Ruby Franke’s Daughter Is Opening Up About Her Mother’s Abuse
In a new interview with Good Morning America, Shari Franke — the eldest daughter of disgraced Mormon mommy vlogger Ruby Franke — detailed the abuse she says she suffered at her mother’s hands, as well as the “strange” relationship between Ruby and her business partner, Utah-based life coach Jodi Hildebrandt.
Ruby Franke first rose to prominence in 2015 through her now-defunct YouTube channel 8 Passengers, where she documented life raising six kids, dispensing controversial parenting advice along the way. She met Hildebrandt, a former sex therapist and founder of the religious online platform ConneXions, through her church in 2019, later appearing in videos on the ConneXions channel. The women were arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse in September 2023, after Franke’s injured and malnourished son showed up at a neighbor’s house begging for food and water. “We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up,” Shari Franke, 21, wrote on her Instagram Story following her mother’s arrest. Ruby and Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to four counts of abuse against Franke’s two youngest children; last February, they were each sentenced to up to 60 years in prison.
Now, Shari Franke is opening up about her relationship with her mother for the first time. “When I was younger, around, like, 5, 6, Ruby was really physical, whether it was, like, a slap to the lip or a slap to the cheek,” Shari told Good Morning America on Tuesday. Shari’s memoir about her experiences with family vlogging, The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, is out today from Simon & Schuster. “When I would practice the piano, her hand would slam, and it was really scary.” She says the physical abuse “kind of stopped” after Ruby met Hildebrandt, who moved into the family’s home in 2022; Shari’s father, Kevin, subsequently moved out. The physical abuse, Shari says, turned psychological. “I could feel a shift,” Shari said in the interview. “I was like, ‘Oh, Jodi, I don’t like her, but maybe this is one good thing that’s come from it: She’s not yelling, she’s not hitting us anymore.’ But it did become more psychological in a way that was more damaging to me.”
Shari also said she sensed “weird vibes” from Hildebrandt and her mother: “I don’t think it’s normal at all that a therapist would move into her client’s home,” she told Good Morning America. “I was moving out to college, I hadn’t even left the house yet, and she is in my room and in my bed.” Franke, who says she was cut off from her family after leaving for school, added that her mom was “secretive” about their relationship and that she doesn’t know “all the details,” but felt “something strange” between them. Franke told Good Morning America she “never saw anything specific” to indicate a romantic relationship between Ruby and Hildebrandt; however, in her memoir, she recalled finding messages between the two women that suggested their relationship “had spilled over into the physical.”
During her sentencing last February, Ruby Franke apologized to her children: “I took from you all that was soft, and safe, and good,” she told the court. In Tuesday’s interview, Shari expressed skepticism over that apology. “I think she’s as sorry as she can be … She probably genuinely believed everything she said,” Shari said. “I don’t believe it, though.”
Related