West
Utah mommy blogger Ruby Franke's power, public image allowed child abuse to go 'unchecked': expert
The “power” and “public image” of disgraced Utah parenting blogger and mom of six Ruby Franke, who is facing up to 30 years in prison for child abuse, allowed her crimes against her children to go “unchecked,” according to a criminal defense attorney.
Franke, 43, and Jodi Hildebrandt, a 55-year-old mother of two, ran a joint parenting and lifestyle YouTube channel called ConneXions Classrooms before they were arrested and pleaded guilty to four of six counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse in a St. George courtroom in December 2023.
“Cases of child abuse are unfortunately familiar, but this one stands out for how power, public image and systemic failures allowed it to go on unchecked,” Jamie E. Wright, a Los Angeles millennial trial attorney and founder/CEO of the Wright Law Firm, told Fox News Digital. “Over the years, Franke built up an online persona as the perfect mom, giving parenting advice to millions. But behind the carefully constructed smiles was a darker truth — a world of starvation, isolation and brutal punishment.”
Wright added that the Franke/Hildebrandt case is “a sobering reminder that social media can mask dysfunction with a gleaming facade.”
MOMMY BLOGGER RUBY FRANKE’S HUSBAND SAYS ‘SOME CRAZY S–T’ WENT ON IN ABUSE ACCOMPLICE’S $5.3M FORTRESS
Most families in the area were aware that Franke had a YouTube channel called 8Passengers, her neighbor told Fox News Digital. When she started another vlog called “Moms of Truth”/ ConneXions on Facebook with Hildebrandt, “a few” neighbors became “very concerned” with the content, the neighbor said. (Moms of Truth/ Instagram)
Prior to meeting Hildebrandt, Franke ran a successful parenting video blog, or vlog, on YouTube called 8Passengers, representing herself, her husband and their six children. The vlog was a success, with more than 2 million followers, generating the majority of her family’s income for years.
But the 8Passengers empire came crumbling down once users started to notice Franke’s unusual behavior and punishments for her children. The story of Franke’s downfall is captured in a new Hulu documentary called “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.”
YOUTUBE MOMMY BLOGGER RUBY FRANKE, CO-HOST JODI HILDEBRANDT SENTENCED FOR CHILD ABUSE: ‘DARK DELUSION’
In earlier videos without Hildebrandt, Franke complains about her children’s school using TikTok to teach dances, the dangers of sleepovers, bullying, and other topics. Some of her videos include her husband, including a “live couples workshop” about managing finances. (YouTube/ ConneXions)
“I want our channel to be a ray of sunshine in a world where people just criticize each other and make each other feel bad,” Franke said in one early video shown in the documentary. “We’re here to show that happy families are reality.”
But other clips shown in the series are not the happy, edited versions Franke posted to social media. They show another side of the mommy blogger — one that had a short temper when her children or husband did things she didn’t like.
UTAH POLICE DISCOVER ‘PANIC ROOM’ INSIDE ABUSIVE MOMMY BLOGGER ACCOMPLICE’S $5.3M DESERT HOME
In one clip, Franke ordered her eldest son, Chad Franke, to “fake being happy.”
Chad Franke discusses his relationship with his mother, Ruby Franke, in Hulu’s “The Devil in the Family” documentary series. (Hulu)
“All of a sudden, it wasn’t enough to just interact with her,” Franke’s husband, Kevin Franke, said in the documentary.
MOMMY BLOGGER RUBY FRANKE ASKED DAUGHTER FOR ONE THING BEFORE ARREST: MEMOIR
“I had to interact with the camera … and she would pull it out and say, ‘Kevin, this camera is millions of people watching us.’”
Brannon Patrick, a clinical therapist who briefly worked under Hildebrandt and who is featured in the documentary series, said it was “fascinating” to watch Franke go from “happy” to “upset and angry” in the unedited videos.
“The reality is, everybody has issues and everybody has struggles, and nobody is perfect, and nobody can be perfect. And so on one hand, we’re presenting this ideal thing. On the other hand, the reality is something completely different,” Patrick said.
“Immediately when it all blew up, it was crazy. All these anti-Mormon podcasters … were just going off about it and how the church was complicit in it and just the church’s teachings about sexuality and those types of things … really became front and center,” he explained. “And this triggered those talks … about perfectionism and being fake — acting like you’re one way in front of people but when the doors are closed, it’s actually quite the opposite.”
RUBY FRANKE’S HUSBAND DETAILS WIFE’S ‘CRAZY’ RELATIONSHIP WITH CHILD-ABUSE ACCOMPLICE:
Chad started to see a change in his mother once large checks started rolling in from her constant content creation. His mother had a shorter circuit and would lash out when her children were not behaving the way she wanted them to behave or responding how she wanted them to respond — particularly while she was recording and trying to portray a certain perfect image of her family.
