Former YouTuber Ruby Frank, known for her parenting advice Channel eight passengers, has
been sentenced to up for thirty years in prison for physically and emotionally abusing her
children. Frank and her business partner Jody Hildebrand pleading guilty to four counts of
aggravated child abuse, including forcing their son into physical labor and inflicting injuries.
This was part of a plea deal which resulted in guilty please being given with
more serious charges being dropped. The abuse came to light when Frank's twelve yard
son escaped and sought help from a neighbor. Frank expressed remorse at her sentencing,
acknowledging the harm done to her children. Hildebrand also pled guilty and received
a similar sentence. Case highlights the dangers of influencers promoting harmful parenting practices in
the importance of safeguarding children's well being. This story from skyningws UK published on
the twenty first of February twenty twenty four. Yeah, this is this is
some pretty atrocious behavior by this mom and her friend. At one point,
they coursed their daughter to jump into a cactus plat as punishment the son.
When you finally escaped. He did this, gave him a his own home.
For some reason, he was at Hildebrandt, her business partner's home.
Escaped from Hildebrandt's home, had I believe, tape duct tape and on his
wrists and ankles, and had been chained up, and one of his one
of her older children, at one point was banished out of his room because
he wouldn't get along with his son and forced to sleep on a bean bag
chair. Just atrocious, atrocious behavior. I don't know where in what world
any of this behavior is okay parenting. I don't I don't understand it's it's
just completely unfathomable to me. I was raised Mormon, and these are not
parenting techniques that I ever heard preach from a pulpit. I believe wealth the
defenders were Mormon. I know the mother was, but I think maybe these
they probably didn't want to be parents. I think a lot of people,
a lot of Mormons, they they In Mormonism, no one gives you the
option of not being a parent. It's always preached your whole life to be
parents. That's the highest and that's the best you can do is to be
parents. But nobody ever tells you, you know what, be parents.
If that seems right for you, give it some thought, figure out if
that's what you want to do with your life. And it's not like these
people probably didn't want to be parents, and we're maybe coursed by the church
to be parents and then had no skills on how to be parents at best.
And what I really want to know is where in the heck was the
dad during all of this. Mom and dad have been separated for a year,
I believe, before the son escaped and got help. The article says
that neighbors also claimed that after her husband was out of the home, Frankie
would leave the house for weeks at a time with the children's side. What
dad doesn't know that their kids are being left in a house for weeks at
a time alone. Come on, dude, step up. And I'd like
to say this is an isolated incident, but from what I see, there
are a lot of dads out there that when they leave their marriage, they
leave their kids too. And that's a bunch of fun fucking shit right there.
Right If you're not gonna if you're not going to show up for your
kids, their whole lives one hundred percent of the time, then you should
not be having kids. Right. You're a dad their whole lives. You're
a mom their whole lives, and that's what you're signed up to be to
do. And I just I'm just I'm so so mad at this dad for
not being present, for not protecting this kids, for not being there.
It's just, oh, it just makes me so mad. Helen all right,
So she's a piece of fucking trash and thirty years just does not seem
enough for what she did to her children. The report also goes into how
the son that jumped out the window and found a neighbor to help them,
and this is how this whole thing came to like because they were being sickrely
being held in their home and he was he had incidents of being held with
duct tape and his mother used kaoe pepper and honey, you dress his wounds,
and I this is I also want to point out, if I know,
some people in are honest may have experience experienced abuse. So if you're
getting if having any triggering feelings, and please like about you know, I
don't want anyone to feel like they have to tup through something when you know,
I'm watching our show because this is this is fucked up, is extremely
fucked up. And I'm curious what you each of you think, because because
she's Mormon, there was this assume goodness about her. You know, she's
a mommy blogger, talking about raising children, talking about being part of the
Mormon faith. She had a partner, And I'm curious, like, you
know, do you think that because you know this Mormon goodness, you know,
kind of the shield that she had, because if you listen to her
blog and the vision like she mentioned like her daughter, you know, her
six year old daughter, forgetting her lunch and not bringing her lunch, you
know, her lunch to school and letting her starve. You know, she's
six years old, Like I couldn't imagine doing this and there and there's little
hints of the type of behavior that she was inflicting upon her children. So
I'm curious when each of you think in regards to this religious shield that tends
to happen when people are when people when it comes to child abuse. So
I'm curious what you think about that. Cynthia, Oh boy, heavy,
Yeah, this is not a fun story, everybody. No, I mean,
like and to be honest with you guys, Like I was really like
wrestling with myself on exactly how I would approach this. I mean like,
I mean, I'm kind of a new mom myself, and as we speak,
my kid is at the door trying to get into the room while I'm
recording. Hey baby, Hey honey, how you doing all right? And
even though that, you know, he likes to throw his crayons and his
and his chalk on the floor, and I get really upset what he does,
and especially after I clean up and vacuum the entire living room, I
just make him pick it up. I'm just like, no, you made
the mess. You can you can pick it up. And when I hear
about people like Ruby Frank and her partner who is a licensed therapist, she
was licensed to actually practice therapy and psychology in Utah, I mean like even
though she got her BA from Brigham Young and then she got her master's in
educational psychology from the University of Utah. So this is a person who is
educated in this particular field. Yet you are observing and even participating in the
abuse. How dare you? And I really get, like Aaron just mentioned,
extremely upset when a you have parents who happen to just like leave situations
completely like I'm free, and then forget that they got six kids you know,
that need that still need you as a parent, you know. And
then the next person that is using their religious edicts to guide them when it
comes to raising their kids unfortunately leans very heavily on the whole verse that says,
in the heart of a child is bound foolishness, but the rod of
correction will drive it far from them. I believe that's a proverb. And
you can do all your different contextual interpretations of what the rod is, but
oftentimes it has been interpreted from different religious sex as a punitive literal rod.
And how they use that punitive literal rod often would be the regard to the
whole, to the child that has to absorb the parents' shitty ideals and shitty
beliefs. And I feel bad for her children, definitely. I you know,
I'm kind of glad you guys kind of got into like, you know,
some of the things that happened to her son. I couldn't do it.
I was about to say, just like, guys, let's read the
article. I mean, it grows into explicit detail when it comes to like
the abuse that was suffered by her children. And I even got a chance
to even look up how much the channel was still making like close to like
two thousand dollars by a week from all the subscribers. I think that she
had over two million subscribed to her to her YouTube channel and it's still making
money. I think that they they finally took it down. I think you
too, finally took it down, but it you know, but up.
And but for the past thirty days, even while she was still under arrayment,
it was still making money. So this person is using her horrible prayerenting
advice, her shitty ass beliefs and to explort her kids and to make money
off. Ain't that about it? Maybe chants of what Helen brought up earlier
as somebody from the British Isles. So that's the United Kingdom, and there
we have had serious scandal that have dented the ability for individuals in positions of
authority through pieces of paper and so on, because as Cynthia says, she
went to BYU, she went to the University of Utah, et cetera.
And there have been enormous scandals in the UK about abuses that have taken place
in therapeutic settings, abuses that have taken place in public settings, abuses that
have taken place in the church, the Irish Church of the Catholic Church of
Ireland, and the laundry system that used to be in place in Ireland.
And for those of you who are familiar with it, Operation yew Tree.
I won't go into too much detail of it, but Operation yew Tree was
the largest police operation in the past twenty years. And those two events make
me, as somebody looking at this, very skeptical of the individual to begin
and it shouldn't be that way that because I they've had these horrendous things happen
in the countries that I from, I am now skeptical of these people.
You should exercise critical thinking before you go and take any advice in anybody on
the end. Do not take what the four of us here say, what
the two people on talk he even say what the two people on eggsp say,
what people said on secular sexuality. Don't take that as gospel. We're
not a religion, we're not authorities just because we open our mouths and say,
you need to analyze what we're saying, and you need to analyze what
was being said by Ruby Frank and her business part and this is where things
have gone off the deep end with sixty second TikTok culture, shorts taking over
YouTube, and people consuming sound bites. And that's it, not the context
and the venea that's not being penetrated here. You can say what you like,
but that doesn't mean you've got any more authority than someone else saying something
different. You have to analyze and listen to what they're saying, and you
have to think to yourself, why am I agreeing with this person? Am
I agreeing with them because what they're saying is something that comports with my values?
Am I agreeing with them just because they've got a badge that says Look,
there we go. There's in society where conditioned to believe people in authority.
We're brought up. Police officers are there to do good, firemen are
there to save, doctors are there to help you. And when that breaks
down, when police officers don't do good, when firemen don't come and say,
when therapists and doctors do harm, it really gets to the core of
what we're taught as children, and it comes back to this religious adage thou
shalt respect thy mother and father, because that is very dangerous as a maxim
because it gives parents an authority that they have not earned because you've flopped out
of somebody's fanny and you're being raised by these people, those of you who
don't understand my Britishness. Fanny does not mean backside. And you have to
think critically before you take on face value what somebody says. Don't dismiss it
just because it's been said, but don't accept it without question. And this
is what has happened with this YouTube chap. You don't know what's behind the
four of us here, just like we didn't know what was behind Ruby Fring.
And that's what the danger of not thinking critically does. Don't think so
critically that you never believe anything in you're some sour puss that doesn't have any
fun. But exercise reasonable cause, exercise this and that, and don't turn
around and say, oh, yeah, that sounds good, I'll just follow
that, because that is dangerous. And it's not just dangerous, it creates
the mob, and we have to stop creating the mob. Yeah. When
I was in drama in high school, our drama director told us if you
forget your line or forget to forget what you're doing on stage, just act
like you know what you're doing and people will believe you. And that's the
truth. Confident people are believed, and people that are verbal people human beings,
we're on the spectrum. Some people are really super verbal, they can
speak really eloquently, and some people like me or on the other side where
they just kind of fumble over everything. And people that are really charismatic and
verbal and able to articulate themselves and be the loudest voice, they tend to
be believed and followed, even though maybe what they're saying isn't the brightest idea.
And I see this at work all the time. I'm a software engineer.
Usually it's the it's the people that speak, that speak the best and
the loudest that get listened to, and not the people that maybe need a
few minutes to go and think and think about something and then come back and
speak. So I totally agree with what you're saying the FOBE. So the
thing that you know that I'm kind of you know, pressing upon, like
I was. I did a podcast ear this week. We're talking about how
churches are now asking for legal protections when they are facing with sexual allegations,
lawsuits that they're trying to circumvent paying out the money that they're supposed to pay
being paid out, trying to circumvent the statue limitations, you know, so
on and so forth, which I find disgusting. And I'm tired of,
you know, religion being used as this fashion of like moral values and we
take care, like we were talking about earlier, like you know, we're
trying to protect. We're all about protecting children, are all about, you
know, being the good ones. You know, we're the good parents,
and so on and so forth. And I'm tired of it. I'm tired
because just because you prayed us a sky Daddy, and you claim that Jesus
is your Lord and savior, that does not save you from criticism. It
does not save you from the law. It does not save you for the
court of public opinion to think that you are a piece of shit. If
you abuse another human being, you are a piece of shit because you do.
I am a parent, and when in that by verse where he says
to respect thy mother and father, you need to give that respect back to
your child. Your child is not your property. They are a person,
and if you want them to grow up to be a decent, kind human
being, then you need to be a decent, kind human being. You
need to treat people with respect. And as Phoebe says, just because someone
says something that sounds good and it sounds reasonable doesn't mean it is. Because
what happens in religion is people sound reasonable and they sound like they're giving good
advice, and they sound like they have, you know, they have,
you know, more then to bring rub together. But in the background,
they're doing horrible things. And it happens over and over and over and over
and over again. Ruby Ruby Frank hand Frek not Ruby Frank Hand Frank is
an example of one person that got caught and she had enough of a public
image, and everybody's focusing on the fact that she's Mormon and she's a mommy
vagger. That's what they're focusing on her religion and that and that itself shows
that we're trying to put religious people in the special little box. You know,
they're special, you know, they they should be, you know,
free from ridical cule. And we keep talking about this on this show again.
Just because you're religious does not mean you're free from ridicule and criticism and
also at times hatred, because guess what, I hate this bitch. She's
a terrible human being. I don't think thirty years is long enough. She
tortured her children, and you don't get a free pass for that. You
don't get the veneer of religion. And I'm just over this shit. I'm
I and I'm and I hope those kids heal. I hope they find,
you know, some way to move forward and build a life that's worth living.
And I'm I'm deeply sorry that that happened to them, and I and
I hope they find a way forward. I know you were right the first
time. It was Frank, not and Frank, that's okay, Okay,
right, I'm thinking, okay, now I think give me hair, Frank.
I am sorry, no, like this, like seriously, like this
whole story just will like put your whole head in a kerfuffle, obviously,
because this just so horrible and and I echo your sentimous, especially when it
comes to the children. I really do hope that they get the help that
they need. I hope that they actually are able to get some type of
assistance behavior health assistance, so that they can heal from this trauma. But
and I know that, like Phoebe, what you said was spot on.
I think this is a cautionary tale of looking through the fallacy of authority.
And the authority that these two women touted was I'm a Mormon, listen to
me, and I'm a mommy, and so that Mormon mommy ism makes me
an authority on raising children. And I have someone to co sign with,
miss Hildebrandt, because she is a mental health counselor and she is licensed to
be a therapist in the state of So that makes us authority. And I
don't give two shits what your titled. It's your work, not you