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The malnourished and badly bruised son of a parenting advice YouTuber politely asks a neighbor to take him to the nearest police station in newly released video from the day his mother and her business partner were arrested on child abuse charges in southern Utah.
The 12-year-old son of Ruby Franke, a mother of six who dispensed advice to millions via a popular YouTube channel, had escaped through a window and approached several nearby homes until someone answered the door, according to documents released Friday by the Washington County Attorney’s office.
Crime scene photos, body camera video and interrogation tapes were released a month after Franke and business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, a mental health counselor, were each sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. A police investigation determined religious extremism motivated the women to inflict horrific abuse on Franke’s children, Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke announced Friday.
“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,” Clarke said.
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The boy later told investigators that Hildebrandt had used rope to bind his arms and his feet to weights on the ground. She used a mixture of cayenne pepper and honey to dress his wounds, according to the police report.
In handwritten journal entries also released Friday, Franke chronicles months of daily abuse that included starving her son and 9-year-old daughter, forcing them to work for hours in the summer heat and isolating them from the outside world. The women often made the kids sleep on hard floors and sometimes locked them in a concrete bunker in Hildebrandt’s basement.
In a July 2023 entry titled “Big day for evil,” she describes holding the boy’s head under water and closing off his mouth and nose with her hands.
Body camera video shows officers entering Hildebrandt’s house and detaining her on the couch while others scour the winding hallways in search of the young girl. They quickly discover a child with a buzzcut sitting cross-legged in a dark, empty closet. After hours of sitting with the girl and feeding her pizza, police coax her out.
Wtf, i can’t imagine being raised like this 😭
Religion as the basis for the justification of the suffering of children…
Is reason alone to avoid it.
My heart aches for the 12-year old boy and his siblings. I feel so bad for them. I hope they are getting the care they need.
Friendly reminder to everyone that the rest of the world has signed on the United Nation’s Connvention on the Rights of the Child; the US doesn’t like that it could prevent children from being spanked, because God wants us to spank our children (spare the rod, spoil the child).
Religion is often a basis for the suffering of children.
The US doesn’t like the idea of taking responsibility for its actions ever.
the US doesn’t like that it could prevent children from being spanked
There’s that, but mostly some states don’t want minors to be exempt from the death penalty or life imprisonment, which would be a consequence of ratification.
(Also, the Venn diagram of those states and the ones where children can be married but can’t get a divorce due to lacking standing in court, another consequence of non-ratification, is probably a circle.)
Religion is a horrible cultural disease that causes unmeasurable harm, sure, but the USA has a well established tradition of treating children as subhuman and brutally abusing them in a vast variety of ways, many of which aren’t directly linked to religion.
Don’t forget they don’t want child marriages to end either
And zero self reflection. They never point their hyper-critical eyes towards a mirror.
Oh they do, but their flaws are human foibles, not being posessed by a demon.
They’re self-centered pieces of shit that use double standards.
*hypocritical
For anyone that’s interested in a deep dive into what kind of shit was going on here, John Dehlin has covered this pretty extensively on his Mormon Stories podcast. Episodes 1805, 1807, 1808, 1809 (removed due to threat of a lawsuit for defamation; you’d have to find an archived copy. Adam Steed is a difficult interviewee in many ways, unless you are already deeply, intimately aware of Mormonism; his thoughts are often very jumbled and he has a hard time expressing things in a linear fashion), 1817, 1817, 1825 (tangentially; it’s about “Visions of Glory”), 1826, 1844, 1865, 1869, and 1873. It’s also tangentially related the the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell murder cases, in that the beliefs of Jodi Hildebrant and Ruby Franke were both heavily influenced by the same apocalyptic book, “Visions of Glory”.
Keep in mind that the episodes I just listed comprise roughly around 30 hours of listening. About half of them are long-form interviews. Unless you have an an interest in cults, religious indoctrination, apocalyptic beliefs, this is probably not going to be your thing. And unless you were raised Mormon–or have listened to the other 5400 hours or so of podcasts that John Dehlin has done–it’s probably going to be a little hard to follow what’s going on.
