Inside the Ruby Franke Case: YouTube Mom Kicked Husband Out of House, Spoke to Him '3 or 4 Times’ In a Year (Exclusive)
Influencer Ruby Franke and her therapist, Jodi Hildebrandt, were charged with six counts of aggravated felony child abuse in August
By the time Kevin Franke learned the whereabouts of his family this August, his wife, Ruby Franke, and the couple's family therapist were under arrest, and his two youngest kids were in the hospital, receiving treatment for severe malnourishment.
In the past year, Kevin had only heard sporadically from his estranged wife — one of the many things that had changed after their marriage counselor, Jodi Hildebrandt, got involved in their lives, Kevin’s lawyer, Randy Kester tells PEOPLE in the latest issue, on newsstands Friday.
“Kevin was shocked,” Kester says of the allegations against Ruby and Jodi, who are each charged with six counts of aggravated felony child abuse. “It was at that point that he realized how deceived he had been.”
The YouTube famous couple, known for their 8 Passengers vlog, which followed the daily lives of their six kids and at its height espoused parenting advice to some 2.5 million subscribers, had separated a year prior to Ruby's arrest. In Kevin’s absence, while Ruby and the youngest two kids lived in Jodi's home, police allege the couple’s son, Russell Franke, 12, was tied to the ground with ropes, and that Ruby and Jodi rubbed cayenne pepper and honey into his wounds.
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The couple started seeing Jodi in 2021. Purportedly specializing in sex addiction, Jodi had been censured by the state in 2012 for having an inappropriate relationship with a client. That same year, Jodi — divorced and estranged from her two kids — founded ConneXions, a program promising on her website “to help you flourish in your relationships,” which offered marital and parenting counseling to “dispose of distortion’s ugly lies in order to live in Truth, connection, and freedom.”
A year later, following a trip with Jodi and another counselor, Ruby told Kevin that his “attitude is infesting the family,” Kester says, and that the only way for them to save their marriage was to separate. Still attending multiple classes weekly with Jodi, Kevin soon moved out. Their son, Chad, joined him, but Jodi, who was also counseling Kevin, ordered them to separate, claiming “they were enabling one another,” Kester says.
Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune
Kevin Franke (right) with his lawyer, Randy KesterAlso at Jodi’s direction, Kevin cut off communication with nearly everyone in his life and was only permitted to talk to Ruby if she reached out — and “Ruby was only allowed to contact Kevin three or four times” in the next year, Kester says, who said that Kevin had been unaware of the abuse his children allegedly endured in his absence.
Related: Police Received Calls About Ruby Franke's Family in 2022: 'Very Concerned About the Children'
Social workers first investigated the couple in June 2020, following several troubling YouTube videos in which Ruby boasted of withholding lunch from a 6-year-old Eve, and another in which Chad, then 15, said he had slept on a beanbag for 7 months after pranking his brother. But that case was closed when Utah's Division of Child and Family Services was unable to substantiate abuse allegations.
Utah State Courts via AP
Ruby Franke at a virtual court appearance, Sept. 8, 2023More recently, as Ruby alternated between Springville and staying with Jodi in Ivins, Utah, about 250 miles away, where they were later arrested, social workers and police came to her door multiple times in response to calls from a neighbor and the Frankes’ estranged daughter, Shari, 20, but made no formal accusations.
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“Basically what child protective services told us is we can’t do anything until somebody gets hurt,” the neighbor says.
Ruby and Jodi (whose counseling license has been frozen) are now held without bail at Washington County Purgatory Correctional Facility. Neither has entered a plea. Kevin has been questioned by police but has not been charged, his lawyer says.
The neighbor who called authorities says Kevin is partly to blame. “Was he negligent? One hundred percent,” the neighbor says. “He decided to leave the house.”
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