 

Neighbors said one of the daughters would often knock on the doors of other homes in the neighborhood that had kids and ask to play while the others were at school.

‘She would just knock on your door and say, “Hi, can your kids play?” And we’re like, “Well, they’re at school. They won’t be home for three or four hours.” And she’d be like, “I’ll wait.” She’s like this lost child,’ the neighbor recounted.

‘I’m really angry because I spoke up. Other people spoke up, and nothing happened, another (female) neighbor explained.

‘I want those kids to know that the community loves them and wants them to be safe,’ she said. 

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk