Daughter Of Ruby Franke Details Horrors Of Growing Up On Family's YouTube Channel
Shari also explained how she and her siblings were paid to perform in some embarrassing or distressing scenes for her mother’s channel.
Shari Franke, the elder daughter of Ruby Franke — sentenced to 30 years in jail for child abuse — has revealed the horrors of growing up in a family engaged in vlogging for their YouTube channel 8 Passengers. In her recent testimonies before the lawmakers, Shari explained how she and others lived their childhood under constant tracking and monitoring for content production.
“I don’t come today as the daughter of a felon, nor a victim of an abnormally abusive mother. I come today as a victim of family vlogging," Shari said at a Utah Senate committee hearing.
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“When children become stars in their family’s online content, they become child influencers," she continued. Shari also said she and her siblings participated in several awkward or upsetting events for her mother’s channel in exchange for compensation.
She said growing up on a family vlogging channel is similar to having Stockholm syndrome.
“The difference between family vlogging and a normal business, however, is that all the children are employees," she said.
Franke said Utah is a hub of family vloggers because of the LDS culture. The aim of sharing the church and large families places family content at a higher monetisation premium. For this reason, she called on the sitting members of parliament to “tackle this issue before it becomes a bigger crisis than it already is."
Background of the Case
Mother Ruby Franke and business partner Jodi Hildebrandt faced serious accusations when one of Franke’s children ran away from Hildebrandt’s residence in August 2023. The 12-year-old boy, who was emaciated, had duct tape on his wrists and ankles and had open sores. He sought help from a neighbour, who informed the police immediately on seeing the state of the child.
The authorities also found that the other children were also subject to physical and emotional abuse. Enquiries that were made and analysis that was conducted showed that they were locked up in confined places with no food and water, worked and subjected to extreme punishment in the name of religious discipline.
Both women were sentenced to four to thirty years of imprisonment in Utah State Prison on February 20, 2024. Franke was given four successive prison penalties for the role of abuse. In the court, she apologised remorsefully saying that she was led to believe that this world was an evil place whereby she admitted to having inflicted injuries on her children. Hildebrandt also accepted the charges and admitted that she took part in the abuse.
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