To my babies, I can see none. Over the past four years, I was in a deep underground that led us to danger. I have betrayed sacred trust. My bedroom was taken away for seven months. You have something in the bag that you would like out. You can pay cash. You took the phone away from Abby. You may never get the phone back. There's a lot more trouble. They both get indicted for aggravating childhood. The question is, who's to blame here? In a world that is as cruel as it is to seek for, tragedy is ignored in pursuit of a happy mind. Those who seek more venture beyond the veil, lay venture into the vortex. Rested after breaking this 12-year-old son climbed out of a window, pleading for help. You don't get personal space. This is my space. You don't get to sneak, you don't get to hide, you don't get to have secrets. Not in my house. You see how loving that is?  This woman is evil, like the treatment of her children is actually horrendous. She just openly admits, proudly, almost bragging about torturing her children. I was meant to know you. She was starved her daughter as a means of... I don't really go anywhere. Don't have any friends. No, I have some to meet. Welcome to the process. When I first started getting to know you, she's like, anger is my favorite emotion. I'm like, I don't know what I'm dealing with here. Use your choices to empower you to recognize distortion, and recognize truth. I'm on the address of your emergency. Tell me exactly what's happened. I just had a 12-year-old boy show up here at my front door, asking for help. Copy, 17. Have already given a name of Russell Frankie. On Monday, December 18th of 2023, Ruby Frankie of the 8 Passengers YouTube Family Channel, which once boasted over 2 million subscribers, pled guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. And to count six aggravated child abuse, a second-degree felony. With my deepest regret and sorrow for my family and my children. Guilty.  The children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment. They were isolated from others and were hidden when people came to visit the house. Both children had extensive physical injuries from the abuse that required hospitalization to treat. We just understand for a minute what these kids psychologically now have to go through to not accept what happened to them. And would you believe that this all linked back to the Mormon church? And all of us were basically set up to be representatives for the church. Some of these families were even paid to do Christmas campaigns to market for the Mormon church. This is over the past 20, 30 years the most recommended therapist in the Wasatch Front by the Mormon church. Initially, the whole world saw a family that seemed to have a big home and a picture-perfect life. But the children were actually living a tragic life behind the scenes. Worst of all, according to those closest to the case, the story of the fracture of eight passengers all links back to one toxic influence. Jody is the mastermind here, not Ruby. Ruby is still responsible. This is Hildebrandt. This circumstance is tragic. It's largely, of course, of your making. This is Jody's therapeutic ideas. These are Jody's ideas that she has been doing for over 14 years. What happened to these children and your philosophy in dealing with them frankly seems detached from reality or any objective standard of decency. The manipulation of Jody Hildebrandt, a therapist, earned mentor who dug her claws into the family and ripped it apart from the inside out with Ruby as her co-conspirator.  So strap in, because this is no joke. And content warning, we are going as deep as you can possibly get. So be prepared to be shocked at the depths and the darkness of humanity. Hello friends and internet acquaintances. Welcome or welcome back to another video on my channel covering controversial internet figures. If you like that sort of content as well as deep dives and analyses, then you might want to subscribe to this channel. Please don't show your butt hole to the camera.  It just hits close to home. And now let's get into the story of eight passengers. Since safety and privacy are huge concerns in this video topic, I thought it would be the perfect fit for today's sponsor, Aura.  Ever since becoming a mother, I've become extremely, extremely protective of my privacy. So it's horrifying to know that so much of my private information is for sale online. We unfortunately live in a world where it's very easy for people to find and sell information about virtually anyone. Data brokers can sell your information to scammers, spammers and anyone else who may want to target you. Your full name, email address, home address, health records, relatives and so on. So much information is out there and available. And that's why I've been using Aura, the sponsor of today's video. Aura shows me which data brokers are selling my information and automatically submits opt-out requests for me. And these are how many data brokers Aura found that were selling my information. Cleaning up this information not only reduces the amount of spam I get, which is a hassle and annoying, but also protects me from hackers who could use this information against me. And Aura also does so much more to protect my family from online threats that I can't see. With Aura, I get features like antivirus, VPN, password management, parental controls, identity theft insurance and more. Without having to download a bunch of different apps, it's easy to set up and I get everything at one affordable price. You may have one or two of these tools already, but not having Aura is like locking the front door and leaving the back door open. Aura is always on, doing the hard work and keeping me safe so that I can focus on other tasks with peace of mind. I value my privacy and I value your privacy because everyone has a right to privacy. You can go to https://aura.com. To start your two free week trial, also linked below in the description. Thank you so much to Aura for sponsoring this video and hopefully you all check it out and feel safe and secure while enjoying your online life. Ruby Franke, the mother of eight passengers, created the YouTube channel in the year 2015. The purpose of the channel was to make family style vlogging content of her, her husband Kevin and her six children, Sherry, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve, hence the name eight passengers. There are eight family members in their family in total and these family vlogs would often chronicle the Franke's daily lives which were sometimes very mundane and sometimes very dramatic. At its height the channel had been clicked on more than a billion times and became one of the most popular family channels on YouTube as well as one of the most controversial. Eight passengers was overall branded as an inside look into a devout and loving Mormon family. The charm of the eight passengers family channel initially was how average and sort of common their lives were. If you were to compare eight passengers to a channel like the Ace family who lived in luxury and would do often these extravagant trips and take things to the ultimate extreme on YouTube, the charm of the eight passengers was that they lived a very average life and would chronicle themselves doing things that most people could relate to like household chores or going to school. I want my children to grow up being hard workers and I think that they're going to have more opportunities given to them in life if they know how to work. Right?  Not really. I've gotten used to it. Their drama in their vlogs were over things that we've all sort of dealt with in our lives like sibling rivalries, forgetting to go to piano practice. And I had to walk home in the pouring rain yesterday. Yesterday mom forgot me at piano. Apparently I do a lot of forgetting. Or forgetting to pack a lunch. Eve did not pack a lunch today and can I bring a lunch over to the school? Even if the way that Ruby the mother dealt with these dramas wasn't something that we could all relate to. And hopefully, hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch. So I'm trying really hard to be as in truth as possible. Over time, critics of the eight passengers family channels started to notice that the mother of the family channel, Ruby Frankie, alongside the father, Kevin Frankie, had some pretty strange ways of going about parenting their children. And I have- You're pouring the way. Yes. That's my horn. What? What? You have something in the bag that you could like out. You can pay cash for it. There was the usual criticisms of exploiting their children at every possible turn, especially at the most vulnerable moments. But people became even more concerned the ways that Kevin and Ruby chose to parent their kids. It was this strange mix of expecting their kids to be very responsible for their age and yet also overly controlling their kids at every single turn. And that strange mix only intensified more and more as time went on in the eight passengers channel. And if the children somehow did not meet their parents' expectations, then they ruled with an iron fist with intense discipline and harsh punishments that to many audience members became abusive. I was really hoping that like keeping them home from school and wiping the floorboards would like really bring pain. Like, like, oh my gosh, I really want to change this behavior that I've been exhibiting. So if Ruby and Kevin are such bad examples of parenting, why did people watch eight passengers? Well, it could be argued that people enjoyed the eight passengers family channel because of the children. Ruby Frankie filmed her children so frequently that audience members became invested in the personalities of all the eight passengers' siblings. So who are the eight passengers' children? Sherry is the oldest child of eight passengers. And throughout the vlogs, people had very mixed opinions of Sherry, often thinking that she was going to grow up and follow in her mother's footsteps. That is, until the past few years, when Sherry distanced herself from her family and made her displeasure with her family's actions known, who fought for justice even when she was only an island. My four young siblings are living in Springville and my neighbors have been telling me that they have been left home alone for about four or five days. Chad is the eldest son and was known to be the rebellious child, often getting into trouble and receiving consequences from his parents. Three years ago, he was making choices that were going to wind him up in prison for life. And so I thought, hmm, do I step in and start holding my accountable in ways that are going to be disappointing for him right now? People's became concerned for Chad due to his parents' heavy discipline. We had a child who was showing up dishonest, irresponsible, not humble in the home, at school, at Pierce Homes. But there was one place he always showed up and that was at his sport or choice football. Because that's the only place he's showing up responsible. That's the one thing that he needs to get rid of. We need to get rid of it. But also rooted for him when he started to rebel against them. Abby, a middle child of eight passengers, loved to read books, but often struggled in school, particularly with math, which Ruby would vlog about but never seemed to get Abby any help for with a general philosophy that it's okay to let your children fail. It didn't really do good on my spelling test. That's because you never brought your spelling homework home to do it, right? So, do I make you do your homework or did I just let you fail? You let me fail. I did. I just let you fail the whole year, didn't I?  