A year after former YouTube family vlogger Ruby Franke was sentenced to prison for child abuse, a new Hulu docuseries is shedding light on what happened behind the scenes before the criminal case made headlines across the nation.
The Franke family, which includes Ruby Franke and her husband, Kevin Franke, alongside their six children, had amassed more than 2 million subscribers on their now-defunct channel “8 Passengers” before she and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested and charged with six counts of felony child abuse in 2023. They both pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse and were sentenced to up to 30 consecutive years in prison.
The saga sparked national shock and outrage as more details continued to surface about the abuse the children endured. Ruby Franke, who had faced internet scrutiny for her parenting techniques even before her arrest, frequently appeared in controversial advice videos for Hildebrandt’s life coaching service, ConneXions.
“Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke,” which debuts Thursday, features interviews with Kevin Franke and the two eldest children, Shari Franke, 21, and Chad Franke, 20. Kevin Franke filed for divorce in the months after Ruby Franke’s arrest.
It also shows behind-the-scenes footage of Ruby Franke, provided to the filmmakers by the family, including multiple clips of her yelling at her children while she was filming herself or her family for their channel.
“Trusting third parties holding cameras was a huge step for [the Franke family],” the series’ director, Olly Lambert, said in an interview. “But when we approached them, I think they all individually had it in mind that the story needed to be told with depth and nuance over a long period of time and in detail, because only then can you sort of fully understand how they ended up where they did.”
Lambert said that the family set strict parameters around protecting the privacy of the four youngest children by blurring out their faces and censoring their names whenever they were mentioned.
Ruby Franke and Hildebrandt were not invited to participate in the docuseries and did not respond to the filmmakers’ request for comment, according to Lambert. Attorneys for the two did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday, ahead of the docuseries’ release.
During Ruby Franke’s sentencing hearing last year, audio of which was streamed on the Utah court’s website, the Utah mom teared up while apologizing to her children. “I … believed dark was light and right was wrong,” she said. “I would do anything in this world for you. I took from you all that was soft and safe and good.”
Here are some of the major moments from the three-part docuseries.
Franke children say they ‘hated’ being forced to perform for the camera
Drawing from an archive containing more than 1,000 hours of unseen footage provided by the family, the Hulu series contains numerous clips depicting Ruby Franke’s persona behind the scenes.
In one unreleased clip of herself, the mother of six yelled at her family for making noise before stopping and restarting her footage, reverting back into a calm demeanor. Other footage showed similar instances of anger, such as when Ruby Franke expressed frustration at her husband for not being interactive enough on camera.
“She filmed everything, and I was so uncomfortable with it,” Kevin Franke said in one episode. “When I came in the door, wherever Ruby was, the camera was. All of a sudden, it wasn’t enough to just interact with her, I had to interact with the camera.”
He later noted that the children began to express discomfort with the constant filming, as well.
“Our entire schedule revolved around YouTube, and I think that’s where I started to have issues,” Shari Franke said, adding that their family home turned into something that “felt more like a set than a house.”
One of the clips in the series shows Ruby Franke telling one of her children to “just be yourself.” When the child said, “That is myself,” the mother responded, “Well, then change it.”
Another clip in the docuseries showed Chad Franke, the eldest Franke son, posing with one of his younger sisters as his mother instructed him to smile. He then says through gritted teeth, “I hate smiling at lenses.”
“I really didn’t want anything to do with YouTube. It bugged the crap out of me,” he said in the episode. “I hated it. And there was a time, maybe even a year or more, where I truly hated her.”
More details about Hildebrandt’s influence over the Franke family
Chad Franke said that as his parents struggled to deal with his increasingly rebellious behavior, they decided to set him up for his first therapy session with Hildebrandt, whose teachings seemed to intrigue Ruby Franke.
In the docuseries, Chad Franke recounted planning to “just put on a happy face” during the call in hopes of quickly “get[ting] rid of her.” But when he tried doing so, he said Hildebrandt immediately called him out for lying.
“She really kind of just read through me,” Chad Franke said. “And that really excited my mom, that there’s finally someone out there who isn’t gonna take my bullcrap anymore. So she was hooked onto [Hildebrandt] from that moment on.”
