On Wednesday, August 30th, 8 Passengers Mom/ConneXions parent advice trainer, Ruby Franke and Jody Hildebrant, the founder of the child advice program ConneXions, were arrested with 6 counts of felony child abuse, with no bail. That is very ironic for people who give “helpful” advice to use on children. The two were taken into custody in Washington County, Utah after Ruby’s younger boy fled to a neighbor’s house for help. He had escaped through a window at Jodi Hildebrant’s residence. The child reportedly had open wounds, and duct tape on his ankles and wrists while looking extremely malnourished. The neighbor called the police and explained the situation. When police arrived at the home, they searched it, finding Ruby’s youngest girl in similar circumstances. The children were transported to the hospital for the needed attention and treatment. After the arrest and search, four of Ruby’s children were taken into care by the Department of Child and Family Services.
Ruby and Kevin Franke started their family vlogging channel on YouTube in 2015 called “8 Passengers” which featured their six kids. They took viewers through their everyday adventures of living in a huge house. This included going to appointments, school, events, first-time things and so much more. They gained over two million subscribers throughout the years until the channel stopped posting in January 2022.
The abrupt break was due to backlash as viewers started to notice some more extreme parenting choices to their already strict habits. They sent their oldest son to a wilderness camp for over two months. When he returned, he played a prank on his sibling. As a punishment, his bed was taken away for over seven months. This forced him to sleep on a bean bag. Another example included when a teacher called Ruby explaining that her youngest daughter had forgotten to bring food for lunch and requesting Ruby bring some since she was hungry. Ruby replied that her daughter was responsible for bringing her own lunch, and since had not, she should have been hungry. She also insisted to the teacher that she didn’t want anyone to give her food so that she’d learn her lesson. Her daughter was six.
As the channel grew in popularity, more people started paying attention to these controversies and began to examine the content and realize the issues with it. Ruby was airing out her children’s very personal business including issues with friends, first shaving experiences, first periods, grades in classes, and much more.
During the break, Ruby and Kevin started to be featured in ConneXions videos. ConneXions is based on “Universal Principles” including Honesty, Responsibility, and Humility. It was founded by Jodi in 2012 where it was described as extensive and intensive materials about life and parenting. This was being shared in forms like workshops, workbooks, and DVDs. After joining, their strict parenting went to a completely different level as they started to spread harmful information to parents who needed help. They have made the “learning environment” an extremely toxic place where they didn’t teach, but they shamed and treated the parents like they were dumb or terrible people. They talked about giving no privacy to kids, and being unaccepting, and being not understanding. One example of this is when a mom came for advice on her daughter’s eating disorder that she’d been hiding. Ruby told the mom that her daughter was feeling powerful from lying/not eating and the Mom needs to start taking more control of her daughter’s life and activities. Another mom came for advice when her daughter was hiding her journal from her. The Mom had taken the journal and felt guilty. Ruby told this mother that her daughter deserved no privacy and shamed her for feeling guilty since it did not match the principles. Ruby has time and time again explained she loves these Connexion principles more than her kids and others should.
People started to notice that Kevin stopped appearing in these videos and rumors began to spread that Ruby and he were separated, and he had taken custody oldest son. Audiences also noticed that Ruby’s family, including siblings and parents, had stopped mentioning or featuring her in their own YouTube videos. Ruby’s oldest daughter had already moved out before her parents joined. The oldest daughter started to feature her aunts who are Ruby’s sisters on her Instagram, but not Ruby. Some of the siblings spoke out and explained that ConneXions had torn their family apart, as well as other families. They said they no longer see Ruby or her kids due to the extreme values they tried to push on the rest of their family. The oldest daughter spoke out and agreed with this viewpoint, along with sharing a post that said “Finally” with a picture of a cop car. This seemingly confirmed her opinion about her mother’s arrest.
Since Jodi and Ruby’s arrest, people have been hearing all of the horrible details and are asking the family why they hadn’t tried to do something about it. They explained that they had called the police and had done what they could legally, but they really couldn’t do anything more because they were cut off and didn’t know exactly what was going on. The oldest daughter explained she called the police after being worried that her siblings were unattended for days and they didn’t do anything. She added after the arrest, “Today has been a big day. Me and my family are so glad justice is being served. We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up.” The 8 Passengers and ConneXions YouTube channels were deleted by YouTube shortly after this arrest.
While Ruby and Jodi have been in custody, many more details have been coming out every week. Jodi told the police that the two youngest that were at her home should “never be allowed around any other kids.” Ruby told the court that her children were harming each other and other kids. She added that they had confessed to it. Jodi’s niece has also come out saying when under her care for a year, the same things were said about her that Ruby was saying. The niece explained that she was basically forced to confess things as well that weren’t true in order to get Jodi to back off. This is what some suspect happened to Ruby’s kids when they apparently confessed. Kevin is trying to get custody of the four kids under 18 to “keep his children together under his fatherly care” and mend things with his family, even though Ruby’s sisters have claimed that he never tried to do anything until now. Since then it has come out how Kevin and his eldest daughter’s relationship really is when he tried to press charges on her for burglary. This occurred after she got clothing and items from Ruby’s house for her two sisters after they went under her custody. The police wouldn’t press charges since she had been given a warrant to do this. More court dates have occurred since where the oldest daughter has shown up separately from Kevin and the oldest son.
Saugus Freshman Abby Harter said, “I can’t believe someone would do this to their own children.”
More and more details will continue to come out as the case gets deeper and closer to a resolution. The kids’ healing, safety, and health is the utmost important thing.