Julie was known to be shy and reserved in the vlogs, a middle child who kept to herself. Julie's also very tall and plays volleyball. How long have you been playing volleyball? You like it? Yeah? Julie is also still a minor, so her face will not be shown in this video. Russell, the youngest son of eight passengers, was known to have angry outbursts from a young age. Again, because Ruby would often film his angry outbursts and put them in the eight passengers' vlogs. So grumpy! Good job! Though some audiences interpreted this as a character flaw on Russell, who is just a child, so that's pretty messed up, it really just could have been Russell trying to express the emotions of his family situation. Russell is still a minor, so his face will not be shown in this video. Eve is the youngest child of eight passengers. Since Eve is still a minor, I won't be showing her face in this video. So what led Ruby Frankie to vlogging her entire children's lives and then, years later, turning down a much darker path and becoming, well, abusive towards her children? What was Ruby's own childhood like while Ruby's childhood has remained somewhat of a mystery due to the lack of family vlogging available at the time? Ruby is the oldest child of Chad and Jennifer Griffiths. Like many Mormon families, Ruby's parents had several children. After Ruby came her brother, Bo, followed by her sisters, Bonnie, Julie, and Ellie. Ruby very rarely, if at all, got to live her own life or do things for herself. She was a third parent to the younger kids, and partially because her Mormon upbringing was strict and sheltered. So this redditor seems that Ruby may have been the child that had the hardest time in her family. Going as far as to assume, she may have had to raise her younger siblings. A lot of parents have the oldest children raise their youngest siblings. And it's a common trope that parents will often put a lot more pressure on the oldest siblings. It's so common, especially with daughters, that there's a widespread term for it called the oldest daughter syndrome. Oldest daughter here, Ruby's life was typical of those within the Mormon religion and culture. She did go to college and met Kevin, who became her husband while she was in college. Ruby and Kevin Frankie met in Utah and married in the year 2000. She got married at a very young age when Ruby was 18. I was young. When we got married, I was 18. I had just finished cradle robber. I had just finished high school and was going up to Utah State. And started having children almost immediately after getting married and then opted to become a housewife while her husband, Kevin, became a university professor. So Kevin is getting his award for teacher of the year. There was a Reddit post that analyzed a little bit more of Ruby's childhood and how that affected her and becoming a mother and her own philosophies with her children. Her childhood home was not one of much warmth or approval. And so the only approval she could scrounge was doing what the church expected of her. Having and raising a family and doing it in a way that her congregation and family would approve of. No, that's not to say that Ruby didn't choose this life for herself. According to Ruby, she chose and wanted to be a mother and a housewife. I just want to tell you an experience that I had in English class that you really can be and do anything you want. I was in an advanced English class, so everyone who was in the class was ambitious and we had a college prep person come and talk to us and we went around the room and we had to stand up, say our name and what we wanted to be when we grew up. And everyone who stood up said lawyer, doctor, all these wonderful, ambitious goals. And when it was my turn to stand up, I said, I want to be a mother. And the lady's like, that's okay. And what else do you want to be? And I said, a housewife. I want to stay home. And my teacher said, Ruby, I want to see you at the end of class. And he let me have it about how I was not being ambitious and how I was going to let my talents go. I was settling. And I think that day marked a time in my life where I said, you know what, not only am I going to do it and show him who's who, but I'm going to be good at it.  According to Mormon rules, Mormons believe we lived with God before we were born. We were spirits there. And in order to gain our bodies and to have special experiences necessary for our eternal salvation, we need to come to earth. For this reason, Mormons are encouraged to have children if they are able to do so. The church's official statement on birth control says, when husband and wife are physically able, they have the privilege and responsibility to bring children into the world and to nurture them. Ruby got married at 18. And I would guess it was at least half desperation to get away from her home life at the time and also a good part social pressure from Mormon women to fulfill their duties of marriage and having kids.  Well, we're going to get married in a couple of months when the semester's over. Two weeks, two weeks from the day we met to the day we got engaged and set a date was two weeks. Ruby was pregnant with her first child Sherry at just 20 years old and was barely 21 as a first time mother. And after only two years of marriage, she was expecting her first child. And we do know that she went on to have kids basically every two years which as someone who had a child and that was an extremely harsh experience on my body, I can't imagine having a kid every two years. On top of that, Ruby had pregnancy loss in between of which she admits her husband was not sympathetic.  Oh gosh, this has been really helpful for me to reminisce about my miscarriages. And this isn't to absolve Ruby, but just to give context of where Ruby started out in her story.  For those who may be born within it and have perfectionistic tendencies, anxiety or insecurity, I can imagine that it would be easy to internalize that or maybe even go the opposite way and project outward this idea that you are indeed living up to those standards and all the expectations that are placed onto you by your religion.   I've also heard personally, at least, from peers who have grown up in the Mormon religion that Mormon culture places a strong emphasis on appearances and that especially with women, there's a lot of pressure in maintaining a traditionally feminine cisgender appearance and also appearing like you have this perfectly curated life. I spoke with Celeste Davis, who is a woman who used to be in the Mormon church in a sense exited and now writes really, really thoughtful essays. When we talked about the experience of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian community, the thing that was really striking to me was the way in which the drive to be perfect is something that is embedded in you almost subliminally. Davis told me that even when she was in the community, she could be aware of herself, aware of somewhere for more irrational drives, aware that it wasn't the end of the world if she didn't put mascara on for church. She could have that cognitive awareness and yet she still had to do it. She couldn't fight it. Of course, I don't have any personal testimony or knowledge in this and if you have any personal experiences in the Mormon religion, I would love to know your thoughts on this in the comments. Kevin and Ruby had been sporadically uploading YouTube videos since the year 2012 when they taped themselves at a rally supporting fast food chain Chick-fil-A's that's a mouthful, anti-gay marriage campaign. This is us waiting in line to eat a Chick-fil-A because we're supporting marriage between man and woman. Ruby announced into the camera, proudly, something very interesting about Ruby's entire family. Ruby's entire side of the family started to make YouTube vlogging channels, something that Ruby's younger sisters started at the rest of her family ended up adopting, including herself. We've been exposed to vlogging because Ellie and Jared had been vlogging for a few years. For years now. And so we've seen it. I mean, we knew what it was. The mom of Ruby has sisters that have channels as well. And all of these family members' content are vlog-style content centered on their day-to-day lives because we all need to know what the Griffiths are up to. It's all riveting information to know what these Mormon families living in Utah do on a daily basis. Whether they're going grocery shopping or doing school drop-offs, we must know this information. Write it down. Ruby's parents, Chad and Jennifer, who are now grandparents, have a YouTube channel called Grandma and Grandpa Griffiths. Their riveting content is centered around cooking videos and also advice videos. Some of their videos are adorable. I love to see grandparents doing grandparent things. And because they are grandparents and don't have children in their house 24-7, I would say that Grandma and Grandpa Griffith are the least problematic of all of Ruby's family's YouTube channels because oftentimes it's just them as fully-fledged adults filming their content without unconsenting children being filmed. Chad and Jennifer are still devout Mormons and also recently went on a mission in Serbia, which they filmed and documented regularly for their YouTube channel.  About six weeks. Ruby's brother, Beau Griffiths, has a master's in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering. In 2006, Beau married Emily and they had three children together. Beau even briefly worked for NASA in 2008. And in 2009, he began working as an electrical engineer for Raytheon's space and airborne systems. I think, you know, once he saw his family members raking in that family vlog or cash, Beau tried his hand at family vlogging as well. And for a brief period of time, Beau ran a family vlogging channel titled a Griffiths Life Vlogs, which gained over 60,000 subscribers before his wife Emily took over the channel and renamed it to Emily Griffiths. Ruby's sister, Bonnie, met her husband, Joe Holland, while they were both in high school and the couple went on to get married and have four children together. Bonnie created her YouTube channel in 2013 and although the YouTube channel is just titled Bonnie Holland, Bonnie uploads what you could call the general traditional style family vlogging content of her entire family. Ruby's sister, Julie, married a man named Landon Daru and together the couple had five children. How many grandchildren do Chad and Jennifer have? Family reunions have to be insane. Julie is a registered nurse and launched her YouTube channel Julie Daru in late 2011, but started uploading consistently in 2014. Ruby can be seen in one of her sister Julie's birth vlogs, Ruby being there when Julie gave birth to her daughter. Ruby's youngest sister, Ellie, is married to Jared McCann. Together they had three sons and recently a daughter. The couple started a family vlogging channel in 2011. Ellie's fertility issues were recorded and posted on their channel, culminating in the birth vlog of their first child, which accumulated over 15 million views since its initial upload. Because of, I assume, their vulnerability in documenting their journey, Ellie and Jared's family channel became the second most popular in their family. Right behind Ruby and the Eight Passengers family channel before Eight Passengers was terminated. You can see with just the fact that every family member of the Griffiths family developed a YouTube channel about their special daily lives that their family is obsessed with image. No offense, these only identity is built off of looking like the perfect Mormon mother and wife. And that's how she can feel like she is good. The thing is, even motherhood, you can barely keep together. And Ruby knows deep down that she cannot keep a hold or maintain control of her six children and therefore her image. And when it all starts slipping, so does her anger, spiraling more and more out of control.  