Featured Image Credit: Hulu
Topics: Documentary, Hulu
Ilana Frost
Hulu’s new docuseries, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, tells a harrowing story of child abuse. The three-part series is about Ruby Franke, a Mormon YouTube family vlogger who was convicted of child abuse in 2023. The doc came out on February 27, 2025 and includes accounts from Ruby’s eldest children, Shari and Chad Franke, her now-ex-husband, Kevin, and the family’s friends and neighbors. It also includes passages from Ruby’s horrifying journal entries, which detail the harm she caused her children.
The mother of six admitted to torturing her children and pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse in December 2023. If you’re watching the chilling documentary, you’re probably wondering: Where Ruby is today? Here’s an update.
Ruby started her YouTube vlog channel, 8 Passengers, in 2015. She documented intimate details of her children’s lives in the videos, filming conversations about puberty, awkward bra shopping moments, and more. It was so successful that at one point, she was earning $100,000 a month from the channel.
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But in 2020, viewers started raising concerns about Ruby’s severe punishments for her children. According to People, those included “refusing to bring Eve, then 6 years old, lunch at school when she forgot to pack it, taking away the ‘privilege’ to eat dinner from sons Chad and Russell after they were wrestling in the home, making Eve sleep on the bathroom floor after wetting the bed and taking away Chad’s bed for seven months for playing a prank on a sibling.”
When her son, Chad, expressed that he didn’t want to participate the vlogging anymore, Ruby enlisted controversial therapist Jodi Hildebrandt to change his mind. She became interested in Jodi’s theories and teachings, and the two women started an Instagram and podcast together: Moms of Truth. Ruby wound up separating from her husband and moving in with Jodi.
She was arrested in August 2023 when her son asked a neighbor to call the police. Authorities discovered the Ruby and Jodi were denying Ruby’s son and daughter water, food, beds, and entertainment. Per the case summary from Washington County, “They were beaten, and the 12-year old was bound hand and foot after a previous attempt at running away. Additionally, the children suffered emotional abuse to the extent that they came to believe that they deserved the abuse.”
Ruby Franke was charged with six counts of aggravated child abuse and pleaded guilty to four.
In February 2024, Ruby was sentenced to four to 60 years in prison. She’s now incarcerated at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City. Jodi received the same sentence and is serving time at the same facility, but the former business partners live in different sections of the Dell housing unit.
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Ruby won’t appear before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, which determines the length of her sentence, until December 2026.