It was a moment that set the stage for Hildebrandt’s growing influence on Ruby Franke, as well as her gradual infiltration into the family’s relationships and home. Chad Franke said his weekly calls with her soon grew more frequent, and she began counseling other members of the Franke family, including Kevin Franke and Shari Franke.
Hildebrandt then moved into the family’s house in 2022 and took over Shari Franke’s bedroom, where Ruby Franke would often spend nights with her — a transition Shari Franke also recounts in detail in her own memoir, which was published earlier this year.
Kevin Franke, who said in the docuseries that Ruby Franke’s relationship with Hildebrandt was “uncomfortably intimate,” said he agreed later that year to his wife’s request that he move out of the house and halt contact with her and the children. (He filed for divorce in late 2023, a few months after Ruby Franke’s and Hildebrandt’s arrest.)
“[Hildebrandt] immediately started putting her fingers into every aspect of our lives, and I think she wanted Ruby to herself,” Kevin Franke said. “But in order to do that she needed me out of the picture.”
Kevin Franke says ConneXions felt like a ‘cult’
Kevin Franke, whom police have not charged with any crime, has said that he was not aware that his children were being abused.
In the docuseries, he discusses further why he didn’t step in. He said he felt that ConneXions was “a cult” after the first conference he attended. (He had also told investigators that Hildebrandt was a “cult leader,” according to case documents reviewed by KTVX-TV of Salt Lake City.) But he joined a ConneXions support group for men, he reveals in the series, and gradually began looking forward to the sessions because they would garner him praise from Ruby Franke.
He previously told TODAY.com that the moment he allowed Hildebrandt into his home “was the moment when everything really started going crazy.”
“I think about it often and I wish that I really would have put my foot down,” he told the publication. “I was adamantly opposed to it. I felt like she needed professional help.”
Multiple participants in the docuseries described Hildebrandt as seemingly “hating” or being “angry” toward men in particular. (Several of ConneXions’ former therapy clients also previously told NBC News it was a program that isolated them from their loved ones and destroyed marriages.)
Chad Franke recounted having a fallout with his mother at 17 and being sent out of his home alongside his father. By that time, however, he said he had learned to love and trust Hildebrandt, to the point where he “really believed Jodi and my mom were God’s chosen people.”
“Jodi was a businesswoman, and she would prey on the weak,” Chad Franke said in the docuseries. “She knew how to hit on a pain point, the biggest pain point for people, in order to turn it into profit.”
Brannon Patrick, a Utah therapist who had shadowed Hildebrandt, also described ConneXions as “a whole platform of people that were drinking her Kool-Aid,” likening it to “a church within the church and Jodi was the prophet.”
“Jodi was absolutely my god, and it was to her you were looking for forgiveness,” Paige Hanna, a former ConneXions board member and former friend of Ruby Franke, said in the docuseries.
Kevin Franke shares why he abided by Ruby Franke’s request
After starting to undergo therapy with Hildebrandt, Kevin Franke said Ruby Franke would finally look at him “the way I always wanted her to look at me.” He didn’t object when Hildebrandt moved into the family home in 2022, nor when Ruby Franke requested a separation later that year — leaving her and Hildebrandt alone with the four youngest kids.
“I was going to support her over all my children, period,” Kevin Franke said in the docuseries, reflecting on his mindset at the time. He was terrified, he said, of possibly losing his marriage.
Lambert, the series’ director, told NBC News that he asked Kevin Franke “the very questions that he knew were most painful, but he wanted to be asked them so that he could respond.”
During his exile, several neighbors said in the series that they were growing concerned about the children’s well-being.
Kevin Franke said in the docuseries that even after Ruby Franke’s arrest in 2023, he was initially suspicious of the details the police had told him about the condition of his youngest children. He noted that he was afraid to do anything that would point the authorities toward Ruby Franke, as he was still trying to protect her.
“I was the last line of defense for these children,” Kevin Franke said, “and I packed my bags and walked away.”
Kevin Franke told TODAY.com that listening to Ruby Franke testify in court “felt like getting stabbed.”
“Because I believe it and I do still love her,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m not as angry as can be at her. I don’t want to be hurt and abused by her anymore. And so, it’s a painful decision to say, ‘No. I love you and I love you enough to walk away from you and to leave you so you can get the help that you need.’”