Where does anger come from? Do you know someone who is angry constantly? Maybe it's you. How is anger created? What is it? Anger comes from living in a place of victim where I'm not responsible for the things going on around me. Life should be easier. Life should be better to me. I don't deserve any of this. So they're not willing to be vulnerable and they live in a state of drama where they are blaming things, circumstances, places, and especially people. I think Ruby was a person who was really dissatisfied with her life. She did what all Mormon good girls do. They follow the rules of their church and family. They get married young, start having children. Ruby did everything a good Mormon girl does, so why was she still unhappy? It must be her children's fault. And if she can fix them, fix them, maybe it'll all be better. Maybe she'll be better. Maybe she can be fixed. An internet forum titled YouTube Mama Drama claimed that the Frankie's first home was owned by the Mormon Church while I couldn't find solid information online to verify this without doing what would feel like a serious invasion of privacy, especially to blast any of that information that I found in a public video like this. The extent of the involvement of the Mormon Church in Ruby's family's YouTube channels as well as other Mormon family vlogger YouTube channels has been something that has continually come into question. In an interview on Cuomo, ex-Mormon, and YouTube content creator Carl Anderson spoke about his interactions with Ruby's entire family. We have an exclusive interview with someone who knows the family who says there is abuse in this family and not just by Ruby. And they believe the Mormon Church, who they were members of, knew about it and may have had the women involved in the family and with the abuse on the payroll. Joining me now is former member of the Mormon Church, YouTube channel of his own, Carl Anderson. Why do you believe the allegations? When we started as family YouTubers up in the Utah Valley, I was a member of the Mormon Church and kind of along the same lines, creating family content with my wife and kids and went to conventions and met this family as colleagues and other Mormon vloggers. Carl mentioned how all of the Mormon family vloggers that Carl Anderson interacted with were set up to be representatives of the Mormon Church. And all of us were basically set up to be representatives for the church. Some of these families were even paid to do Christmas campaigns to market for the Mormon Church. Even claiming they were paid or given gifts for some of their content by the Mormon Church. Though Ruby's family, according to Carl, was being partially funded or receiving gifts at the very least from the Mormon Church, were their content. When he spent time with them privately, they were not the Mormon family that they portrayed themselves as online. And ever since we started to get to know that family behind the scenes, they were not the Mormon family that they were portraying themselves to be on their YouTube channels. Carl even called into question Ruby's sister Bonnie's recent professions of naivety at the situation. We don't think any of us could have ever seen this coming. Claiming even Bonnie's content has been riddled with problematic and concerning posts with her children constantly having split lips and broken bones to such an extent that she had to go into YouTube headquarters and remove a good amount of her content. We all did as much as we could legally and you don't know what you don't know. A lot of people of her following probably remember many years ago probably clear back into 2018, 2019 when Bonnie herself was under a lot of heat and under allegations and was taken to YouTube headquarters and had to defend herself because she was constantly portraying her children with split lips and bloody noses and everybody was wondering like, are these people pushing their kids down the stairs or whatever? And they had to go back and delete a whole bunch of content related to division on YouTube at that time where they had to split into a YouTube for Kids app and YouTube for grownups and Bonnie Hullien and her content on that channel was a central focus of a part of that problem when it was going on. And the thing is this isn't something that just Carl noticed and called out. Beyond what Carl mentioned of Bonnie's children getting scratched and injured on her channel there's even more evidence of the sisters so more of the Griffith sisters laughing at their children's injuries on social media and these are horrific looking injuries that you might not be able to see because I will be blurring out this child's face for all children's privacy in this video but Bonnie posts a photo of her son who has scratches, really, really bad scratches all over his face not something you would normally laugh at a child having on their face and there's a photo post from Bonnie where she says, up all night with this guy the injury was so bad that she had to stay up all night with her child a nasty spill down the hill I was scrolling through Bonnie's Instagram trying to find a specific post and instead I found this picture of poor Cody from 2014 of his face scraped up from a fall and this is what Julie has to say about it and this is what the sister Julie replies oh my, it's sad but I still laughed out loud and then Bonnie, the mother of this injured child replies, oh at Julie it is so sad I kind of laugh at it but it really is so sad to look at him well what? there is nothing funny about that? poor boy must have been so scared and in so much pain and Julie thinks it's funny how insensitive could she be? many children within Ruby's family have had accidents at a young age don't get me wrong, children can be chaotic fall down, have accidents naturally not to compare though but my child has never had so much as a bad scrape the worst they've ever gotten is maybe a tiny scrape on their knee they are a very cautious child naturally by nature, still there are children that are a little bit more daring and they'll do more dangerous things when you're not looking so I get it that accidents happen which I think is why initially a lot of people didn't question why these families had so many accidents in their household but looking back the pattern can become concerning especially the situation when Ruby's son Russell who was only 6 months old at the time broke his femur from a fall in their home Russell fell off the couch when he was 6 months old and even though he was clearly in pain and crying he wasn't taken to the ER for a week according to Ruby Russell was going to start kindergarten it's a very late birthday where Russell didn't start walking until he was almost 2 years old he was like 21 months old he didn't start sitting up and crawling until he was 18 months old so I just thought I'm just going to give him that extra year to physically develop and he has been a rockstar if you are curious as to why Russell developed physically so slowly one of the reasons could be that he I'm saying it out loud because I still feel a little guilt over it I dropped him off the couch he didn't fall straight down but he rolled off he was not even 6 months old he was very young he was just an infant we were lying on the couch and I leaned up and he rolled off and I grabbed him so he didn't fall straight to the ground I kind of fumbled him and he fell to the floor so after he didn't stop crying for a couple days I took him into the hospital and they x-rayed him and they said it looks like he broke his beamer but the baby is still so quickly it's only been a day or two and it's already starting to heal so they put him in a body caster and they just said be very careful when you change his diaper don't lift from the legs and because of that he had a walking delay and didn't walk until he was around almost 2 years old a forum poster said I'd also just like to throw out as an ER nurse that this is still probably the single-handed most disturbing Griffith story I've ever heard the femur is the largest bone in your body a.k.a. the hardest to break and baby bones are more difficult to break because they still have some flex to them the mechanics of falling off a couch don't match up with a femur injury that is one of the most painful fractures out there I don't know how Russell wasn't screaming for an entire week and they didn't do something sooner I also don't know how no one at the ER investigated them of course maybe they did and just checked out as the typical overwhelmed but perfect little Mormon family if I saw this injury with a lame story like he fell off the couch I'd be making a call to CPS it was a week old that just makes it worse for the most part Ruby has always been the run running the show in the early years her vlog was rough around the edges it was basically a collection of personal home movies that she was storing online guys look as fast as you can now okay that's good Olivia that's good bet a bone mom I bet a bone my flower a lot of Ruby's home movies began to attract a small group of devoted followers mostly people who loved the children and the family and became parasocially involved and alive she was documenting the well-being of her children something that benefited Ruby initially because it brought in views from people that were invested in her family but would come around eventually to bite her in the ass as people became really upset with the way that she was treating her children because they cared about her children as people before long Ruby was posting 3-4 videos a week documenting trips to the zoo doctor's appointments homeschooling sessions and shopping excursions oh whatever it is so we just passed the Rocky Mountain goat so now I think we're going to the mountain lion next because Abby just got accepted into our school she doesn't have any of the