The popularity of 8Passengers began to dwindle after Chad admitted nonchalantly in one of the videos she posted to her account that he had been sleeping on a beanbag for seven months as punishment for his behavior, and Franke’s followers lashed out. Hildebrandt entered Franke’s life after 8Passengers fell apart, and the two pals decided to create ConneXions Classrooms.
“I think we have a culture of perfectionism and shame in many ways, and … [the Franke case] just illustrated it.”
“Jodi just threw fuel on the fire and the fire that was already burning and took it to the extremes,” Patrick said.
YOUTUBE MOMMY BLOGGERS ARRESTED ON ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD ABUSE: ‘FINALLY’
Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt ran a joint YouTube page called ConneXions, previously known as Moms of Truth, that aimed to teach some 4,650 followers how to “successfully navigate life.” (Instagram/ moms_of_truth)
ConneXions Classrooms sold counseling sessions, packages and retreats ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
In one ConneXions Classroom episode, Franke told her viewers, “If your child comes to you on fire, you don’t pat them on the head and say, ‘It’s OK, I’ll help you.’ No, you beat them, and you kick them, and you hit them with a rod. You cannot put welts on your child’s legs and then lovingly apply gauze and expect healing.”
Patrick said he would diagnose Hildebrandt with clinical narcissism.
“She was really lonely.”
“I don’t use that word lightly because I know it’s thrown around way too much,” he said. “But she was a narcissist. … She was charming enough to draw people in, but she still, to me, felt very disconnected as a human being. She was very convincing in her speech, but she was disconnected. Her family life wasn’t good. She didn’t have any really close friends.”
UTAH CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR SENT DAMNING TEXT TO LOVER BEFORE HUBBY POISON PLOT: DOCS
Kevin Franke said Ruby “really wanted” him “to be the perfect husband … the even-keeled but strong patriarch of the family.” (Hulu)
FOLLOW THE FOX TRUE CRIME TEAM ON X
In 2023, Utah authorities arrested the two pals and business partners for abusing Franke’s two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy. Some of the abuse occurred in Hildebrandt’s home.
The allegations against Franke and Hildebrandt only came to light after Franke’s son fled Hildebrandt’s Ivins home and ran to a neighbor, who called 911 after seeing the malnourished boy with duct tape on his wrists and ankles.
“Social media helped Ruby Franke build a brand around extreme parenting, which likely made it harder for people to see the red flags,” trauma therapist Malka Shaw, founder of Kesher Shalom Projects, told Fox News Digital. “When someone presents as the authority on family values, there’s often a reluctance to question them—even when the content itself is unsettling.”
HEAR THE 911 CALL:
Wright noted that when “a family’s life becomes abrand, perception triumphs over wellness.”
“And thus secrecy thrives, and controltightens,” she said. “Ruby’s oldest daughter, Shari, has since spoken out about the damage that was done, joining a growing chorus of former child influencers and reality stars who have recently discussed the dangers of living their lives without protections in the public eye.”
Shari explained in the documentary how her mother’s company, 8Passengers LLC, listed Franke’s six children as “employees.”
“When children are treated as commodities, they are vulnerable in every way, shape and form — whether living in a suburban home or in Hollywood.”
Wright said the “most haunting question of all” in the Franke-Hildebrandt case is why the abuse was not “halted sooner.” Shari Franke has also talked about how she tried for years to get the Department of Family and Child Services to take action against her mother in her memoir.
Shari Franke explained how she tried for years to get the Department of Family and Child Services to take action against her mother in her memoir. (Hulu)
“Child protectionagencies are often under-resourced, hesitant to intervene in cases where the accused is a respected member of the community. A good image can be carefully curated, and a cover for an abuser for years,” Wright explained.
She added that for many Utah locals, the case was a “betrayal.”
SIGN UP TO GET TRUE CRIME NEWSLETTER
The demise of Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt ended with the pals and business partners in prison.
“Franke wasn’t just another influencer; she was a sort of moral authority,” Wright said. “Her fall has sparked a conversation about how child welfare regulations should apply to content creators, and what ethical obligations content creators have to the subjects of their work. How do we protect children in digital media How do we ensure that they’re protected and that their rights and privacy are protected?”
Franke and Hildebrandt were both sentenced to serve four consecutive terms between a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison.
Ruby Franke spoke publicly for the first time at her sentencing hearing last year.