A very, very short version is that, while Franke was always borderline abusive as a mom (and that’s pretty par for the course in Mormon families, TBH), Hildebrandt is an incredibly charismatic, persuasive psychopath that used a version of Mormon theology to induce her to be far, far worse than she would have otherwise been. If Hildebrandt had been male–because you must be male to have real power in the Mormon church–she almost certainly would have ended up leading a fundamentalist cult.
EDIT When I say that Franke was borderline abusive, I mean that she was borderline before she met Jodi Hildebrandt. Once Hildebrandt attached herself to Franke, Franke’s behavior became overtly, obviously abusive. In my opinion, Franke was always vulnerable to acting in that way, but Hildebrant was who convinced her that abuse was appropriate and moral.
Franke was always borderline abusive as a mom (and that’s pretty par for the course in Mormon families, TBH)
I don’t know about families in minority sects, but this kind of thing is extremely rare among families in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It certainly happens as much as in any other demographic, but generally rarely. The Church does not tolerate the abuse of children and the actions of Franke will certainly result in excommunication (if it hasn’t already).
Would you care to make a wager on her excommunication? Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were ex’d, but they were ex’d for apostasy, not for murdering children. Hildebrandt should be excommunicated for apostasy, but she likely has too much insider knowledge to safely kick out.
Moreover, I know that the shit Franke did (prior to Hildebrant’s involvement; Franke really went off the deep end once she connected to Hildebrant) would be seen on the spectrum of normal in Mormon households because that’s the same kind of household I was raised in, and my dad was a bishop. Twice. In two different wards. My mom, now in her 80s, still has the same attitudes about ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘sin’ that Franke does/did. The only difference is the question of degree.
Hildebrandt should be excommunicated for apostasy, but she likely has too much insider knowledge to safely kick out.
Lol, that’s some wild conspiracy theory stuff right there 🤣
Wild conspiracy theories about the shit that goes on at the upper levels of the Mormon church has an unfortunate way of being proven true years and decades after the fact.
Many of the decisions that get made by upper levels tends to be about protecting the name and reputation of the church, which means hiding the piles of dirty laundry. Moreover, if you’ve been sending people to a particular therapist for decades for ‘sex addiction’, and Hildebrandt has clearly been favored for such, then it’s going to be really hard for them to turn around and say, no, we’ve been wrong about her this whole time, she’s been preaching apostasy for decades, oops, we dun fucked up.
Has the Mormon church said anything yet about whether or not Tim Ballard was excommunicated, despite his use of elder Ballard’s name and his own sex abuse of women? Or are they still keeping that one quiet?
Wild conspiracy theories about the shit that goes on at the upper levels of the Mormon church has an unfortunate way of being proven true years and decades after the fact.
Such as? There are many lies that are commonly spread about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. Which ones are you referring to that have been “proven true”?
Has the Mormon church said anything yet about whether or not Tim Ballard was excommunicated, despite his use of elder Ballard’s name and his own sex abuse of women? Or are they still keeping that one quiet?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not issue public announcements when a member’s membership is withdrawn. The decision to do such is made at the stake level. People with some level of public prominence, such as Tim Ballard, are known to announce the withdrawal of their membership themselves, usually in order to garner additional support from their followers. The policies of the Church on this topic are not secret and can be found here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/32-repentance-and-membership-councils?lang=eng#title_number71
Such as? There are many lies that are commonly spread about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. Which ones are you referring to that have been “proven true”?