school supplies that she needs so we're gonna start and we'll go from there they were just a jumbled mess really Ruby talked about her initial vlogging days but people started liking them it became apparent to me very quickly that people were interested in knowing how to respond to children it became for me a platform of teaching demonstrating mothers in action the power of mothers those who can't teach make really crummy family vlogging videos of their children the more and more Ruby recorded her content viewers began to notice how unlikeable Ruby was not only as a content creator but as a mother and a parent viewers noticed that as 8 passengers gained more followers and attention Ruby became so focused on vlogging content even more than showing up for her kids during a vlog Chad expressed disappointment that his mom wasn't going to be able to be at one of his sports games dad's taking you to the game right okay I don't think I'm gonna go are you okay with that? Chad do you want to feel bad? we won't say that our viewers gonna think I never come to your games that's true I come to your games last season you only came to like two games you're batting me out you're making me look good Ruby completely ignored him while filming content with Russell instead people immediately noticed this and saw this as yet another red flag in Ruby's parenting for Chad in today's vlog he looked like he was trying so hard not to cry he didn't even seem to feel bad about missing his games what else does she do that's so important that it makes her miss something that's obviously important to her son vlogging is ruining Ruby faster than I thought it would an interesting thing about the early days of 8 passengers is that though Ruby filmed the day to day lives of her children and her family life we would never film herself disciplining her children so over the last several videos I have had a lot of comments that have said Ruby you're so patient you're the most patient mom and I actually have to laugh all of the discipline takes place off camera at least from what you can find in archived videos and according to internet foreign posters she would often invade her children's privacy but would tell the audience that discipline was kept private I did think it was something important to know because eventually this would all change at some point in the 8 passengers journey and Ruby would just air everything out about her children online from the nitty gritty embarrassing things to the discipline that she carried out or at least the ones that she felt were appropriate to film something or someone that viewers often noticed was missing from the 8 passengers vlogs was the father Kevin Frankie who was gone somewhere all the time to the point where some viewers thought that Ruby was a single mother viewers noticed that Kevin was often traveling for work leaving Ruby home alone with 6 children because of this Ruby often had the older siblings in the family Sherry and Chad parent or look after the younger siblings Chad was often put in charge of looking after his younger brother Russell often sharing a bedroom with him and Sherry was put in charge of her younger sisters even sharing a bed with her youngest sister Eve so it seems that Ruby ended up eating the cycles that were inflicted on to her in her own childhood especially with her own eldest daughter Sherry viewers noticed that Sherry took on a lot of responsibilities that a parent is supposed to have in a household coming it seems a parentified child a parentified child is one that takes on some or all of their parent's responsibilities parentified children take responsibility for practical tasks like cooking cleaning and paying bills they put their younger siblings to bed and help them with homework the human brain isn't fully developed until our mid 20's so of course if you're a child you cannot effectively parent your siblings on top of that parentified children have to parent themselves they have to figure out how to cope with their own trauma feelings and growing up experiences which leads them to feel alone, overwhelmed, scared and angry Ruby branded herself in her vlogs as a minimalist buying very minimal clothes for her children not hanging photos up in her house literally there were no photos hanging up of her family, her children but to a lot of viewers this was seen as very cheap tendencies that often aired on neglect towards her children for example Ruby would often underfeed her children with the viewer for the sake of her budget she purchased minimal meats and vegetables but loaded her meals with carbs her grocery haul was pretty terrible no vegetables, a small bowl of fruit, little meat and a whole heap of snacks she definitely carb loads her meals with little real nutrition moral of the story is don't have more kids than you can afford and don't complain about your food bill when you have a ton of kids really, really really painful to up my food budget but it's necessary because I have to eat more I'm gonna eat more, I want to eat more, I don't like being hungry viewers also regularly expressed concern regarding the Frankie children's lack of clothes Ruby would get upset whenever her children tore their clothing or would come home dirty as children do because they enjoy playing and being outside and in nature but when her children would get their clothes dirty or tear a piece of clothing Ruby would refuse to replace their clothes forcing her children to wear the same outfits for multiple days a week that's something that always feels neglectful to me personally when children have to wear the same clothing to school for multiple days I couldn't imagine re-wearing the same outfit each week or the same shirt multiple times in one week I wonder if their friends or teachers notice people became even more upset when Ruby seemed to neglect her kids emotional needs on camera as well as disrespect a person who had recently passed through sharing way too many details of his passing in a vlog in a video Ruby decided to film herself talking about Chad's friend's father who had recently passed due to unaliving himself at least from Ruby's statements instead of being respectful keeping the situation very vague and sending her condolences Ruby decided to talk in depth about this man's personal life situation before his passing in an attempt to teach her children in real time on video about the concept of unaliving oneself and what causes someone to do that I suppose was the idea here and according to viewers Ruby spent more than half the video shoving the camera in Chad's face and her other children's face and talking about Chad's friend's father all for content Abby's looking at me funny come here do you think it's funny that I'm just sitting here staring at the camera I'm trying to decide if I if it would be appropriate to mention something or not did you hear about Chad's friend's dad his dad committed suicide do you know what that means no it means they killed themselves it's easy not to have regrets when situations come up like this if you haven't been kind you can feel a lot of regret when dealing with such a complex issue at such a young age is undoubtedly a really hard thing and Chad and the other children should not have had to do that in front of the camera they should have noticed the neglect in subtle ways at times there were other times where the neglect of the 8 passengers family in the early days shown in much more obvious ways for example there was the incident where Ruby was filming a vlog of her children going to the dentist the last time they went to the dentist Eve already had a few cavities and they were told to keep an eye on her cavity situation in the morning the situation got worse and Eve has 9 cavities I remember the last time we came in she had some cavities and we were going to watch them but you don't have good news for me do you Eve has 9 9? 9? cavities? yes Eve that just has to be painful she also seemed to take pride in her children's morning routine her oldest daughter Sherry woke up at 5.30 in the morning to practice her piano 5.30 Sherry gets up and practices then Ruby wakes up her children at 6 am so that they can practice their scriptures at 6 I go in and wake up Abby and Julie and Chad and we meet in the library so that we can read scriptures not for freedom of religion practicing what you believe but I have a belief personally that when you're a child you need as much sleep as possible because you're growing and developing when I was a child I also struggled to wake up before 8 am most days so I am a bit of a night owl to have your mother wake you up at 6 am every day immediately force you into reading heavy religious text right at 6 am in the morning I imagine that that would not be a very easy thing to do then right after they read their scriptures she has the rest of her children practice their musical instruments at around 6.15 am before they go to school 6.15 ok Chad go ahead and go get your violin and get practicing Julie you need to go get your flute and practice their musical instruments before school there is no need for a 7 year old to be out of bed at 6 am read scripture, practice the flute sort fold, put away laundry for a family of 8 people have breakfast, get ready for school make her lunch, make her bed do 20 minutes of reading and then go to school all day that may be tired just typing it out you have to wonder if Ruby to do so much before and after school at home is detrimental to their life at school Ruby would often talk about how her children were failing at school I wonder why I didn't really do good on my spelling test so do I make you do your homework or did I just let you fail you let me fail I did I just let you fail the whole year didn't I it was a topic of discussion for a while in our home it just happens to be in my house it's not very realistic for me to say okay I'm going to sit down and do homework with you because there are too many and we have way too much going on and so my way was to let Abby fail an article published by the University of Utah Health detailed that lack of sleep can also have a negative effect on how Ruby learns all of these moments in the early 8 passengers vlogs are in hindsight red flags but none of them would result in large enough backlash for the channel's growth to be stunted or for people to begin significantly calling out Ruby and her behavior as a mother on the platform but then Chad disappeared on the vlogs appearing in the 8 passengers summer vlogs and viewers noticed his unexpected absence and became well concerned so Kevin and Ruby responded to the concern by posting a sit down video where they explained why their then 14 year old son wasn't appearing in any of their vlogs you know it's a serious video when it's me sitting down and talking but if it's the two of us sitting down and talking it's like even more serious it's really serious he'd been allegedly expelled from school though Kevin and Ruby also claim that Chad has just been having problems for years and it's all been building up to this moment it's an accumulation of things over years well before we ever started YouTubing or well before we ever got