They Looked Like the Perfect YouTube Family; Screams and Whippings Behind the Scenes

While Franke created the channel in 2015 to highlight their life in Utah, a few years later she and collaborator Jodi Hildebrandt found themselves behind bars, sentenced to four consecutive one-to-15-year prison terms on child abuse charges.

“It just crossed a line of abusive to just psychotic and full on evil,” daughter Shari Franke said at the top of the new 3-part Hulu doc, in which she, dad Kevin Franke and brother Chad Franke all speak out about Ruby’s alleged behavior — giving their detailed accounts, on camera, for the first time. They also shared “over 1,000 hours of unseen footage,” most of which showed Ruby’s harsh demeanor immediately before and after filming their cheery YouTube videos.

According to Kevin, Ruby’s “sole ambition was to be seen as the perfect mom” — and, when she felt she wasn’t “getting enough praise and attention for it,” she decided to start the 8 Passengers channel.

“My mom didn’t want anything to be forced .. she wanted to show the view of a Mormon, happy family … but they only saw what we wanted to show them,” said Chad, as the family detailed the early rise to fame.

“She filmed everything and I was so uncomfortable with it. When I came in the door, wherever Ruby was, the camera was,” recalled Kevin. “All of a sudden, it wasn’t enough to interact with her, I had to interact with the camera.”

The family pretty quickly realized videos highlighted their oldest children, Shari and Chad, would perform the best, mainly due to the age of their audience and younger girls thinking Chad was cute. Kevin admitted he and Ruby both “exploited” Chad, who was seen as the “heartthrob” and “comic relief” of their clips.

While their first check from YouTube was only $85, it quickly started to grow — with Kevin claiming it went from “$2,000 a month to $8,000 a month to $20,000 a month and, at the peak, $100,000 or more a month.” They got so popular, YouTube even acknowledged her in a Mother’s Day post … and the family was able to move into a new, bigger home.

But as the channel grew, so did the kids’ frustrations with filming.

“We did see changes in the kids accumulating,” said Kevin, as footage showed him and Ruby berating the children for being “terrible” while trying to film. He added that they started “to complain about everything, like, I’m bored, we don’t want to film, we’re tired of doing this. It really began to concern Ruby a lot. She described it as they were losing their life.”

Shari said it seemed like everything in their life revolved around making content, saying their new home “felt more like a set than a house.” Chad, meanwhile, said he “didn’t want anything to do” with filming anymore, saying “it bugged the crap out of me” and “I hated it.”

“There was a time, maybe a year or more, I truly hated her. But when it came to brand deals and sponsorships, that really put me on edge. It felt like a script, like I was being controlled,” he said, as footage showed him being disinterested with filming. “I purposefully said the wrong lines, I purposefully tried to make my mom as pissed as she possibly could.”

He also began acting out at school, which led to him getting expelled. As his parents considered getting Chad into therapy, a friend suggested Hildebrandt and the pair started virtual sessions together. After Jodi said Chad was “running circles” around his parents, the punishments began — as they took away his phone, XBOX, access to sports and sent him to a wilderness camp.

“My mom was trying everything she could to fix me, but I never felt she was doing it for me. It was like she was doing it for herself,” said Chad, who then had his bedroom taken away from him before being given the option of sleeping in the living room or in the basement on a bean bag. He went with the latter … and the punishment lasted seven whole months.

The facade for fans began to really break down when Chad revealed his bedroom basement punishment in one of their videos, a remark which sparked huge backlash for the 8 Passengers channel at the time.

“When this video hit, all hell broke loose and all of a sudden the algorithm began to recognize, this is a hot topic,” recalled Kevin. “I think [Ruby] was unprepared for the torrent of pure hatred that came through the door. Ruby was devastated.”

According to Kevin, the couple saw the criticism as just “an innocent religious family that’s being attacked unjustly by cancel culture and cancel culture winning.” In retrospect, he acknowledged the attacks were valid, saying, “I’ve learned that there was a whole lot of horror that was going on in the shadows and behind the scenes. I had no idea this was going on in my family.”

Amid the backlash, Ruby’s temper allegedly continued to flare — with Chad saying, “There were times where she blew up off camera. She would spank, whip, take the belt out and whip my butt. Pull down my pants, whip me.”

Shari seemed to back up his allegations, saying, “I did always feel bad when he’d get in trouble. He’d get a bloody nose and I’d bring him toilet paper and didn’t really know what to do. He got beat really bad one time and I helped him clean blood off the walls.”

Video footage, meanwhile, showed Chad being told by Ruby to “be excited” for one of their videos, “even if you have to fake it. Fake being happy.” As she screamed at kids in the background to shut up, a dejected Chad told her, “I don’t know if I can right now. I don’t know why.”

“I don’t think she was a good person,” said Shari. “I think she was already an abusive mother before and obviously it escalated dramatically … the fact Ruby went as far as she did, I wouldn’t blame that on Jodi. She just set off things in Ruby that were already in her heart.”

Hulu said neither Ruby Franke or Jodi Hildebrandt responded to requests for comment about new allegations made in the special.

For more coverage on the doc, check out the links below.

All three episodes are available now on Hulu.

If you are experiencing or witness child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. If you believe a child is in immediate danger, call 911.