A popular family blogger from the USA bullied children

They were locked up alone at home and punished with hunger.

American Ruby Frank ran a popular family YouTube channel with 2.3 million subscribers for seven years. Viewers have complained about the way she raises her children for years. Now she is accused of child abuse and could be jailed for 15 years. "Cold" talks about what her six children went through.

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On August 30, 2023, a 12-year-old child knocked on the door of a private home in the town of St. George, Utah . When the door was opened to him, he asked for food, water and to call the police.

“The boy is exhausted, there is tape wrapped around his legs, he is hungry and thirsty,” the owner of the house told police over the phone a few minutes later. - You understand, he is very scared! He has wounds all over his body... It seems to me that he was held by force. We need cops, and fast."

It turned out that the child is the son of Ruby Frank, a former popular video blogger who is now engaged in psychological mentoring. He and his family were staying in a neighboring house and escaped through the window to call for help because his mother was starving him.

Arriving police searched the house where Frank was staying and found Ruby's 10-year-old daughter, also in critical condition. The girl was so frightened that the police had to persuade her for four hours to see doctors, who confirmed that she, like her brother, was suffering from malnutrition, and hospitalized the children.

Together with Frank, the police also detained the owner of the house, Jody Hildebrandt, who could not help but notice that children were being abused in her house. Hildebrandt and Frank are charged with six counts - the prosecutor believes that they used physical violence against children, brought them to a state of deep exhaustion and seriously damaged their psyche.

Frank Family

Ruby Frank is 41 years old. She was active in the Mormon community with her husband Kevin Frank. regularly The family attended church , prayed together , and discussed spiritual practices.

Ruby and Kevin have six children , four of them are minors. The way the family raised their children has been criticized by Ruby's subscribers for many years. For more than seven years, she ran a YouTube channel about the life of her family, “8 Passengers,” which was subscribed to by more than two million people. In one of the videos, Frank told how she once refused to take lunch to her daughter’s school in order to her not teach to forget to collect her own food. only six years old at that time The girl was . Frank also sent her eldest son to a correctional camp for troubled teenagers and forced him to sleep in a bean bag for seven months. All because the boy did not want to share a room with his younger brother. Most of the videos are currently unavailable.

Many of the channel's subscribers were horrified by Frank's parenting methods and even signed a petition calling on child protection services to pay attention to them. Frank would threaten to cut off the head of her daughter's stuffed animal and constantly filmed her children, even when they asked her to put the camera away. She also forbade them to eat and drink when, in her opinion, they did not behave obediently enough.

The neighbors also knew about the Franks' excessive severity. When they came to visit, the Franks' children said that at home they were punished with hunger. the Franks' home 15 times Over the past 4.5 years, police have visited . Most complaints came the police from concerned neighbors, but one day the Franks’ eldest daughter, who lives separately, called : she learned that the children had been left at home alone for several days. The police came to the call, saw the children in the window, knocked, but they did not open the door. Neighbors gathered on the street said that this was not the first time this had happened: Ruby Frank often went to visit her friend in another city and left her children alone.

Soon the police returned , accompanied by guardianship officers. a petition demanding that Ruby and Kevin be checked for violations of children’s rights Viewers of the Frank channel have long demanded this: almost 18 thousand people signed . However, the check did not reveal anything illegal. After this, videos on Ruby Frank's channel began to appear less and less often , and at the beginning of 2023 she deleted the channel.

"*** Mother of Truth " *

Having lost her source of income (the channel, by her own admission , brought her a lot of money) , Ruby Frank, together with her friend Jodi Hildebrandt, began running a column with psychological advice, including recommendations on raising children. The videos were published on the ConneXions Classroom channel, Hildebrandt’s project dedicated to mental health. In addition to producing “Mothers of Truth,” as Hildebrandt and Frank call themselves, ConneXions Classroom has also hosted various personal growth courses and personal consultations with Jody Hildebrandt, who is a licensed psychologist.

In sessions, Hildebrandt told clients that there are two states - “Truth” and “Distortion/Deformation”. In the first are those who practice the principles of personal responsibility, honesty and humility. into the second, undesirable state People with addictions slip , those who live in denial, do not believe in themselves, are in codependent relationships, indulge in lust or manipulate others. Hildebrandt claimed that in her courses and during individual therapy she heals people and teaches them to live in “Truth.” However, the therapy was reminiscent of the practices of psychological cults: clients were convinced that they would not be able to achieve results unless they cut off ties with relatives who were in a state of “Distortion,” and the clients were invited to enroll their “ignorant” loved ones in the course.

“They pretend to be gods, to whom the truth is revealed alone, and therefore constantly insult people. By following their advice, you risk losing touch with your loved ones and alienating your own children. They are controlling and mean,” wrote about his experience. one client

Income from ConneXions Classroom courses, according to the most conservative estimates, exceeds $30 thousand per month. Just a 50-minute session with Jodie costs $175.

According to one of her clients, a member of the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), who turned to her on the advice of the church leadership when he began to experience problems in his marriage, she destroyed his family, and also told the church leadership that he allegedly porn addicted sexaholic and rapist. After this, the man was deprived of honors in the church and expelled from the religious University Brigham Young . Because of this incident, in 2012, the professional commission revoked Jodi Hildebrandt's license for 18 months. But she was soon returned.

Eighth passenger

father, Kevin Frank, who previously appeared in Ruby's videos and even defended her parenting style to subscribers, now wants custody The children 's . His lawyer explained that Kevin separated from his wife more than a year ago.

The Ruby sisters said that they fought for the safety of their children for three years, but did not talk about it publicly in the interests of their nephews. “It had to happen,” they wrote about their sister’s arrest. The Franks’ eldest daughter, who has been living separately from her parents for a long time, published a photograph of her mother’s arrest on her social networks and accompanied it with the caption “Finally.” She later wrote that her family had been trying to draw the attention of the authorities to the situation for several years, but only now received help. She also asked the public not to bother her younger siblings, who have already been through a lot.

At the first court hearing, where the conditions for keeping the children were to be determined, Ruby stated that she was forced to do this because she allegedly found them in “inappropriate relationships with each other.” And her 12-year-old son, according to her, was dangerous to society because he molested 20 other children from his environment. Because of such statements, the guardianship services obliged to separate the children. will soon be

If convicted, Frank and Hildebrandt risk going to prison for a long time: they are accused of six crimes, each of which carries a prison term of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $10,000.

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