How about pretty much everything that Gerald and Sandra Tanner tried to publicize? Rock in a hat, treasure digging, JS Jr. criminal conviction, JS Jr. “polygamy” (calling it polygamy would be a stretch, since many of the women were already married), polygamy in general (it was being actively denied by people that were polygamysts, including JS Jr., apostles, and shit, even rank and file members were lied to until BY led the majority of Mormons to Utah), the end of polygamy with the first manifesto (in fact, it’s been demonstrated that there was at least one sanctioned polygamous marriage by the child of an apostle after the second manifesto), Ensign Peak & tithing funds being used for City Creek Mall (“oh, tithing didn’t pay for it, we just invested the tithing and then used the investment fund to pay for it…”), PoGP not being a translation at all (in recent years they’ve entirely de-ephasized it, but when I was in seminary they printed the Egyptian funerary text facsimile at the front of the book of Moses, and claimed that it was a translation; later it became the inspiration, and now…?), the Kinderhook plates, the temple endowment ceremony being ripped off from Free Masonry, direct church involvement in the prop 8 campaign in California, and on, and on, and on.
You can even look at Nelson’s, “saying Mormon is a victory for Satan”, and contrast it with Hinckley who championed the, “I’m a Mormon” ad campaign that ran for years. Nelson is claiming that his words are straight from god, so apparently Hinckley was being deceived by Satan when he green-lit a PR campaign…? Every prophet is a prophet until a new prophet says something that contradicts the old one, and then the old one was “speaking as a man”. But wait, weren’t we promised that god would never let a prophet mislead his people? Hmmm.
This is the pattern of the Mormon church. Everything is denied, until the evidence is so overwhelming, and then members are told that it was always this way, and if you didn’t know it’s not their fault.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not issue public announcements when a member’s membership is withdrawn.
They used to print notices of excommunication in Desert News. Literally. So this idea that “oh no, we can’t tell people about this, they need their privacy” is utter nonsense.
I’m going to assume that you’re a believing Mormon, because there really isn’t anyone else that defends their nonsense.
So, here’s your fundamental problem: the beliefs are un-falsifiable. That is, you study, you pray, you think that god gives you good feelings through the holy ghost that confirms that it’s true. If you don’t feel the good feelings, then you believe that you need to pray more, study more, etc., and you need to do this until you do get the ‘right’ answer. But here’s the problem: most religious converts report the same process, and the same feelings. People that have converted to Islam from atheism, people that have converted to Judaism from Christianity, and even people that become Buddhist report going through a similar process. When I was Mormon, I was taught that Satan could counterfeit the feelings from the holy spirit, and that people that thought they felt the spirit when it was telling them that Mormon doctrine was wrong were being deceived. And yet, how can you know that this is true? How can you know that you aren’t being deceived? The answer is that you don’t. You believe you aren’t being deceived, but you can’t know it. Moreover, I will bet every dollar that I have in my wallet right now that you’ve never put the same kind of effort into finding out the Truth of any other religion; you have almost certainly never attempted, for instance, to deeply study The Holy Books of Thelema under the tutalage of a scholar of the Ordo Templi Orientis to discover if Crowley was truly a prophet or not. Instead, you have assumed that your feeling are Truth.
As long as you remain convinced that the Mormon church is absolutely god’s One True Church™, you won’t be able to truly see and understand the near constant changes in doctrine and dogma for what they are.
I don’t think anything that you listed is a secret. And yes, I am an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’m not sure your talking points are made in good faith (you sound like you have a massive chip on your shoulder) but I’ll try to address them anyway.
Every prophet is a prophet until a new prophet says something that contradicts the old one, and then the old one was “speaking as a man”.
This is a mischaracterization about Latter-day Saint beliefs regarding contemporary prophets. Unlike most Christian sects, we believe in an open canon and that God actively communicates to humankind via a prophet today just as in biblical times. A prophet can say one thing and then another prophet can say something else, and both can still be speaking the word of God authoritatively.
They used to print notices of excommunication in Desert News. Literally. So this idea that “oh no, we can’t tell people about this, they need their privacy” is utter nonsense.
It is not “utter nonsense”, it is the policy of the Church. Your logic is faulty, because it could be used to define any improvement in any organization or group as “utter nonsense”. One could just as easily say that because slavery was once legal in the United States, the emancipation proclamation is “utter nonsense”.