Movie poster for “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.” (Hulu)
“For the past four years, I’ve chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion,” a teary Franke said in a statement at the time. “My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone who challenged me. I was led to believe this world was an evil place, filled with cops who control, hospitals that injure, government agencies that brainwash, church leaders who lie and lust, husbands who refuse to protect, children who need abuse.”
CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
She continued: “To my babies, my six little chicks, you are part of me,” she continued. “I was the momma duck who was consistently waddling you to safety. … In the past four years, I was consistently leading you to danger.”
The case has prompted discussions about how parenting and lifestyle blogs often present only a sliver of a person’s or family’s reality, as well as children’s rights to their own privacy if their parent is a social media star.
Read the full article from Here
San Francisco, CA
DoJ closes San Francisco immigration court in move critics say worsens case backlog
The Department of Justice shuttered a major San Francisco immigration court last week, a decision attorneys say could exacerbate the Bay Area’s immigration case backlog.
Early in the year, news reports emerged of the closure of the courthouse on 100 Montgomery Street slated for January 2027. Over the last year, the Department of Justice had fired 20 of the court’s 22 judges (the Trump administration has been accused of culling certain immigration judges, in favor of those more amenable to its ongoing mass deportation agenda).
The justice department’s executive office for immigration review (EOIR) described the court’s closure as “cost effective” in a statement last week. A smaller court in San Francisco remains open, but the majority of court operations will move to an immigration court 35 miles (56km) away in the East Bay city of Concord.
The Concord court opened in 2024 amid a Biden-era push to trim the ballooning immigration case backlog. As of September 2025, nationwide there are 3.75m pending immigration cases, according to data from the EOIR. In San Francisco, there are 120,000, per the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac), a research center at Syracuse University.
Some legal experts doubt the Concord court, where six judges were recently removed, has the capacity to inherit the closed San Francisco court’s caseload. A justice department spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
“With so few judges at the Concord court, we’re going to see a lot of people waiting years and years and years to have their cases heard,” said Milli Atkinson, director of the San Francisco Bar Association’s immigrant legal defense program.
“These delays deeply affect people. They affect people’s ability to have resolution … to have an answer and closure, whether a positive one that they’d hoped for or a negative one,” said Shira Levine, a former judge at the San Francisco immigration court, who is now legal director for the Immigrant Institute of the Bay Area.
The passage of time could also weaken the presentation of a case.
At asylum hearings, people are “presenting a lot of oral testimony from themselves and from witnesses. Over years, testimonial memories can fade,” Levine said. “Even if you submit the written evidence, years later, someone may not be available to testify in support of that evidence.”
The San Francisco court’s closure coupled with the exodus of judges has sown “a lot of chaos”, Atkinson said. There are court dates being pushed back and others being pushed up as a result of recent changes.
Atkinson expects that there several individuals will fall through the cracks of the court system.
“A lot of migrants have unstable addresses or don’t receive their mail,” she said, also adding that notices in English may not be heeded by those who don’t speak or read it.
People could then be placed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s radar if they miss their hearings, Atkinson said.
“If someone gets the wrong date, gets the wrong time, gets the wrong place, doesn’t file something exactly correct … the consequences are in some cases – where they really do have a serious fear of return – life-threatening.”
Last chosen, first signed.
New Denver Broncos linebacker Red Murdock agreed to terms on a four-year rookie contract on Tuesday. The news was first reported by 850 KOA’s Benjamin Albright. Murdock’s contract is worth $4.503 million with a $122,000 signing bonus.
Murdock was the 257th and final player selected in the 2026 NFL draft, earning the title of “Mr. Irrelevant.” Murdock (6-1, 232 pounds) was a force to be reckoned with for Buffalo in the MAC during his four-year college career. Murdock set a new FBS record with 17 forced fumbles, breaking the record of former Bulls all-star Khalil Mack.
Murdock is the first of Denver’s seven drafted rookies to sign his first pro contract, ahead of reporting to Broncos rookie minicamp later this week. It is anticipated that the other rookies will follow in short order, making them officially members of the team.
Denver began the offseason program on Monday, with organized team activities scheduled to begin in June. After that, fans will get to sell all the club’s rookies, including Murdock, at training camp later this summer.
Social: Follow Broncos Wire on Facebook and Twitter/X! Did you know: These 25 celebrities are Broncos fans.
Seattle, WA
‘Clueless’ socialist Mayor Katie Wilson in hot seat after video of 77-year-old beaten in downtown Seattle goes viral
Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson is facing fierce blowback on social media after a 77-year-old man was seen on video being beaten by two individuals in a crime that was captured by closed-circuit television cameras, a tool that Wilson has denounced in the past as something that makes the community feel unsafe and “vulnerable.”
