The Franke family stumbled into fame when the mom, Ruby, began posting videos of the family — which included her husband Kevin and their six children — on YouTube in 2015. People gravitated towards the wholesome content of Ruby baking homemade bread, kids playing instruments and all of the siblings getting along perfectly.

The channel, “8 Passengers,” gained an impressive two million subscribers, and people praised Ruby for how well behaved her kids were and looked to her for parenting advice.

However, beyond the video frame lay dark secrets: Ruby was a cold mother who withheld her love and abused her children emotionally, physically and financially.

Viewers of “8 Passengers” began to notice red flags in 2020 and later effectively “cancelled” the channel when Ruby stopped posting and deleted all of the videos in 2022.

Ruby didn’t care though, since she had already taken on a new endeavor: being a high ranking member in the cult-like life coaching program ConneXions, run by Jodi Hildebrandt.

At Hildebrandt’s insistence, Ruby kicked Kevin and their oldest son Chad out of the house and moved with her two youngest children into Hildebrandt’s house. It was from that house that her youngest son later escaped, tied up and malnourished, and went to a neighbor for help.

In August 2023, Ruby and Hildebrandt were arrested for child abuse and found guilty on four counts, each one with a prison sentence of one to 15 years. On the day of the arrest, her eldest child, Shari, posted an Instagram story with the caption, “Finally,” which was the start of her publicly sharing her side of the story.

In January, Shari released a memoir titled, “The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom,” where she gives a first person perspective on Ruby’s harsh oppression and what caused the family to disintegrate, along with sharing personal and familial secrets.

She reveals that Ruby had always been abusive, even before the fame or meeting Hildebrandt, hitting Shari for making small mistakes as a child, particularly when learning the piano. Shari blames some of Ruby’s behaviors on her upbringing and generational curses, such as her perfectionism and belief that motherhood was the only path to fulfillment.

The Franke’s practice Mormonism, which means that girls and women are raised in preparation to be wives and mothers. Ruby got engaged to Kevin after knowing him for two weeks, and she dropped out of college after they married three months later.

Shari, now 21, also discloses how she has struggled with her mental health since middle school, largely due to Ruby’s parenting, and Ruby was against her getting treatment. In middle school her father stuck up for her and she was allowed to go to therapy, but that ended abruptly when Ruby decided she didn’t need it anymore. Now, as an adult, Shari is back in therapy and trying to unlearn the toxic mindset Ruby instilled in her.

Speaking of her father, who has taken a lot of blame from the media for failing to protect his children, Shari defends him by saying he was also manipulated by Ruby and Hildebrandt, although she wishes he had protected his children better.

The two women convinced Kevin that he was a danger to the family because he had a pornography addiction and predatory thoughts about young girls. Former male ConneXions clients said they were also “treated indiscriminately for porn addiction,” according to testimonies from NBC News. Other clients spoke out and said that Hildebrandt ruined their marriages. Kevin was sent out of the house and told not to contact the family.

Shari suggests that Hildebrandt’s discrimination towards men stems from her being secretly attracted to women and hints at Ruby and Hildebrandt having a romantic relationship, stating that they “condemned queerness very publicly in their ConneXions videos, while embodying it privately.”

Throughout the book Shari only refers to Ruby by first name, and Kevin for the most part as well. She shares that she has actually given the titles of “Mom” and “Dad” to a new couple, her former high school math teacher and his wife, the Haymonds, who supported her for many years and let her stay with them after she was cut off from her biological family during college. She thanks them at the end of the book, stating that “family can be more than just blood.”

Shari concludes by saying that she is proud of the person she has become “in spite” of Ruby and that she is healing and looking forward to the future. In an Instagram post in December she announced that she is engaged but will no longer be sharing her private life online.

Yet she hasn’t left the public eye completely, in fact she plans to continue to advocate against family vlogging, currently drafting a bill, HB322, to protect child influencers in Utah, her home state.

If you were a fan of “8 Passengers” like myself or interested in the effects of child influencing, I would recommend this book as it provides a lot of details about the Franke’s that are not in the news and serves as a cautionary tale for how seemingly innocent family vlogging can easily turn into exploiting child labor.

On Thursday, Feb. 27, a documentary about the family called “Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke” is set to premiere on Hulu, featuring Kevin and Chad sharing their side of the story for the first time in detail. Shari will also be in the film.