‘Devil in the Family’: 11 Bombshell Revelations Made by Ruby Franke’s Husband and Kids

This post contains disturbing discussions of child abuse.

As Ruby Franke continues to serve her prison sentence of up to 30 years, the new docuseries Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke is delving into exactly what happened to the disgraced former vlogger and mom of six.

Franke was arrested in August 2023 and pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse in December 2023. In the docuseries, her estranged husband, Kevin, and two eldest children, Shari and Chad, spoke out about everything their family went through in-depth for the first time ever.

Scroll down for all of their most shocking revelations.

Kevin was ‘uncomfortable’ filming for family’s YouTube channel

Before her downfall, Franke had a successful YouTube channel called 8 Passengers where she documented life with her husband and their six kids. “She filmed everything and I was so uncomfortable with it,” Kevin admitted. “When I came in the door, wherever Ruby was, the camera was. All of a sudden it wasn’t enough to just interact with her. I had to interact with the camera. She would pull it out and she would say, ‘Kevin, this camera is millions of people watching us.’ She wanted me to be the perfect husband. The even-keeled, but strong patriarch of the family. But I wasn’t. I’m a nerd through and through.”

Chad ‘truly hated’ his mom

The family noticed that videos featuring Chad and Shari were performing the best on YouTube, but as Chad got older, he began resenting the fact that he always had to film. “I just wanted to be with my friends,” he said. “I really didn’t want anything to do with YouTube. It bugged the crap out of me. I hated it. There was a time, maybe a year or more, where I truly hated [my mom].”

He said that “brand deals and sponsorships” were what “really put [him] on edge” because it “felt like a script.” Chad added, “I was being controlled. I purposely said the wrong lines. I purposely tried to make my mom as pissed as I possibly could. I made things hard for her, and I don’t know why.”

That’s what Chad started acting out, both at home and at school. One of Ruby’s friends, Paige Hanna, connected the Frankes with a therapist named Jodi Hildebrandt, with hopes that she could get Chad on the right track. After Hildebrandt came into the picture, the harsh punishments began. Chad’s phone, Xbox, and more were taken away, and he was sent to a wilderness camp. “My mom was trying everything she could to fix me, but I never felt like she was doing it for me. It was like she was doing it by herself,” he said.

Eventually, she sent him down to the basement to sleep on a beanbag. He spent seven months sleeping there, instead of in his room. Franke and Hildebrandt threatened to send him to a military camp in Virginia if he didn’t stop acting up, which Chad said “terrified” him. He began improving and was given access to his bedroom back, but that was the “spark that blew the powder keg,” according to Kevin. When this punishment was revealed in an 8 Passengers YouTube video, viewers began turning on Franke, and she became viewed as an “abusive monster.”

Behind the scenes, things were even worse. “She would pull out the belt, pull down my pants, whip me,” Chad shared.

Did Kevin know about the abuse?

“I had no idea that this was going on in my family. Not to that extent,” Kevin maintained. “But I knew that’s how it was modeled for her. Love is obedient, but the moment you disobey me, you’re going to fear me.” As for the haters online, Kevin said he thought (at the time) that they were “unjustly” attacking an “innocent religious family.”

Meanwhile, Shari was onto her mom much sooner. “I think she was already an abusive mother before, and obviously, it escalated dramatically in the last couple of years,” she added. “The fact that Ruby went as far as she did, I wouldn’t blame that on Jodi. She just set things off in Ruby that were already in her heart.”

Kevin and Ruby believed Jodi was a representative of God

Hildebrandt began to train Franke as a coach even though she was new to her form of therapy. She and Kevin became the faces of Jodi’s ConneXions program, and Franke eventually got rid of her 8 Passengers social media accounts and traded them in for a Moms of Truth account focused on Hildebrandt’s teachings.

“We genuinely believed that Jodi was inspired, called by God, a representative of God, chosen by God,” Kevin confirmed. “And this belief all culminated in May 2021. Jodi calls Ruby. She was wailing and sobbing into the phone. Apparently, she was being haunted by hooded shadow figures that would just appear surrounding her bed at night. And she said Satan had it out for her. And we believed it. We wanted to believe it because we were in a state of mind where we were ready for something big to happen.”

Kevin and his wife drove 400 miles to Hildebrandt’s home to support her. He said they fully believed they were “in the presence of Satan” when they were with the therapist, and invited her to come live with them so she could “heal.”

Shari was the first to be skeptical of Jodi

“I remember looking up Jodi to see who she was, and I found out she was not a psychologist, even though she claimed to be one,” Shari shared. “From reviews online, I learned that she ruined families. She’s not even married. Even her kids didn’t talk to her. I remember thinking, ‘Why are we working with this woman?'”

But when she went to her mom with her concerns, Franke “didn’t think anything of it,” according to Chad, who was also under Hildebrandt’s spell. “To me, it all seemed like people were just attacking her because she was so morally correct and so spiritual,” he admitted.

Kevin acknowledged that he and Franke “shut it down so fast” when Shari told them what she found. “Jodi was forthright about those things,” he explained. “‘If you Google me, you’re going to see this and this, and that was from a former client who was particularly nasty.’ It made us believe that troubled people were doing everything they can to attack Jodi.”

Were Ruby and Jodi lovers?

After Hildebrandt started going into “possessed trances” and “speaking in other voices,” Franke started sleeping in the bed with her “because she thought the demons would leave her alone if she was there,” Kevin said.

