December 30, 2025
by Carla Hay
“Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal”
Directed by Ali Naushahi and Olivia Witt
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American) talking about the child-abuse scandal involving former YouTube family influencer Ruby Franke and her business partner Jodi Hildebrant, who are both from Utah.
Culture Clash: In December 2023, Franke and Hildebrandt were both convicted of felony child abuse for beating, torturing, starving, and holding captive Franke’s two youngest children earlier that year.
Culture Audience: “Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching true crime documentaries about child abusers who are punished for their crimes and how family vlogging can have a dark side.
“Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” is the first documentary film about the scandal of the first famous social media family influencer who became a convicted child abuser. It’s a fairly straightforward documentary that has a well-rounded mix of interviews of law enforcement, journalists, and people who knew Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt before Franke and Hildebrandt went to prison for child abuse. More facts have since emerged since this documentary premiered on television in 2024, but this documentary has a fairly comprehensive summary of the facts, along with commentary from people who were involved with the case or closely followed the case.
Directed by Ali Naushahi and Olivia Witt, “Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” is a British TV production that was renamed “Abused by Mom: The Ruby Franke Scandal” for American television. The documentary is narrated by actress Jane Perry, who gives voiceover narration in an appropriately serious tone. The documentary follows a traditional format of mixing archival footage with footage that was filmed exclusively for the documentary.
“Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” begins by showing the now-notorious home video surveillance footage from August 30, 2023, when Franke’s then-12-year-old son rang the doorbell of a neighbor on a blistering hot day in the desert city of Ivins, Utah. (All of the Franke children who were still under the age of 18 when this documentary was released do not have their names mentioned in the documentary.) The boy, who is Franke’s second-youngest child of six children, was emaciated, wearing only socks on his feet, and had duct tape tied over his wounded ankles. The boy asked to be taken to jail because he said he belonged there.
The elderly couple (whose names are also not revealed) who answered the door are seen trying to help the boy, as the man of the house calls 911 to send an ambulance. His voice cracks with emotion when he sees the extent of the boy’s injuries. During this phone call, the boy says that he came from Jodi Hildebrandt’s house and his mother is Ruby Franke. At the time, Franke was a social media influencer whose specialty was parenting advice, while Hildebrandt was therapist/life coach who was Franke’s business partner.
Later, through Franke’s own journals, police body cam footage, witness statements and other evidence, it was revealed that Franke (who was born in 1982) and her business partner Hildebrandt (who was born in 1969) had been holding Franke’s two youngest children (the youngest being a 9-year-old girl at the time) captive in Hildebrandt’s sprawling compound in Ivins for several months. The children had been brainwashed to believe that they were evil and possessed by the devil and deserved any torture and punishment that they were getting from Franke and Hildebrandt.
Body cam footage shows the police went to Hildebrandt’s home and found the youngest child emaciated in a locked room. Hildebrandt and Franke were arrested that day and refused to explain in police questioning why the children were abused. Franke’s middle two children (daughters who were underage teenagers at the time) had been visiting at a friend of the family’s at the time the police searched Hildebrandt’s house. Franke’s two eldest children (daughter Shari and son Chad), who were over 18 and estranged from their parents, were living in separate residences.
At the time of this abuse, Ruby Franke and her husband Kevin (who had been married since 2000) were separated, and he had been told to stay away from his wife and kids. This separation had been ordered by Hildebrandt, who had been the former couple’s therapist/life coach under a business that Hildebrandt founded called ConneXions. Hildebrandt had accused Kevin (who was born in 1979) of being addicted to porn because he admitted that he looked at porn. Hildebrandt had also moved into the Franke household for a while, but after the separation, Ruby began to live with Hildebrandt.
Body cam footage shows Kevin being questioned by police on the day that his two youngest children had been found emaciated and abused. He denied knowing anything about his kids being in danger and seemed shocked by what police had found at Hildebrandt’s house. Because Kevin had not been in any contact with and had not seen his children for about a year, he was ruled out as a suspect.
