Some of you that may have been following me for a long time may criticize me as being insensitive about juvenile-justice-related topics merely because I strongly question and even challenge the statutory-rape laws here in the United States. Well, I can assure you that I am anything but insensitive to such topics. In fact, I don't believe that abusive parents should have the legal right to disinherit their own children under any circumstances.
You may or may not know about the scandal that broke back in 2023 in which a YouTube influencer named Ruby Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were indicted for abusing Ms. Franke's two youngest children and nearly murdering them. Both women are now behind bars. They will be eligible for parole hearings fairly soon, but I seriously doubt that they will be released so soon.
The name of the two kids of Ms. Franke that she and Ms. Hildebrandt abused were Russell and Eve Franke. The name of the now defunct YouTube channel that Ms. Franke had out in Utah was "8 Passengers."
There were even indications in the videos on that same channel that Ms. Franke and her husband, Kevin Franke, were starving their two youngest children. You'll likely notice that Russell and Eve are skinny in most every video of theirs. And, yes, now Mr. Franke is coming back at the public at large as the good guy, but it doesn't erase the fact that he was a silent collaborator in much of Ms. Franke's crimes against her children.
I'm not going to deny that Mr. Franke has done a number of good deeds to atone for his failures to protect his children, but they still don't excuse how he handled or rather mishandled Ms. Franke's abuse against them. Mr. Franke and Ruby Franke are now divorced from each other, and Mr. Franke has gotten remarried. He obviously didn't want to remain married to a jailbird, so he decided to move on.
Ms. Franke once lived a lavish lifestyle through her YouTube channel, and now she is living in a correctional facility with very little or no privacy. The name of the organization that she and Ms. Hildebrandt were running, which was really a cult, was ConneXions. They misrepresented it as being some kind of therapeutic organization to help others with their personal problems and their marriages, but they did much more damage to others than they did good in that organization, to say the least.
Below is a video that shows Ms. Franke talking about her business relationship with Ms. Hildebrandt almost two years before they both nearly starved her two youngest kids, Russell and Eve, to death. Interestingly enough, Russell and Eve were the only two kids of hers that were in this video with her.
In hindsight, it is horrifying to watch this same video, knowing what was eventually going to happen to these two kids by 2023. In her video, Ms. Franke acts as though she has found the proverbial bluebird of happiness in her business partnership with Ms. Hildebrandt. However, this video really marks the beginning of both women's respective downfalls.
Ruby Franke Takes Her Two Youngest Kids Shopping And Talks About Her Involvement With Jodi Hildebrandt, Among Other Thingshttps://youtu.be/VZsE57jC_lo?si=wayTXgS-KES166Rd
In her video, Ms. Franke speaks as though her involvement in ConneXions was going to improve her marriage to Kevin Franke, but instead it ultimately ended her marriage to him. She describes the sessions with Ms. Hildebrandt and this same organization as absolute nirvana, when, in reality, Ms. Hildebrandt victimized her patients in ways that one could not even imagine.
In case you don't know the full story behind Ms. Franke and Ms. Hildebrandt, the video below will give you the full scoop. I'm not a major fan of Jesse Weber, but I have to give him credit where credit is due; and he and his journalistic staff covered everything there was to be covered in this story.
Do not be intimidated upon seeing "Video unavailable" below where there is supposed to be an actual video. You can easily access the by clicking the icon that reads "Watch on YouTube." A new window will then open up, and the video will play. Enjoy.
Jesse Weber Of True Crime Provides The Full Story Behind Ruby Franke And Jodi Hildebrandt's Crimes Against Humanityhttps://youtu.be/PEQ3bTl2z58?si=HORGwSw4NNa-nLg_
If you want the nitty-gritty details of the police investigation, then you can see them in the video below. The police got to the Franke kids just in time before they would have died.
Like the video above, do not be intimidated upon seeing "Video unavailable" below where there is supposed to be an actual video. You can easily access the video by clicking the icon that reads "Watch on YouTube." A new window will then open up, and the video will play. It's well worth the watch.
After The Police Raided Jodi Hildebrandt's Residence To Rescue The Franke Kids, The World Of Family Vlogging Was Never The Same Againhttps://youtu.be/XsW8fgvhEPc?si=FDSKLvuNJmAAWfv1
Some people believe that Kevin Franke was an enabler of all the abuse that Ruby Franke committed against their children. His lawyer insists upon describing him as a frog that was placed in a large pan of cool water and stayed there after it got hot and began to boil.
In the video below, Kati Morton provides an interesting breakdown of the psychology behind everything that Ms. Franke did to harm her children and even people that had trusted her. Ms. Hildebrandt was a shady shrink that deserved to lose her licensing after she was convicted of her heinous crimes against Russell and Eve.
Ms. Morton is a therapist herself, and she points out the warning signs behind Ms. Franke's evil behavior. The video contains clips catching Ms. Franke in the act of abusing her children.
Kati Morton Pinpoints The Warning Signs Of The Evil Behavior That Made Ruby Franke A Danger To Others, Especially To Her Kidshttps://youtu.be/4_8EguIHNAs?si=9cAZm3ufYLq82lBR
Ms. Hildebrandt committed her own set of abuses against her niece, Jessi Hildebrandt, and, according to rumor, her own two kids. Jessi has come out of the shadows to expose her aunt since then, whereas there have been no interviews conducted with Ms. Hildebrandt's two kids regarding how she treated them during their formative years.
When Ms. Franke was a little girl, she was a sweet and kind child. Below is a video of her from back when she was 4 years old. You're going to be shocked at how different she was back then. Never at any point in that video does she come across to you as a bad seed.
Ruby (Griffith) Franke Was A Gentle, Kind, And Loving Little Girl Back When She Was 4 Years Old
By looking at Ms. Franke in that video, you can tell that she had the heart of an angel back then. She was like that little girl that knew how to cheer someone up when they were despondent merely by showering them with her sweetness. I cannot figure out what could have changed her so drastically through the years. It is though she went from being the kindest, most lovable little girl on the face of the planet to becoming an absolute monster who had no mercy for her own two youngest kids.
Perhaps there could have been a family member such as an evil uncle that harmed her when she was a child and changed her into the dangerous person that she is now. It's hard to pinpoint what caused her to become the predator she ultimately became. Perhaps it could have merely been that when she was 4 years old, she was too young to hate anyone.
Like any other 4-year-old girl, Ms. Franke had her fair share of imperfections as a toddler, but, overall, you could tell that she had a big heart back then. Even when she was being mischievous, she knew how to make her loved ones giggle. It is so sad that she turned out to be the horrible person that she is today.
I'm well aware that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches some of the most conservative parenting practices out of any other religion. However, out of all the Mormons I have known throughout my life, I have not known even one Mormon personally that ever violently abused their own children or would have condoned anything of that nature.
Even though Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt are going to be eligible for parole hearings fairly soon, my hope is that neither one of them get paroled. The Franke kids are going to need a considerable amount of time to heal from the trauma that these two women inflicted upon them, and keeping these women in prison for as long as the law allows will make it easier for those two kids to heal.
If the government institutions that were supposed to be protecting the Franke kids had acted sooner and more aggressively than they did, those kids could have been spared the kind of harm that their mother and Ms. Hildebrandt inflicted upon them. Fortunately, Russell got away from them when he did while they had him and his sister, Eve, in captivity. That young man is a hero for saving himself and for saving his little sister, Eve.
Join me in my mission. I'm your Spaceship Captain reporting to you.😃
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