Shari said that she “does think” her mom and Hildebrandt were lovers. Kevin added, “I don’t know the extent to which their interactions went. It was much more than a friendship. Much more than a sisterhood. It was uncomfortably intimate. She immediately started putting her fingers into every aspect of our lives and I think she wanted Ruby to herself, but in order to do that, she needed me out of the picture.”

Ruby kicked Kevin, Chad, and Shari out of the house

Under Hildebrandt’s guidance, Chad confessed to his mom that he had been viewing pornography and making out with girls behind her back. He said Franke was “distraught” and blamed “everything that happened to Jodi,” like the “possession” and “satanic attacks,” on him.

“She wiped away the tears and got back to serious and she said, ‘Chad, it’s time you leave the home,'” he recalled. “I was 17 at this time. I really thought I was messing with the house and the spirit in the house.”

Around the same time, she also kicked out her husband. “She bluntly said, ‘Our marriage is in serious jeopardy because of you, Kevin, because of your selfishness, because of your lustful thoughts and behavior that you’ve been hiding,'” Kevin revealed. “‘I’m trying to rise up to the measure that God wants me to be and to do the work he wants for me to do, and you keep holding me and Jodi back. I want you to leave the house. I want you to do it immediately. I don’t want you to have any contact with me or the children.'”

At this time, Shari was in college, but she got a text from her mother where Franke revealed that she was disowning her. “I got a long text from Ruby basically, like, ‘You’ve shown you don’t want to be part of this family, and you’re causing chaos for everyone, and you’re reaching out to your dad when we asked you not to. You’re crossing a line.'” She then received a phone call from Franke who told her that she was being removed from the family’s car insurance and that her health insurance would be terminated at the end of the year.

When she drove home to see what was going on, Franke told her “not to talk to the kids and that I’m no longer part of the family,” Shari said.

Shari contacted the police, but they wouldn’t help

At the end of 2022, a neighbor called Shari with concerning information. She revealed that Franke was leaving the younger kids home alone for days at a time, all while her videos, which were being filmed at Hildebrandt’s house, were becoming more troubling. Shari alerted the police, while various neighbors also began contacting the Department of Children and Family Services.

However, since there was no “physical evidence” of abuse — the neighbors never actually witnessed Franke being abusive to the kids — the case was closed.

What the police found at Hildebrandt’s home

In August 2023, Franke’s 12-year-old son escaped Hildebrandt’s home, where he and his then 9-year-old sister were being held. He got help from a neighbor who told a 9-1-1 operator, “He’s emaciated. He’s got duct tape around each ankle. He’s hungry, and he’s thirsty. He’s been detained, and he’s obviously covered in wounds.”

The detective on the scene recalled “being able to see the tendons on the upper part of his ankle and that Achilles tendon area, front and back.” The child told police “he had been tied up and he had handcuffs on him and he said, ‘I have a younger sister in the home.’ I said, ‘When did you see her last?’ He said, ‘It’s been over a month.’ He said he heard her in the home, but they’d been kept totally separate.”

A search of Hildebrandt’s house found the youngest child in an upstairs bathroom. “The young girl looked like a boy sitting there,” one of the detectives shared. “Shaved head. Real skinny. Didn’t talk to us.” In Hildebrandt’s safe room, officials found rope, handcuffs, gauze, a cayenne pepper and honey paste that was used to put on wounds, and duct tape.

After police spoke more with Franke’s 12-year-old son, they were painted a disturbing picture. “What he described was bad,” the detective said. “How he would be forced to stand in the sun all day long, being tied down to weights. He would have to jump on a trampoline all day. He had mentioned going out to Hell Hole Road, it’s in the middle of the desert, and they were forced to run.”

Ruby accused the kids of ‘lying’ about what happened

At this point, Kevin hadn’t been in contact with his family for over a year, but he received a panicked call from his estranged wife. “She told me that the two younger children were demonically possessed,” he said. “I remember asking, ‘How do you know?’ and she said, ‘Well they’ve confessed to it.’ And one of the younger kids had gotten out and gotten to the police and she said, ‘I can only imagine the lies he’s telling the police right now. You need to go pick up our children from the police station. This is your chance to redeem yourself.'”

Kevin went to the police station but did not share that he spoke to his wife because he wanted to “protect” her. “I truly believed [the police] were lying to me,” he admitted. “They even offered to show me some pictures and I refused because I didn’t want to be manipulated.”

Where do Kevin, Chad, and Shari stand with Ruby today?

While Kevin refused to believe Franke was guilty at first, he eventually returned to the family home and saw how much of a mess it was. “At this point, the things I was believing weren’t compatible with the things sitting in front of me,” he realized. “I started asking questions for the first time.”

He admitted to feeling “guilty” for not being there for his kids but said he “definitely” still loves his wife, despite filing for divorce. “I’ve always loved her,” he concluded. “The actions that she did are atrocious, but I still feel a longing. I miss her. I cannot turn off all of those other memories.”

Shari said, “I personally have seen too many crocodile tears from her, so I can’t say whether or not she is sorry. I will never talk to her again. Whether she’s the most apologetic person in the world or not, that doesn’t change anything for me.”

Chad added, “I miss a mother figure. I miss how she was when I was very young. But I think what she’s going through is deserved. I don’t think she should get out, at least, until the kids all turn 18 years old. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have love for her.”

Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, Streaming Now, Hulu

If you or someone you know is the victim of child abuse, contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.