So, here’s your fundamental problem: the beliefs are un-falsifiable.
From where I stand, that is your fundamental problem. You sound like you feel personally affronted when someone has faith in something that you can’t observe with your natural senses. That’s okay, I get it. It’s not for you. Why spend so much energy arguing with an internet stranger whom you identify yourself as being obviously an adherent to such a faith?
I am comfortable with my faith and have no interest in forcing anyone to believe like I do. However, it sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder and are heavily prejudiced against religious people in general and Latter-day Saints in particular. I can’t envision a productive outcome to continuing this discussion, but should you have questions about my beliefs and are willing to listen with an open mind, my DMs are always open.
I wish you a joyous day.
Bullshit.
I’m searching for those archived podcast episodes. If anyone knows where I can find them…
All but episode 1809 should be easily available on Spotify or YouTube. 1809 is the tough one; I listened to it when it was released–I generally like Dehlin’s long-format style of interviews, and the subject matters is of personal interest–but I don’t know where to find it now.
I don’t know who sent Dehlin the C&D, so I don’t know when or if the episode will ever be restored. If it was Hildebrant’s attorneys, then he might be able to restore it once she’s in prison. But maybe not, since they would say that–despite her conviction–it’s defamatory. (Although if it’s all true, then by definition it’s not defamation. But you’d have to prove that in court, which is expensive.) If it’s was the Mormon church that issued the C&D because of the accusations that they misused confidential medical records against Adam Steed to throw him out of BYU and threaten his church membership, well, that’s getting tossed into the memory hole.
Their actions have been condemned by other Mormon parenting bloggers who say they misrepresented their community and the religion
Oh bullshit. These religious zealots get together every fucking week at church and pretend they didn’t know this abuse was happening? Mormons are a cult and should be treated as such.
That’s not how it works…
When it comes to mormons, never forget that they had networks of their pastors and elders to hide and ignore abuse. They were more systematic about it than the cuntish catholics.
https://apnews.com/article/mormon-sex-abuse-de446ad8212b6ca50ecbaaf222c35e7e
https://apnews.com/article/mormon-church-sexual-abuse-investigation-e0e39cf9aa4fbe0d8c1442033b894660
I guess “religious extremism” is accurate, but this is batshit insanity as well. There is something very, very wrong in this woman’s brain, and it requires treatment. While she rots in prison of course.
There are many, many Christians who abuse their kids under the guise of godliness. Ever heard of “To Train Up a Child”? It’s a whole book about how to properly abuse your child to turn them into a mindless, obedient slave. They start hitting them as infants for showing curiosity. There are popular Christian influencers who have openly spoken about the ways they “discipline” their kids - one said her husband “doesn’t know his own strength” with their kids. Aka he’s beaten the shit out of them more than once. Sure, Ruby Franke turned it up to 11, but she and her husband routinely abused their children and were public about it for years, and plenty of people saw no problem with it and continued to consume their content.
I’d argue it’s not mental illness, it’s the natural consequence of practicing a branch of Christianity that doesn’t see children as people, just little trophies who aren’t meant to have any personality, needs, or wants. They’re supposed to parrot everything their parents believe and otherwise not be seen or heard.
Your argument is good, and your views have merit. Which is super fucking depressing.
What?
This is par for the course.
Pretty much every Abrahmic offshoot was started by someone who was completely insane.
According to their own history, it all kicked off with Abraham killing family members because a voice in his head told him that anyone doubting the voice needs murdered.
He was violent and insane and now literally billions and billions of people worship the voice he invented, and legitimately believe that if a voice in their head shows up telling them to do horrible shit, it’s probably cool because maybe it’s just God again.
There is absolutely nothing surprising when a person who not only believes those fairy tales, but come from a family they may have spent thousands of years believing them, starts thinking theyre the next “special one”.
Sure, most people dont actually believe in their own religions. But they pretend it’s real, and then the really crazy ones do shit like this.
