Kevin Franke, estranged husband of disgraced Utah parenting blogger and convicted child abuser Ruby Franke, opens up in a new documentary series about his wife’s quick descent from a popular lifestyle figure to someone consumed by the idea that her children’s unruly behavior was the work of Satan and demons.
Ruby Franke, a 43-year-old mother of six, and Jodi Hildebrandt, a 55-year-old mother of two, ran a joint parenting and lifestyle YouTube channel called ConneXions Classrooms before they were arrested and pleaded guilty to four of six counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse in a St. George courtroom in December 2023.
“I want our channel to be a ray of sunshine in a world where people just criticize each other and make each other feel bad,” Ruby says in one early video shown in the documentary. “We’re here to show that happy families are reality.”
Kevin and his eldest son, Chad Franke, speak out for the first time since Ruby was sentenced in “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.” The documentary includes clips of Ruby lashing out at her family in newly unearthed video clips that did not make it to her social media profiles.
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Blogger Ruby Franke is imprisoned in Utah for child abuse. (Instagram/ moms_of_truth)
But the clips shown in the documentary are not the happy, edited versions Ruby posted to social media. They show another side of the mommy blogger — one that had a short temper when her children or husband did things she didn’t like.
In one clip, Ruby orders Chad to “fake being happy.”
“All of a sudden, it wasn’t enough to just interact with her,” Kevin says in the documentary. “I had to interact with the camera … and she would pull it out and say, ‘Kevin, this camera is millions of people watching us.’”
Kevin Franke tells police in an August 2023 interview that he has not seen his children in over a year after police arrest his wife, Ruby Franke, and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt. (Washington County Attorney’s Office)
He added that Ruby “really wanted” him “to be the perfect husband … the even-keeled but strong patriarch of the family.”
“But I wasn’t. I am a nerd through and through,” Kevin said.
Chad recently told “Good Morning America” in an interview that things began to change in their family once Ruby started bringing in money for her vlog.
“Lots of yelling, lots of snapping, lots of time-outs in the corner,” he recalled.
Prior to ConneXions Classrooms, Franke ran her own parenting vlog on social media for years called 8Passengers, representing herself, her husband and their six children. Her 8Passengers social media pages generated the majority of the family’s income when it gained popularity. Ruby’s videos shared an intimate view of her family’s seemingly perfect life and had more than 2.5 million subscribers before her downfall.
“We became 8Passengers, and that was a powerful metaphor for us. We’re all in this vehicle together with our family, driving down this road called life,” Kevin Franke says in the documentary.
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Utah authorities found two malnourished and emaciated children at a home in Utah prior to arresting Franke and Hildebrandt. (Instagram/ moms_of_truth)
The popularity began to dwindle, however, after her eldest son admitted nonchalantly in one of the videos she posted to her account that he had been sleeping on a beanbag for seven months as punishment for his behavior. Hildebrandt entered Ruby’s life after 8 Passengers fell apart, and the two pals decided to create ConneXions Classrooms.
ConneXions Classrooms that sold counseling sessions, packages and retreats ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
In one ConneXions Classroom episode, Ruby tells her viewers, “If your child comes to you on fire, you don’t pat them on the head and say, ‘It’s OK, I’ll help you.’ No, you beat them, and you kick them, and you hit them with a rod. You cannot put welts on your child’s legs and then lovingly apply gauze and expect healing,” according to Shari Franke’s memoir, “The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom.”
In earlier videos without Hildebrandt, Franke complains about her children’s school using TikTok to teach dances, the dangers of sleepovers, bullying, and other topics. Some of her videos include her husband, including a “live couples workshop” about managing finances. (YouTube/ ConneXions)
Kevin Franke told “GMA” that he “regrets” the way he handled his wife’s downfall.
“The bottom line is: I was choosing to trust a licensed professional mental health counselor and my wife, and they gave some terrible counsel. And I have regrets. And I wish I hadn’t done those things,” Kevin Franke said.
“I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving her,” Kevin said when asked if he still loves Ruby. “Does that mean that I want to let her back into my life? Let her back into my kids’ lives? Absolutely not.”
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Most families in the area were aware that Franke had a YouTube channel called 8Passengers, her neighbor told Fox News Digital. When she started another vlog called “Moms of Truth”/ ConneXions on Facebook with Hildebrandt, “a few” neighbors became “very concerned” with the content, the neighbor said. (Moms of Truth/ Instagram)
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Utah authorities eventually arrested Ruby and Hildebrandt in August 2023 for abusing Franke’s two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy, after yearslong efforts by Ruby’s eldest daughter, Shari Franke, to get the Department of Family and Child Services to take action against her mother. Some of the abuse occurred in Hildebrandt’s multimillion-dollar home in Ivins, Utah.
The allegations against Franke and Hildebrandt only came to light after Franke’s son fled Hildebrandt’s Ivins home and ran to a neighbor, who called 911 after seeing the malnourished boy with duct tape on his wrists and ankles.
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“It was so outlandish to me that it had to have been fabricated,” Kevin Franke told “GMA” when asked about his initial reaction to his wife’s arrest.
Franke and Hildebrandt were both sentenced to serve four consecutive terms between a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison.
Ruby Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were sentenced to prison in Utah for child abuse. (Instagram/ moms_of_truth)
Now, Kevin is warning of the dangers of social media after his family’s once-private life was put under a microscope.
“There is real danger when you place yourself, or your family, your children, out onto public social media,” he told “GMA.”
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In dozens of YouTube videos and social media posts, Franke and Hildebrandt coached parents in calm voices from a living room couch on how to raise their children in “truth.” In a video posted just before their arrests, Hildebrandt said pain can be a good thing for children of a certain age.
The case has prompted discussions about how parenting and lifestyle blogs often present only a sliver of a person’s or family’s reality, as well as children’s rights to their own privacy if their parent is a social media star.