into social media as a sort of punishment for his culmination of problems and issues they're sending him to 10 weeks at the Anasazi Foundation Wilderness Therapy Program an outdoor intervention camp that according to his website was designed to help 13 to 17 year old troubled youth as well as young adults up to 25 with depression, sub abuse and other emotional or behavioral concerns the idea is with Wilderness Therapy is if you can survive with these peers in the Wilderness with nothing more than the clothes on your back and a couple of field supplies then there's nothing in this world that you can't tackle Wilderness Therapy programs are a major part of the multi-billion troubled teen industry Wilderness Therapy claims to combine counseling alongside Wilderness experiences like hiking camping and other outdoor activities the thing is there's now a lot of testimonies into the troubled teen industry especially Wilderness Therapy programs and just how toxic they are as well as how unregulated their programs are for a lot of people basically their money-grubbing schemes that can do major damage to the teens involved in them the main philosophy of the troubled teen industry is that teens need to be isolated, deprived and broken in order for them to improve and this is done by making them participate in humiliating group activities forcing them into manual labor giving them small amounts of food and threatening them with violence to prevent residents from trying to run away in the night and outer garments are taken from them they're also given a very small amount of food and water at a time so if they did try and run away they would starve or run out of water quickly in an article written for Akona, Nicole Sakura detailed that since the year 2000 roughly 86 teenagers have died as a result of Wilderness camps these programs avoid branding themselves as mental health facilities to prevent being government regulated and monitored by the National Institute of Health and this strategic loophole allows wilderness therapy programs to freely do what they want with the teens in their care since they don't have to comply with federally mandated laws according to the Anasazi Wilderness Therapy Program's official website Anasazi's therapeutic wilderness program for teens provides an opportunity through a primitive living experience what does that mean does that mean that they're trying to do cultural appropriation or does that mean starving children and throwing them into the wild in the name of a primitive experience and a philosophy that invites healing at the hands of nature to affect a change of heart a change in one's whole way of walking into the world the participants called young walkers kinda sounds a little bit inhuman like they're dehumanizing the kids making them sound like zombies calling them young walkers spend a minimum of 49 days hiking in the wilderness of Arizona and camping with little manufactured gear they live a primitive lifestyle and learn the skills and technologies of the ancient ones what is this terminology this sounds like fantasy book lore but really it's all just cultural appropriation of a bunch of parents who chose this wilderness camp to basically abuse their children in the forest for thousands of dollars young walkers learn to cook their own meals food packs are replenished weekly and build shelters to protect themselves from the elements they may hike up to 10 miles a day and sell dumb camp in the same place for more than two nights that sounds brutal 49 days children are hiking up to 10 miles a day yeah, of course you come back a different person you don't even have time to think about depression you're too busy just surviving what is the therapy here programs are billed through a daily rate with also a one time fee of $2,750 eventually Chad returned from his primitive experience as a young walker in Anasazi and the thing is a lot of people felt like the level of promotion that the 8 passengers social channels made of the Anasazi foundation was fairly overkill tagging them in Instagram posts like these and making multiple video posts about Chad's experience at Anasazi guess what Chad is coming home like three days we read his room to kind of resemble the camp and the culture that he's been in this is our last prayer before Chad comes home I brought heels and no makeup to go to the desert you can't throw it 10 weeks old you can't throw it treating us to grape leaves don't look in the bottom of the cup don't look the amount of promotion that the family made about this wilderness therapy program made many people wonder if ruby was sponsored by them or at the very least if Chad was getting in for free in exchange for posts by ruby that all of the content surrounding the Anasazi videos going to pick up Chad Chad returning home and getting reunited with his family got way more views than usual for the 8 passengers channel and a lot of attention for the family channel so if you're curious and want to learn more you can search Anasazi foundation on google and they have a website lots of youtube videos and it's assumed that these videos weren't sponsored by Anasazi this isn't a sponsored video but we were very impressed with this program though that doesn't necessarily clarify if they got the program for free for Chad because of their social media status or if there was some other shady sort of deal set up you can't tell me there wasn't some undisclosed benefit from ruby and kevin promoting the crap out of Anasazi now the video of Chad parents is on all of Anasazi's social media pages a forum poster estimated that the grand total that the frankie family would have had to pay for Chad going to Anasazi would have been $22,450 for telling me that they dropped $22,000 to send Chad to the middle of effing nowhere the same family that doesn't even buy their children more than 5 pairs of shirts and carbo loads for a food budget all of a sudden dropped upwards of $22,000 to send their son into the middle of the desert to go camping for 49 days though of course I can't confirm or deny whether or not 8 passengers was comped for the Anasazi wilderness therapy program or whether they had to pay for it nevertheless Chad returned home and ruby ensured to document his heartfelt return on all of the 8 passengers socials he got letters from Chad he reports that he has never been happier or more at peace his words have been a testament to me that parents have divine inspiration for their children parents receive guidance from heaven that teachers coaches, viewers friends and leaders don't doing the best thing for your child sometimes means taking a stomach punch by everyone around you Chad, I would take a punch to the gut for you any day we documented and filmed greeting Chad in the forest after he spent 49 days out in the wilderness we and Kevin filmed what it was like for Chad being out in the wilderness of course in a very glorified way he's making cupcakes that made it seem like wilderness therapy programs are great and made it look like the program for Chad without any of the harsh realities behind it I don't want to go home without busting a cold I haven't seen myself in so long usually we'll find a water truck occasionally and we'll look in the rear view mirrors oh my goodness this is crazy this is bread in the amazon world you have to ration all your food out for a whole week and once Chad returned from the program Ruby decorated his room with tons of reminders of Anasazi the camp that he just attended three oh my goodness Anasazi what what what what what what I don't know but like find it almost disturbing how focused Ruby was on filling Chad's room with Anasazi reminders when for all she knows it could have been a really negative traumatic experience for him it could have been a message to poor Russell who has to sleep there too behave or you'll be sent away too according to viewers on the youtube mama drama site his sister Bonnie her instagram story she supported Ruby's decision in sending Chad to Anasazi saying something along the lines of trust your instincts Frankie's also took away Chad's instagram account following his return home a lot of people began to theorize and it was later confirmed by those within Ruby's close circle that the year 2019 is when Ruby began receiving parenting advice from the therapist Ruby Hildebrand someone who will become more and more involved in a sinister way later in this story people believe this because even though Ruby always had red flags in her parenting style around the year 2019 you can see a drastic shift in the way that not only Ruby chose to parent her children but also in the way that she proudly documented it all for the world to see as mentioned earlier in the past Ruby would never film herself disciplining her children and around the year 2019 she started strongly implementing her discipline into her family vlogs because of all of this many people now believe that Jody Hildebrandt was the one that told Ruby to send Chad to this wilderness therapy program as well as some of the other disciplinary measures that Ruby enacted and filmed later on this year when he returned from Anasazi Ruby recorded a sit down video with Chad Chad revealed that he gained 10 pounds during his time at the wilderness therapy program and this was while he was eating nothing but vegan food and walking in the desert I gained weight I gained 10 pounds right there I bet that's shocking to everybody Chad did come home Chad revealing this information added even more validity to the theory that Ruby potentially starves her children since while in the wilderness Chad had to ration his food and according to Anasazi walked up to 10 miles a day and yet he gained weight of course that led people to be very concerned about how Ruby fed her children in her home if while being away in a very harsh environment actually was able to thrive far more than he was in his home environment you can see in documented videos that Ruby has shown a pattern that beyond just budgeting food and having poor nutrition in her children's diet Ruby has shown a pattern of controlling her children's food intake and using food as a punishment once you hit 99 pounds you don't need any suckers anymore there's nothing to eat yeah I need to go to the store stop, just stop only you say it one more time and then you're going to lose the privilege to eat the center for discovery published an article detailing that children, teenagers and adolescents who have EDs are often heavily influenced by their parents' words and actions there's been research in particular how mothers directly influence their daughter's relationship with food and their view of their body while many parents have rules about when children are allowed to eat, research shows that children have set points in their brain that alert them to when they're hungry and full so it's important to let children feel hungry and full on their own so that they can adjust to their natural physiological set points and it seems that Chad in a while away at Anasazi was actually allowed to satiate himself and feed his own hunger maybe to a point that he hadn't been able to before before Anasazi, Chad