Ruby Franke, a disgraced mom-influencerwho is serving a maximum of 30 years in prison, kept detailed handwritten journal entries about the daily abuse she inflicted on her children.
On Friday, prosecutors released months’ worth of heavily redacted entries in which Franke described abusing two of her six children — who were referenced as “R” and “E.”
In one entry from July 2023, the former “8 Passengers” Youtuber, 42, wrote that it was a “big day for evil.”
Warning: graphic description of child abuse
She then described holding her 12-year-old son, who she believed to be possessed by a demon, underwater while she placed her hands “tightly over his nose & mouth.”
“These selfish, selfish children who desire only to take, lie, and attack have zero understanding of god’s love for them,” Franke wrote in her journal.
Franke also withheld food and water from her son, which she justified by writing, “I will not feed a demon.”
In another journal entry from around the same time, Franke revealed that she cut off her daughter’s hair and “doused” her with water in the “dog wash.” Franke explained that it was punishment for the young girl wanting to break the two-day fast that was forced upon her.
Franke described shaving her daughter’s head numerous other times in the past for whining, writing, “If she is going to act sick, she can look sick.”
Ruby was arrested in August 2023 on multiple charges of child abuse alongside her former business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, after her son climbed out of a window in the latter’s Utah home and ran to their neighbor for help.
Both women — who belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse in December.
In a case summary, the Washington County Attorney’s Office said that religious extremism motivated Franke and Hildebrandt to “inflict this horrific abuse.”
“The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies,” the summary, posted Friday, read.
The two kids were held in a “work-camp-like setting” and “were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment,” per the report.
They were forced to perform manual labor as punishment — often in the sweltering heat without water, shoes or socks on a cement patio — and beaten.
Before Franke’s son escaped, he was bound with ropes and his feet were tied to weights so that he could not flee after being caught trying to run away.
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Despite that, Franke and Hildebrandt’s abuse was exposed in August 2023 after the boy fled to a neighbor’s house asking for help.
“I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door asking for help, and he said he just came from a neighbor’s house, and we know there’s been problems at this neighbor’s house,” the concerned neighbor told 911.
“He’s emaciated. He’s got tape around his legs. He’s hungry, and he’s thirsty. … I don’t think he needs an ambulance,” the man added. “I’ll let the cops decide that, but his ankles are taped up, and he won’t tell us why. … There’s sores around him.”
According to the neighbor, the boy believed the injuries were “his fault.”
The kids’ father, Kevin Franke, claims he played no role in the abuse and that they were separated at the time of her arrest.
He filed for divorce in November 2023 and requested guardianship of the former couple’s teenage daughter Abby in February 2024.
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