The American ‘influencer’ Ruby Franke, famous in the YouTube family community, has been arrested for an alleged crime of child abuse and neglect after the police found two minors with signs of malnutrition and remains that indicated they had been gagged.
The well-known ‘youtuber’, famous for 8 Passengers, her channel now inactive on the platform where she had more than 2.3 million subscribers, was arrested after one of the minors alerted for help after fleeing home from one of your neighbors. The boy remained at the home of Franke’s partner, Jodi Hildenbrandt, who has been arrested on charges of the same offence.
As confirmed by the Department of Public Safety of Santa Clara (Utah, USA), the authorities responded to the call of one of the neighbors, who alerted having found a minor at his home, asking for help, around 10:50 a.m. hours of the morning of last Thursday. The minor was described as “emaciated”, “malnourished” and with visible “open wounds”, caused by the “duct tape” that he was wearing around his extremities.
As the statement says, the child’s condition was so serious that he had to be immediately transferred to a nearby hospital so that they could treat him urgently. Later, the officers went to a nearby house (presumably Hildenbrandt’s), where they found another minor in similar circumstances. This other little one was also taken to the hospital. In addition, four other minors passed into the care of the state Department for Children and Families.
Franke and Hildenbrandt, who are currently actively working through their Instagram account, Moms of Truth, are known for their strict ways of educating and upbringing, following the Christian faith, and have more than 343,000 followers on the aforementioned social network alone. . The two collaborate at Hildebrandt’s life service company, ConneXions, where they offer advice on parenting and relationships.
At the moment, only Kevin Franke, Ruby’s husband and father of their six children, has ruled on what happened. Franke, in addition, had already been previously reported to the child protection services.
The strict parenting style of the youtuber had led some of the viewers themselves to denounce the influencer to the authorities. For example, when her eldest son spent seven months sleeping on a beanbag, punished; or how another went without eating, at only six years old, because she had forgotten to wrap her lunch.
The eldest daughter of the youtuber, 20 years old, does not remain in contact with her family. Last Wednesday night, she celebrated that “justice finally acted” after years of trying to alert the authorities. “
The children are safe, but there is a long way to go,” he reported. The detainee’s sisters also used their Instagram accounts, assuring that this arrest was something that “needed to happen” for the safety and well-being of their children: “Behind the scenes we have done everything possible so that the children were safe.”