The elderly man was walking down the street in downtown Seattle last month when two men walking by him stopped, without any provocation, shoved him to the ground and beat him, KOMO News reported.
Ahmed Abdullahi Osman, 29, was later arrested and charged with second-degree assault, and police are looking for the second suspect. Osman was reportedly booked into jail the night of the assault and then released back onto the streets before a bail hearing.
“Turning on more cameras won’t magically make our neighborhoods safer, but it will certainly make our neighborhoods more vulnerable,” Wilson said in 2025 after Seattle City Council’s approval of expanding the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) CCTV pilot program, the program used to capture the video of this specific crime, according to KOMO News.
Conservatives on social media quickly pointed to Wilson’s policies, which have been much maligned as “soft on crime,” as a contributing factor, as well as her previous comments on CCTV.
“They elected a SOCIALIST,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez posted on X. “What did they think would happen?”
“Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson remains clueless on the job,” journalist Jonathan Choe posted on X. “So she’s allowing far-left activists to make public safety decisions for the city.”
“Go ahead and explain the ‘sOCiONoMic rOoT cAusES’ of this heinous crime,” Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael A. Mangual posted on X.
“Ahmed Abdullah Osman beat a 77-year-old in Seattle,” conservative influencer account End Wokeness posted on X in a clip that has been viewed over a million times. “Police ID’d him thanks to street video cameras. Mayor Wilson: ‘CCTV puts refugees at risk.’”
Wilson has amplified concerns from local activist groups that CCTV cameras will pose a threat to illegal immigrant communities.
“We are deeply concerned that the expansion of these tools will create an infrastructure where federal agencies can more readily target vulnerable communities, including immigrants and refugees,” the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Washington and the Church Council of Greater Seattle said in a letter last year.
The victim in the incident spent a week in a hospital after suffering a broken arm, knee and facial injuries, KOMO News reported.
Wilson’s office directed Fox News Digital to a March press release in which she outlined her position on the cameras, saying she is leaving the current cameras on but “pausing expansion of the pilot” program until “we have completed a privacy and data governance audit, and taken significant steps to strengthen our policies.”
Wilson acknowledged there’s “no doubt that these cameras make it easier to solve some crimes” that include “serious ones like homicides, but also, cameras are not the one key to making our neighborhoods safe.”
“I want to acknowledge that this is a controversial issue,” Wilson added. “For some people, seeing CCTV cameras in the neighborhood where they live or work or attend school makes them feel safer. For others, those same cameras make them feel less safe.”
“Those feelings are important, because our quality of life is partly about our feelings of safety or lack thereof, and our sense that our city is a welcoming place that is designed with consideration for our well-being and our humanity.”
Wilson continued, “But precisely because different people and different communities experience the cameras differently, it’s important to base a decision on more than feelings. It’s important to ground our actions in a thorough understanding of how the cameras are being used, of the public benefits they are providing, and of any harm they are causing or could cause.”
In a Tuesday press release, the Redmond, Washington Police Department announced the second suspect, Jes’Sean Tyrell Elion, was arrested with the help of Seattle police officers.
However, Osman is on the run and “currently wanted on a $200,000 warrant” and “officers are actively searching for him,” the press release said.
Last month, Fox News Digital reported on city advocates who say they are struggling to find solutions as homelessness and open-air drug use spread across Seattle’s streets, amid growing concerns about the direction of Wilson’s new administration.
“You can just see the foil is like blowing down the sidewalks like autumn leaves,” Andrea Suarez, founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“Very common to see property damage of our parks and shared spaces. You can see Narcan is used to reverse an overdose, so you’ll see cartridges. But at least we’re remodeling the bathroom to be gender-neutral. I’m not [kidding] you, that’s where our priorities are.”
-
Business3 minutes agoLast resort in Primm, former gambling mecca at the California-Nevada border, will close
-
Entertainment9 minutes agoTed Turner, CNN creator who revolutionized the media industry, dies at 87
-
Lifestyle15 minutes agoAn Altadena glassblower lost his home to flames. In his studio, he’s forging something new
-
Politics21 minutes agoCommentary: How I learned to stop worrying about noncitizens voting in L.A. elections
-
Science27 minutes agoRFK Jr. clears path for minors’ use of tanning beds, much to the dismay of dermatologists
-
Sports33 minutes agoLakers hurting for Luka Doncic as offensive slump continues in Game 1 against Thunder
-
World45 minutes agoEU reset: Hungary’s incoming PM to meet Giorgia Meloni in Rome
-
News1 hour agoPope Leo rejects claim he supports nuclear weapons after Trump tirade