was attending a private school and after he returned he begged his parents to let him go to public school this year I'm going to a public school well what made you want to go to public school so I went to their school, the private school right and there were like only literally 40 kids in my grade however behind the scenes there was a lot happening that viewers did not know about while Ruby was filming Chad's return from Anasazi as if everything was happy and sun shines and rainbows behind the scenes the honeymoon of Chad's return from Anasazi did not last long, Chad was staying in the same bedroom as his younger brother Russell and decided to play a prank on his younger brother by waking him up in the middle of the night and telling him the family was going to Disneyland when they were in fact not going to Disneyland because of this prank the Frankie parents decided that an appropriate punishment would be to take away Chad's bed from him so he had no bed to sleep on for about seven months however viewers wouldn't find out about this for quite a while in a Q&A with his sister Sherry Chad talked about how when he was away from Anasazi Ruby had donated most of his clothes we have like three shirts no I don't when I went to Anasazi mom got mad and there were tons of clothes on my floor so she donated all the clothes that were on the floor he was sleeping on the couch before moving to sleeping on a bean bag and he was sleeping on the couch because Russell kicked him out of his own room and around this time Chad was walking a mile to school in Utah in freezing cold conditions so it seems like Chad's time at Anasazi where he had to live out in the wilderness in harsh conditions was really just preparing him for his time when he had to go back to living at home meanwhile Ruby got to live a life of luxury in December of 2019 the eight passengers YouTube channel uploaded multiple videos documenting their new move into their home likely from an increase in income from their YouTube channel especially from all of those videos documenting Chad's experience in Anasazi which had an increase in viewership so how do you feel about the possibility of us selling this house and moving like leaving this house I'm super excited but if you think about it like moving into this house as far as I can remember like my childhood and this is where Nali lived like all of her life Anasazi but kind of sad too because I mean I literally only have two memories of our house before this and everything else has been here this is the house she grew up in I cannot wrap my mind around this like this is like my bigger bigger than my wildest dreams ever would have let me imagine Ruby had all of her dreams come true meanwhile Chad was living in squalor in the very same homes in the videos where she's talking about the move Ruby even mentions how she had become afraid that their good fortune and YouTube success was one day going to vanish foreshadowing the events that would soon come I figured out why I was so scared I'm afraid for some reason YouTube went away and I don't think it's going to honest to goodness truly I'm not that worried about it I love YouTube and I think YouTube loves their creators and I think that they'll always work out something between between us but I was worried that I might not be able to create the family soon faced a controversy that would cause their image to further shatter a clip of Ruby from one of their vlogs began to rapidly circulate on the internet people became outraged because Ruby refused to give her youngest child Eve food while Eve was at school Eve who's five years old at the time didn't pack a lunch for the day and her kindergarten teacher ended up texting Ruby asking her to bring something for her five-year-old because her daughter was hungry but Ruby refuses it's got a text message from Eve's teacher and she said that Eve did not pack a lunch today and can I bring a lunch over to the school this happens quite often when you're having raising children Eve is responsible for making her lunches in the morning and she actually told me she did pack a lunch so the natural outcome is she's just going to need to be hungry and hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her a lunch now people were obviously very upset by this because using food as a punishment is overall very harmful especially when you're young and growing and need food to nourish yourself and grow it also just sets up children with harmful beliefs in the future in an interview with The Wrap Ruby and Kevin backpedal a bit on the incident claiming that the real reason that Ruby didn't bring a lunch to Eve was because the school was 45 minutes away even though that's not the reason that she gave in the video my heart broke for her Ruby said and I told her oh honey my darling I'm so sorry you're going to be hungry and I'm so uncomfortable with this with you I'm going to be uncomfortable alongside you because I know you are so capable of picking up your lunch off the front door and taking it with you when you go get in the car and Kevin said that all of the children are taught how to prepare a lunch when they reach Eve's age and that this day Eve simply forgot to pick hers up and you know what she never forgot her lunch again so it's a way to teach our children responsibly and be masters of themselves rather than dependent upon somebody else to always take care of them I'm all for teaching children responsibility early but you have to anticipate slip ups and forgetfulness you don't let a 6 year old, Eve was 5 at the time go an entire school day without food that's insane my children's school never lets any child go without food no matter the reason I love that about their school this clip circulating online caused the 8 passengers reputation to fall even more but Ruby tried to continue forward and pretend like everything was normal continuing to post on the 8 passengers channel after renovations were complete in the new home the Frankie family moved in and all the children got their own room and weren't forced to share rooms anymore Dad and I have reconfigured where we want to put things and we decided everybody gets their own bedroom around this time Ruby and Kevin were seemingly still punishing Chad giving him a much smaller room than his younger brother and only giving him a couple of dollars cash for his birthday while in the midst of moving we filmed a new parenting technique that had people very perturbed we threw away her children's homework something they need to do well in school which you know affects their mental health and well-being and made them pay for it to get it back and she filmed it all and posted it being somehow proud of this was I went around the house and I have worn the way yes that's my homework wow so you're all like what I have your attention now is that it you're all you have something in the bag that you would like out you can pay cash for it so you learn the value of your items or you can give what Dad I'll let you take the conversation from here you can do an equivalent value chore to get it back and whatever isn't claimed by the end of the day goes in the garbage we explained on video that this was a new rule that would be put in place to ensure that the children treat their stuff with the utmost respect I feel like the only thing I would learn in this situation is to resent my parents for making my life extremely difficult especially until my teacher um sorry I don't have my homework my parents threw it away because I couldn't pay them also honorable mentions of outrageous things that Ruby has done that invaded her children's privacy is she filmed shaving her daughter's legs for the first time Julie has been asking all summer if she can shave her armpits and I Julie you should shave your armpits I think your armpits need to be shaved more than your legs do when you start speaking in this video the poor daughter seems so uncomfortable with the entire situation being filmed she also filmed her son's conversation when he was texting a girl I assume a crush saying out loud for the camera what they were texting back and forth to one another let me see it I really like you I hold on I did not say that who are you texting no one any girlfriend whoa whoa I really like you I saw you in my dreams last night which is humiliating and while those small clips angered viewers because of the clear invasion of privacy they weren't as much of a sign of neglect as this next vlog that Ruby posted was in a vlog where Ruby talks about a new routine for the children she homeschools she mentions that she hasn't bathed her two youngest children in a long time Russell when was the last time you took a shower or a bath you don't remember that's a pretty good indicator you need to go bathe normally I do not wake up Eve she normally wakes up on her own however I'm pretty sure it's been at least six days she's had a bath why would she tell everyone that her kids haven't showered in over a week God she's disgusting a six and eight year old aren't just going to shower unless someone tells them to she really is useless how far can it go until someone realizes her kids are being neglected it's terrible that on the surface they just look like a rich family in a super nice house with their needs seemingly met the neglect is not as obvious but it's sure there dad checked out a long time ago and would much rather escape to the gym or work than face his children mom used to be in charge of the kids but has decided that's not for her either maybe she got jealous of Kevin doing it the kids are expected to financially provide for many of their own needs and are emotionally neglected and exploited by their parents Ruby's therapy teachings with Jody Hildebrand through the colt like company connections started to leak out in videos viewers didn't really understand what was going on besides being very concerned by the terms and phrases that Ruby was using as well as the very concerning parenting that Ruby was doing the company connections is the colt like pseudo therapy that practiced and perpetuated a tax tactics that Ruby got involved in alongside Jody Hildebrand that ultimately led to her being charged and arrested for child you can see in real time the escalation of her extreme beliefs in her content take root and start to rot although Ruby would occasionally talk about how she was taking courses to become a mental fitness trainer viewers were not aware at the time of how deep and disturbing the connections teachings went I am doing some really fun and exciting things in the mental health field I'm really passionate about a place where I want to put my time so we'll get into the disturbing nature of connections teachings later in this video an example of a seedling of connections teachings sprouting in Ruby's mind is when her daughter Eve was sick at home and Ruby became convinced that Eve was only manipulating her until Eve eventually got a fever don't you hate it when your kid is sick but they don't have a fever until after the whining starts I just thought the whining was because she was manipulating not true she's not feeling well so instead of listening to her daughter