Kevin filed for divorce from Ruby in November 2023. In December 2023, Ruby and Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse of Ruby’s two youngest children. In February 2024, Ruby and Hildebrandt were each sentenced to four to 30 years in prison. In early 2025, Kevin and Ruby’s divorce became final, after Kevin won his long legal battle of wanting full custody of their underage children, who had been placed in foster care after Ruby’s arrest and conviction.
Ruby (who lived in Springville, Utah) was a controversial social media influencer, who in 2015, launched a successful family vlog called 8 Passengers, starring herself, Kevin and their six children. At its peak, 8 Passengers had nearly 2.5 million subscribers and had six-figure sponsorship deals that totaled between $1 million to $2 million a year. Ruby presented her family as wholesome, loving and devout followers of the Mormon faith, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Hildebrandt, who is also Mormon, marketed Hildebrandt’s therapist counseling sessions almost exclusively to Mormon clients.
By January 2022, 8 Passengers went defunct, after Ruby was the subject of intense criticism and scrutiny over her harsh parenting tactics. In one video, she admitted that she made her teenage son Chad sleep on a bean bag for seven months as punishment. In another video, Ruby filmed herself telling her then 6-year-old daughter (her youngest child) that the daughter would be deprived of lunch that day because the daughter didn’t make her own lunch.
After the demise of the 8 Passengers channel, Ruby went into business with Hildebrandt, a divorced mother whose two adult children are estranged from her. Together, Ruby and Hildebrandt started a social media platform called Moms of Truth, which promoted and advocated for strict parenting discipline that many people would describe as abusive techniques. Ruby was also actively involved in ConneXions, whose main business was counseling married Mormon couples.
A disturbingly high percentage of these couples got divorced because of Jodi’s domineering style of “counseling,” says Trey Warner, a former ConneXions client who is interviewed in the documentary. Warner says he was one of a minority of people who didn’t go to ConneXions for marriage counseling, but Warner says he saw many couples’ marriages ruined because Hildebrandt manipulated the wives to divorce their husbands. The documentary mentions that Hildebrandt’s therapist license was suspended in the early 2010s because she breached the confidentiality of a client by telling private information about him to a therapy group.
An unnamed woman, whose face is not shown in the documentary, describes herself in the documentary as a friend of the Franke family. She blames Hildebrandt for breaking up the marriage of Ruby and Kevin. The couple had separated in June 2022. Kevin moved out of the family home in July 2022. In interviews with police, Kevin said Hildebrandt made him feel guilty for looking at porn and convinced Kevin that he had a porn addiction, which Hildebrandt said required Kevin to stay away from Ruby and their children.
By September 2022, neighbors and eldest child Shari were calling police to report that the four youngest Franke children (all under the age of 18 at the time) were spending hours and sometimes days alone in the Springville house. Nothing came of these reports because every time police showed up at the house to check on the kids, no one answered the door. Without a warrant or any witnessed abuse of the children, the police had no choice but to walk away. It has since been revealed in news reports, Shari Franke’s 2025 memoir “The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom,” and in the 2025 documentary series “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke” that before Ruby and Kevin separated, they had ordered Shari and Chad to stay away from the house and threatened to have Shari and Chad arrested for trespassing if Shari and Chad went to the house. By early 2023, the underage Franke children were being homeschooled.
Much of “Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” tells this tragic story through archival footage that shows how the image that Ruby presented on camera was very different from who she was in real life. Springville Police Department chief Lance Height says in the documentary that the Franke case is the worst case of child abuse he’s ever seen. Other people interviewed in the documentary are Utah News Dispatch reporter Kyle Dunphey; NBC News Internet culture reporter Kalhan Rosenblatt; psychologist/parenting expert Maryhan Munt; [Cult]ure Shock YouTube channel founder Kendra Lee Bryann; The Mirror U.S. reporter Fiona Leishma; and ABC News legal contributor/attorney Brian Buckmire. “Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” is a no-frills documentary that avoids tabloid-like sensationalism and is an informative and cautionary tale that shows warning signs to look out for if people suspect child abuse.
Channel 5 (in the United Kingdom) premiered “Abused by Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal” on May 5, 2024. Peacock premiered the movie (retitled to “Abused by Mom: The Ruby Franke Scandal”) on August 13, 2024.