Being shocked this keeps happening is like asking why your car runs out of gas when you never put gas in it until after the tanks dry
This is the rational result of what they’re doing.
You’d often finds that religious extremists prefer to prey on the mentally unwell. They’re more susceptible to abuse and easier to turn into abusers themselves. Then the chain repeats and the abuse self-replicates, propagating the abuse. Very sane and well adjusted individuals can be made to be really cruel and destructive via religious abuse.
Her business partner (and co-defendant) is described as a “mental health counselor.” I’m sure she’s fine.
/s
Which is why I don’t trust any shrink that’s religious. You can’t claim to be mentally sound when you hold that delusion in your mind.
I’ve definitely applied this filter when selecting a therapist. In Texas, you can weed out a whole lot of them, because they’ll explicitly mention it in their bio.
Handy
I don’t recall what Hildebrandt’s degree is, but she is–or was, before this criminal case got it revoked–a licensed practitioner. She came very, very close to getting her license revoked over some major malpractice and HIPAA violations with a guy named Adam Steed, but was able to retain her license and was put on probation.
The best explanation I’ve heard from interviewees that had worked with her is that she’s a genuine, clinical psychopath.
typical religious nut, dont let them fool you in to thinking that this person is an outlier
But they are an outlier… if they weren’t people wouldn’t be so horrified.
We’re horrified because it’s horrible, not because it’s unusual. Not the first time I’ve been horrified today, unfortunately.
Roflmao pointing out an outlier is an outlier gets you downvoted on Lemmy. We don’t take kindly to people who defend religious types ‘round here.
This person’s actions are an outlier, but the beliefs are not. My own mother held very similar ones during my early years, and the circle of women at the church was not shy in voicing their opinions which, oh so outlier-like, were also similar to this woman’s. That was in an eastern US state, in a protestant church. Don’t forget that the US had the (insanity of) belief in the childcare cults of satan, that D&D was from satan, that rock music was the road to satan, etc. Those were massive, widespread beliefs. They haven’t gone away entirely. Talk to members of a rural church, and you’ll hear the subtle hints of all those things, but they’ve learned not to be overt.
The bitterest part?
- “Do not harm little children” - Church of Satan
- “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.” - The Satanic Temple
Are you getting the picture? People who claim themselves to side with Satan are more eager to show compassion than people who claim to fight against a devil. It immediately reminds me what my grandma used to say, that “Protestants love the devil so much that they talk about him nonstop”. (Not that the Catholic church is any better, I know.)
[I’m not Satanist, regardless of my nickname, by the way.]
The satanic temple name is more than anything just sarcastic, they don’t believe in Satan, they’re just using it because they know it irks the religious.
It’s more like a different interpretation of what “Satan” is, more like an internal force than like a mythical entity. Still - the contrast is clear.
These children deserve better. I cried when I watched the little girl inside the closet and the cops giving a pizza to her.
I would adopt that little girl and raise her as my own. She deserves a better life.
The father is currently fighting for custody. The situation is complicated, but Hildebrandt would wedge herself between couples, encourage wives to sever communications with the husbands, and convince them to force the husbands to move out of their joint home. Often because the husbands were ‘sex addicts’ (e.g., might have masturbated once or twice, of looked at pornography). Franke’s husband probably had no idea what was going on with Hildebrant. He did file for divorce within a few weeks of the arrest.
Wasn’t there a phone call with the wife that was recorded and he was saying things to help her. Like this line is recorded.
I haven’t heard of that. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t, just that I haven’t heard of it. If so, I’d be curious about the circumstances, and what his rationale is. Having heard interviews with several men that had marriages ruined by Hildebrandt, my tendency is to place less blame on Franke’s husband. But that could be entirely wrong; I just don’t know.
It was the very first phone call together. She was saying something like it’s a witch hunt and he kept reminding her this line is recorded and a ton of “… I know, I know”.
I went and listened it again and it sorta sounds like a damaged husband .
