OAN’s Abril Elfi
3:02 PM – Sunday, March 24, 2024
This week, a number of videos and documents pertaining to the child abuse case involving well-known parent vlogger Ruby Franke were made public by the Washington County Attorney’s Office.
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Prosecutors believe that “religious extremism” drove Franke and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt to subject Franke’s children to “horrific abuse,” as evidenced by the documents, which include Franke’s diary.
On the since-deleted “8 Passengers” YouTube channel, Franke, who entered a guilty plea to four counts of aggravated child abuse in December, had vlogged the abuse of her kids.
She was first charged on six counts, but as part of a plea agreement to testify against her business partner, she entered not guilty pleas to two of the counts.
According to the prosecutors, Hildebrandt also entered a guilty plea to four counts of aggravated child abuse.
Franke’s arrest report in the case shows one video made public by the attorney’s office on Friday, which depicts Franke’s 12-year-old son, who had climbed out of Hildebrandt’s home’s window on August 30th, 2023, knocking on a neighbor’s door “requesting food and water,” looking injured and malnourished.
The boy, identified in documents as “R,” “said he needed a favor” and “asked to be taken to the nearest police station,” according to the neighbor’s witness account. The neighbor then called 9-1-1 and noticed that the child had duct tape wrapped around his ankles and wrists.
First responders brought the boy to the hospital, where, according to Franke’s arrest report, “he was placed on a medical hold due to his deep lacerations from being tied up with rope and from his malnourishment.”
“Satanic choices lead one to becoming destitute—even in the most affluent homes,” Franke wrote. “The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined’sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies.”
The father of the two kids, Kevin Franke, stated in a thorough incident report in the case that he was married to Ruby but that they were separated. He claimed to be unaware that the kids were living with Hildebrandt and that he “had not spoken with them or seen them in a year.”
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