who's saying I feel really ill I'm not feeling well Ruby instead was convinced that her daughter must be manipulating her again the term that continually pops into my mind is in hindsight red flag throughout the entire 8 passengers journey the 8 passengers children continued to struggle in school Abby one of the middle children has always seemed to struggle particularly with math and instead of getting Abby a math tutor or any extra help Ruby has simply stuck by her method of just letting them fail and then chose to call out Abby's poor grades in math one of the worst days that she could have ever call out that Abby was failing math Ruby was in the middle of vlogging Abby's birthday Abby was opening presents and was gifted a book series that she really wanted to read this is the one series of books that I really wanted so you really don't want this one as a book girlie who's been getting into books a ton recently I can relate that's one of the best feelings in the world having a good book series that you can dive into when Abby expresses that she was so excited about this gift and being able to read this book series Ruby takes that as a moment to say that Abby's teacher told them that she's failing math which Ruby has always known that Abby struggles with math so do I make you do your homework or did I just let you fail you let me fail I did I just let you fail the whole year didn't I but that Abby feeling math must be because she's reading too many books so this book series that she just opened she can't read I hate to do this on your birthday to you Abby but your math teacher has told us that you've been missing work and you read all the time so I'm like you're not allowed 15% in math she has an F in math it's too assignment and because it's her birthday you just can't read until you catch up with your math and you can see how immediately depressed Abby becomes Ruby knows that the book series was the present that Abby really wanted and was excited about and used her bad grades something that Ruby purposefully lets happen as she's already talked about before I just let you fail the whole year as a way to withhold the present that Abby was excited about from Abby and virtually ruin if not at the very least dampen her happiness on her birthday hey so you need to catch up with your math I found it shocking that Kevin let out a surprise what when he found out Abby was failing math goes to show how really absent of a father he is the fact that Abby is only 13 and her parents know close to nothing about how she's doing in school is upsetting though Ruby never butt in when it came to her children's school work and let them fail on their own when it came to her children's home lives privacy was not allowed for example when Chad was vlogging his bedroom reveal you could see that his bedroom door was completely gone or taken off of its hinges I've known some parents who do this though I don't agree with it personally because I've always loved to have my own private space but also according to an article written for psychology today children have the right to privacy the teenager may want a right to privacy when it comes to activities like self inspecting getting dressed having confidential phone conversations with their friends keeping personal possessions and taking time to oneself ultimately the Frankie's lives took a dark turn leading to the biggest controversy of all in the summer of 2020 when Ruby uploaded a video where she and her kids spoke about some of their family issues behind the scenes and this video resulted in a massive backlash for the family channel and mainly Ruby Frankie the video started out with Ruby talking about Abby's phone getting taken away and Chad was surprised that Abby still hadn't gotten her phone back the last video that we did on electronics um you guys saw that I took Abby's phone away I still don't know how she hasn't gotten that back Abby so in our house when we take something away it's because they have shown that they are not responsible enough to manage it and so we don't just turn around and give it back as soon as they start acting good Ruby claims that the reason they hadn't given Abby's phone back is because they look for a minimum of six months of changed behavior Chad says that must be a new rule which leads Ruby to ask when she's ever not taken something away for six months so Chad reveals on video that his bed was taken away from him for seven months Ruby just laughs saying I don't think our viewers know that it has to be consistent over a minimum minimum of six months and that's showing up consistent in every aspect of their life that's a new rule that's a new rule oh wait just a minimum of six months have I ever given something back more than six less than six months um my bedroom was taken away for seven months and then you give it back like a couple weeks ago I don't think our viewers know that Chad continues saying that he was sleeping on a bean bag all the while Ruby just laughs in the camera Chad talks about the incident which led to his bed being taken away in which he plays a prank on his younger brother Russell by waking him up and saying the family is going to Disneyland I think so I think this is the reason at least this is the reason that's been in my head it's pretty funny but now I look back and it's pretty depressing no we never told our viewers that I woke Russell up at two in the morning and told him that we're going to Disneyland and he has to pack and he got up and made his bed all neatly and then packed all his clothes in a suitcase and then he walked out the door and I'm like Russell he's like what? and he's all happy that's his sunglasses on and I was like we're not going to Disneyland and he started crying and hitting me and then he went back to bed into use then when the family moves Chad confirms that he was further punished by Russell getting a larger bedroom than Chad but also that Chad wasn't even allowed to use a bedroom for a period of time a lot of you are like hey that's not fair because Chad got the bigger the lesser bedroom and Russell got the bigger bedroom Russell got the big bedroom and Chad got the smaller bedroom and Russell's bigger bedroom also had a bathroom but what you guys didn't know was Chad didn't get any room he didn't get anything he was sleeping on the floor in the family room Ruby then talks about how Chad doesn't have any electronics as a teenager in the modern age and will probably never get any electronics on top of that Ruby says that her daughter Abby will probably never get her phone back as well Chad hasn't had a flip phone a smart phone any kind of phone and it's been over a year and um I still have no intention of returning a phone Abby we took the phone away from Abby in November and you may you may never get the phone back I don't remember The most heartbreaking admission in this video is when the two children Chad and Abby reveal on camera that they don't have any friends I'm sure was made even harder due to the fact that they have no technology or any way to remain in contact with their friends and now I have no friends you can play with friends no like I don't have friends I don't have friends either I literally like told my friends I'm not hanging out with them anymore apparently during the time that Chad was living in the same room as Russell he was told to be taken out on a therapist's recommendation it's now known that Jody Hildebrandt was working with the family at this time and also became Chad's therapist for a period of time so it can be somewhat inferred allegedly that the advice for Chad's bed to be taken away was most likely Jody Hildebrandt's advice the video goes on the Ruby disciplining her youngest son Russell and in this section of the video Ruby begins using connections phrases the phrase from connections that will come up a lot in this video is the word distortion which Ruby used Ruby even claimed that Russell was being manipulative and lying okay you guys I need to go have a talk with Russell the fact that he's not willing to sit with me and be humble and talk is a big is a big demonstration to me that he has some distorted views and that he is in a lot of shame oh there you are I was just talking about you do you want to come sit with me and talk I'm gonna get down on your level I've noticed that you've been hiding from me and you are feeling a lot of embarrassment and shame I don't know you tell me what you're feeling I'm mad because I really won't get anything for summer I won't be able to go anywhere I don't have any friends no iPads no TV nothing okay so I hear you that sounds like a lot to be taken away that sounds like it's going to be a miserable summer can I can I tell you what I see would you be open to hearing what I have to say I see that yes the iPads will be taken because you weren't responsible you were lying and be manipulative with them people were very disturbed by this video for a multitude of reasons it was just bomb drop after bomb drop of disturbing behind the scenes parenting displayed by Ruby Ruby defended the video to Insider saying that the previous video that they had posted where Chad had done a bedroom reveal where it shows him without a bedroom door showed just how thrilled Chad was to have a bedroom again he had done a bedroom reveal where he was excited that he had put LED lights up in his bedroom it never occurred to him that it would turn on us somewhat blaming Chad that revealing this information had caused the internet to turn on Ruby and her parenting decisions the video which was titled what we haven't told you was deleted and Kevin tried to explain to Insider that it was a moment of vulnerability and a part of Chad's story of redemption that showed his victory over the challenges that he's faced over the last several years the people who've been following us this whole time they would have perceived as such the problem is when individuals who aren't familiar with the narrative don't get the entire story they fill in the unknown with their own narrative and that's really where this blew up and this story did blow up the general public became aware of the eight passengers channel and just how concerning their parenting choices were and people began searching through their past videos and over five years worth of content to find other evidence of mistreatment if you search eight passengers on YouTube especially now you'll find tons of compilation videos of the Frankie's toxic and abusive parenting just go sleep on the floor in the bathroom sleep on the floor you did? you slept good on the tile floor I hate it when I'm talking and vlogging and the kids come up and they're like I want to talk to you I am not taking Eve babe, Eve unless you come and give me a huge apology it was not very thankful of you I was excited and I told you to go get on your shoes and your jacket to see a movie and you should say okay and be grateful instead of well what movie well I don't know, let me think about it that's not very grateful and I'm not going to take a girl who's not grateful did you, did she go with you? no, I just found her you just found her? Where have you been? I don't know these