Sounds like we really need a “priest hunter” profession again so we can squash religion once and for all.
People wonder why I’m so against religion, well folks, here is an easy example of why the delusional need to wake the fuck up.
“Why don’t you take a seat right over there, pastor?”
“Why? You’re a little too old to be an altar boy”
I’m on board. I’ve been looking to make a career change.
He forgot the famous aphorism, “feed a demon, starve an evangelist”
I keep saying this, but the issue are the people that watch these videos. If they didn’t have followers they wouldn’t be where they are or could do what they do. (But in this case, maybe even without all the money they still would have abused those poor kids)
Franke 100% would have been doing this even without being a YouTuber. What she was doing on 8 Passengers is not all that extreme in Mormon circles, and I don’t mean just the deeply conservative ones. Yes, she went a little farther than most Mormons would be comfortable with, but the core ideas? They entirely understand where she was coming from. The commonly cited example is her refusing to bring lunch to a child (6yo?) that forgot it, saying that it’s ‘personal responsibility’; many Mormons would argue that it’s a little too young to expect a 6yo to be fully responsible like that, but if a 10yo child forgot? Or an 8yo? No problem.
Yup. An eight year old is plenty old enough to accept baptism and a lifetime of church membership and begin taking accountability for their own sins!
8yo children are clearly old enough to evaluate the truth claims and to be able to engage in the serious biblical scholarship that you need to be able to make sense of the Book of Mormon, as well as being old enough to know the historical context of JS Jr. and his actions. So, uh… (Obvious sarcasm is obvious.)
I don’t think society understands the scale of ignorance and evil of other humans that walk among us. I used to always say it’s 50/50. But I think it’s more like 75/25 and decent people with respect for life are the minority. It feels like it’s game over for humanity.
its the opposite. most people are genuinely decent folk. the world is actually getting safer despite what you see and hear because we now see and hear so much more than we used to. its a confirmation bias.
at some point we will realize that religion itself is a cancer. like most cancers, it has a strong benign composition with many deadly streaks.
just like with benign cancers, it must be excised and treated as the mental health problem it is.
Unfortunately too late I think. It’s metastasized.
Left to their own devices, a very strong majority of people default to being “good” people (I generally consider “good” is self sacrifice for the good is the many, and similar thinking and behavior - “evil” is selfish actions and ‘the end justify the means’). However, people are unfortunately not left to their own devices due to algorithms, echo chambers, propaganda, etc.
And evil is far easier to spread than good is…
What the actual fuck? These women are sick. There’s a deeper reason (like
some mental illnesses orsociopathy) for why these women did these things, and their motivations should be examined. If we know more about such things, we can hopefully protect against other people with such behavior in the future.Sure, we can blame religion, but what if religion didn’t exist? Would people like these women not exist either, or would they use another excuse for their behavior?
Until a mental health issue has been concretely determined, I believe it’s somewhat irresponsible to toss the idea around that it’s the underlying root cause for this obscene behavior.
Religion, like other dogmas, has historically empowered and continues to empower a lot of otherwise mentally healthy people to feel okay doing plenty of fucked up shit, simply because religion said it’s okay to do it.
Ever heard of the Stanford Prisoner Experiment? Many “normal” people will do terrible things if simply given permission.
That experiment was recently shown to be a lie, https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication
But I think you’re right that people go along with a lot simply because of religious doctrine. There are plenty of cases of failed “exorcisms”
I mean, religions are fucked in all kinds of ways and can certainly fuck up their followers in a systemic way but in this instance I’m not sure Mormonism is teaching emaciation of children, more like they were attributing their fucked up impulses to religion.
If religion didn’t exist, a lot of this bullshit wouldn’t happen. Some still would, but a good portion wouldn’t happen.
Let me guess… Mormons?
“I will not feed a demon” says Youtuber – is a fun headline.
Whole lot of irony in that one sentence.
Irony?
She’s the demon.
Gotta love religion
