Newly released video shows the malnourished son of a parenting advice YouTuber approaching a neighbor for help on the morning that his mother and her business partner were arrested on child abuse charges.

The malnourished and badly bruised son of a parenting advice YouTuber politely asks a neighbor to take him to the nearest police station in newly released video from the day his mother and her business partner were arrested on child abuse charges in southern Utah.

The 12-year-old son of Ruby Franke, a mother of six who dispensed advice to millions via a popular YouTube channel, had escaped through a window and approached several nearby homes until someone answered the door, according to documents released Friday by the Washington County Attorney’s office.

Crime scene photos, body camera video and interrogation tapes were released a month after Franke and business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, a mental health counselor, were each sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. A police investigation determined religious extremism motivated the women to inflict horrific abuse on Franke’s children, Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke announced Friday.

“The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies,” Clarke said.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
    52·
    10 months ago

    For anyone that’s interested in a deep dive into what kind of shit was going on here, John Dehlin has covered this pretty extensively on his Mormon Stories podcast. Episodes 1805, 1807, 1808, 1809 (removed due to threat of a lawsuit for defamation; you’d have to find an archived copy. Adam Steed is a difficult interviewee in many ways, unless you are already deeply, intimately aware of Mormonism; his thoughts are often very jumbled and he has a hard time expressing things in a linear fashion), 1817, 1817, 1825 (tangentially; it’s about “Visions of Glory”), 1826, 1844, 1865, 1869, and 1873. It’s also tangentially related the the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell murder cases, in that the beliefs of Jodi Hildebrant and Ruby Franke were both heavily influenced by the same apocalyptic book, “Visions of Glory”.

    Keep in mind that the episodes I just listed comprise roughly around 30 hours of listening. About half of them are long-form interviews. Unless you have an an interest in cults, religious indoctrination, apocalyptic beliefs, this is probably not going to be your thing. And unless you were raised Mormon–or have listened to the other 5400 hours or so of podcasts that John Dehlin has done–it’s probably going to be a little hard to follow what’s going on.

    A very, very short version is that, while Franke was always borderline abusive as a mom (and that’s pretty par for the course in Mormon families, TBH), Hildebrandt is an incredibly charismatic, persuasive psychopath that used a version of Mormon theology to induce her to be far, far worse than she would have otherwise been. If Hildebrandt had been male–because you must be male to have real power in the Mormon church–she almost certainly would have ended up leading a fundamentalist cult.

    EDIT When I say that Franke was borderline abusive, I mean that she was borderline before she met Jodi Hildebrandt. Once Hildebrandt attached herself to Franke, Franke’s behavior became overtly, obviously abusive. In my opinion, Franke was always vulnerable to acting in that way, but Hildebrant was who convinced her that abuse was appropriate and moral.

    • uhmbah@lemmy.ca
      1·
      10 months ago

      I’m searching for those archived podcast episodes. If anyone knows where I can find them…

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
        1·
        10 months ago

        All but episode 1809 should be easily available on Spotify or YouTube. 1809 is the tough one; I listened to it when it was released–I generally like Dehlin’s long-format style of interviews, and the subject matters is of personal interest–but I don’t know where to find it now.

        I don’t know who sent Dehlin the C&D, so I don’t know when or if the episode will ever be restored. If it was Hildebrant’s attorneys, then he might be able to restore it once she’s in prison. But maybe not, since they would say that–despite her conviction–it’s defamatory. (Although if it’s all true, then by definition it’s not defamation. But you’d have to prove that in court, which is expensive.) If it’s was the Mormon church that issued the C&D because of the accusations that they misused confidential medical records against Adam Steed to throw him out of BYU and threaten his church membership, well, that’s getting tossed into the memory hole.