YouTube gives us insight into how many people live their lives. Family channels devoted to showing the inner workings of families and their lives have become popular in the past few years. However, most of these channels receive little to no overview from a third party. This allows parents to take advantage of their children’s lives, often exposing vulnerable moments for millions of viewers to see.
“8 Passengers” is a family channel on YouTube that originated in 2015 with over 2.3 million followers that has now been taken down. Ruby Franke, along with her husband, Kevin Franke, started the channel to discuss parenting and discipline strategies and shared their children’s daily lives. At one point, the channel posted up to five days a week and revolved around their six children: Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve.
Fans began noticing concerning behavior in 2020. Ruby’s eldest son, Chad, revealed that his bed had been taken away from him for seven months and he had been forced to sleep on a bean bag. This was his punishment after pulling a prank on his little brother. After this incident, viewers of the channel dug to find more instances of abuse. Once, Ruby’s youngest daughter Eve, who was around five at the time, had forgotten her lunch at home. Ruby claimed that it was her responsibility to bring her own lunch, and that “the natural outcome is for her to go hungry.” She also told Eve’s teacher to not provide her food. In other instances, Franke would threaten to take away dinner “privileges.” Due to these instances, a concerned citizen made a petition on May 31, 2020 to get Child Protective Services involved with the family: 17,938 people signed it, but nothing came of it.
Today, Ruby and business parter Jodi Hildebrandt, have been arrested and charged with six felony counts of aggravated child abuse each. This sentence carries a maximum of 15 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine if convicted.
According to an affidavit filed by the 5th District Court in Washington county, Utah, Ruby’s 12-year-old son Russel escaped from the second story of Hildebrandt’s home and fled to a neighbor’s house on Aug. 30. There, he requested food and water and that they call the police. When the police arrived they discovered deep lacerations, duct tape around his ankles and signs of malnourishment. Eve, who is 10 years old, was found in a similar state at Hildebrant’s residence. Russel and Eve were transported to St. George Regional Hospital and placed on medical hold, due to deep lacerations from being tied up with rope and duct tape, and signs of malnourishment. Since then, all four of Franke’s minor children have been taken into DCFS custody.
A YouTube video featuring Ruby and Hildebrandt in the basement of the house was posted two days before Ruby’s son fled. This indicated to police that Ruby had known of the abuse occurring in the residence, which led to their arrests and their charges advancing to second-degree felonies.
Conclusively, family channels are unregulated and do not take into account children’s nonconsensual digital footprint. Ruby’s children could not consent to embarrassing and intimate moments of their lives being exploited for profit. These children experienced neglect and abuse for years and Ruby profited from it. Family channels on YouTube as a whole are unethical and unregulated, and “8 Passengers” is damning proof.