compilation videos became so widespread that the Frankie's began sending out cease and desist letters to try and take down these videos and as more videos came out highlighting the potential abuse in the eight passengers household more and more major news outlets also began to grasp the story another family channel getting exposed for mistreating and exploiting their children this past week family vloggers eight passengers have come under fire for the way they discipline their children and when I tell you guys I'm so frustrated hearing about all this stuff I just, I can't even process some of the things that she's done to her children I think that tough parenting is something that I can't really judge I can't judge the punishments that you're giving I could give my two cents but I can't tell you if it's good or bad or if it's abuse talking about the concerns of the eight passengers family and in response the Frankie's just continued to send out more and more cease and desist but in some way this controversy was good for business the eight passengers name was circulating now more than ever and at its height eight passengers had reached 2.5 million subscribers eight passengers was also at its peak pulling around 200,000 views a day generating by some estimates $1,600 a day in ad revenue or around $584,000 a year and YouTube was teeming with drama surrounding the Frankie's all their attempts to silence their critics but it shouldn't be forgotten that the reason everyone acted in uproar is due to Ruby and by association Kevin's actions there are extreme punishments which could be described as hostile parenting people immediately identified that their parenting style was wrong and damaging to their children researchers at the University of Cambridge and University College Dublin found that children exposed to hostile parenting at age three were 1.5 times likelier than their peers to have mental health symptoms which qualified as high risk by age nine and according to the University of Cambridge parents who frequently exercise harsh discipline with young children are putting them at significantly greater risk of developing lasting mental health problems the study detailed that hostile parenting involves frequent harsh treatment and discipline and can be either physical or psychological yet child maltreatment is not only a risk factor for mental health problems it may also affect cognitive functioning for example child abuse is related to delayed language and cognitive development lower IQ and poorer school performance interesting Marion Baker a psychologist who's worked with parents for 15 years told Insider that it often leads to the child not really understanding what they did wrong and also repeating their behavior it's simply concerned with getting the child to conform to a set of predetermined often poorly communicated and ever changing sets of goalposts so the child is almost doomed to fail Baker said that punishing a child by taking away their bed would be incredibly upsetting as illustrated by Maslow's hierarchy of needs we all seek a set of safety and security in our environments and taking away a bed strips this away entirely and leaves the child in trauma the Frankies claimed that Chad chose the beanbag because he found it the most comfortable the parents also claimed that he removed his door in an effort to be transparent and help regain his parents trust which the mental state that you have to be in to think that you need to remove your own door and have zero privacy in your life to regain your parents trust is really tragic the Frankies were met with a flood of backlash which Ruby and Kevin tried to address in an Instagram story where Kevin claimed that mental health professionals presumably and assumed that they mean Jodie Hildebrand agreed that removing Chad's bed was an acceptable punishment and counseled them to do it many of you are criticizing and calling abusive are actually things that mental health professionals have counseled us to do we got accused of child abuse when we sent Chad to Anasazi guess what, the first thing that they did was take a bed away they don't have beds they don't have beds Kevin claimed that the actions viewers called abusive were recommended to them by medical health professionals so it seems at this point the behavior that was causing Ruby and Kevin Franky so much backlash was already being pretty heavily influenced by Jodie Hildebrand the creator of connections Jodie allegedly recommended Anasazi she recommended Chad's bed be taken away and the question starts to form of how much influence did Jodie Hildebrand have over the eight passengers' decisions with their family but at the time of this controversy viewers still had no idea who Jodie Hildebrand was they only knew that Kevin and Ruby made some very horrible decisions with their children and they were very angry with Kevin and Ruby in the middle of doing damage control Ruby spent days deleting negative comments off social media and while initially controversy may have been good to spread the eight passengers' name and might have been good for business as the heat continued to rise the clicks started to fall and sponsors began to back away not wanting to be associated with child abuse sponsors like Clorox, Norton Sargento, Narwhal, and Ruggable all cancelled their deals with eight passengers and as soon as sponsors and viewers vanished the channel's value completely plummeted at one point because of that YouTube family-friendly higher value add-sense eight passengers' ad rate was as high as $11 per thousand views but following this flurry of controversy it fell to below $1 Kevin and Ruby talked about the controversy saying sponsorships were 90% of the business and that has gone away I never ceased to be amazed at how intense and ferocious these individuals and these cancel mobs are and overnight, Ruby went from confidently believing that YouTube would never go away to everything that she built up on the channel vanishing in front of her eyes simply over her children admitting on camera what punishments she was giving them behind the scenes I guess we know now why for years she kept her punishments private from what predictably a change.org petition was made demanding that Utah's division of child and family services investigate the Frankies and it quickly drew more than 16,000 signatures and on top of that a lot of people were calling CPS directly. The sad thing is none of this was effective and we've seen time and time again that none of these things are effective change.org petitions calling CPS directly if you're an online internet viewer aren't effective so what do we do if we see a b***** happening online and want to stop it or prevent it? Eventually CPS even did stop by the house but never took action Ruby claimed that CPS basically said they were getting around a thousand complaints a day it was taking up more of their time answering the phone than it would to just come out and pay a visit. I guess looks can be deceiving and the Frankie family passed as the perfect Mormon family that just got a bad reputation online so the 8 passengers family channel lost the reputation their YouTube income and Ruby and Kevin were floundering blaming cancel culture and refusing to yield against their parenting decisions but Ruby had more of an audience than maybe she ever initially intended and people were now tuning in to ensure the safety of her children and I think one of the most outrageous posts that had nothing to do with her children was the post that Ruby made about the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement Ruby tried to maybe partake in the movement in the most tone deaf way I'd ever seen but used George Floyd and Black Lives Matter as a means to reflect on her own parenting and somewhat tried to claim that she was being persecuted in the same way it's all just a wild take to take something so public and tragic that the entire world was sort of experiencing and going through and then make it about your own internet drama where you're being accused of child abuse. Ruby posted an Instagram caption that said I watched the news for the first time in 15 years last night my heart hurts for the things I've learned my heart hurts for the George Floyd. My heart hurts for the murder of police officer Nathan Leide my heart hurts for being accused of abuse when my motives have always been love and real abuse actually occurs on a daily basis throughout the world. The world is full of rage, anger and hate. I have never been more grateful for blanket forts and the innocent laughter of children. What did she think that was going to accomplish? Like we forgive you now Ruby I think that was the most white woman post and take that I've ever seen of all time. Ruby continued posting on 8 passengers even after the plummet and viewership and sponsorship cancellations but started slowly to pull back from the frequency in which she recorded content in an interview with the rap she said as far as the content I've been more aware of how things can be twisted. I haven't talked as much about holding children accountable which is something I used to talk a lot about. In an interview with insider Kevin claimed he had seen everything from threats to attempts to get him fired from his job. Interestingly enough probably around the time that 8 passengers received a drastic drop in their sponsorships and ad revenue it's been publicly documented that 8 passengers pulled out a PPP loan or a paycheck protection program loan. The paycheck protection program is a 953 billion business loan program established by the United States federal government in 2020 throughout the pandemic through the coronavirus aid relief and economic security act to help businesses self-employed workers and sole proprietors and non-profit organizations and tribal businesses continue to pay their workers that is the purpose of PPP Loans to be able to continue to pay your workers throughout the pandemic. Now first off how many employees does 8 passengers have? It's just Ruby with a camera and a lot of controversy came out with PPP Loans when people began misusing the system and especially a lot of content creators used it just to pay themselves. Ruby's production company which shared the name of her YouTube channel 8 passengers received 2 PPP Loans totaling the amount of $83,620 according to ProPublica's loan tracker. Bonnie Ruby's sister has a production company titled Holland Productions LLC and received 2 PPP Loans totaling roughly $53,000. He and Jay Productions run by Ruby's sister Ellie and her husband Jared received roughly $47,000 from 2 PPP Loans. I guess it's up to each individual person whether this is morally wrong or right. I just know that during the pandemic a lot of people were home and so content creators for the most part did very well during this time compared to other people and small businesses who were struggling and in general it's ironic to me that Ruby was so okay with blurring this moral line when Ruby specifically has often deprived her children of so much in their own lives. Luckily 2020 was the last bigger year for 8 passengers but unluckily Ruby became more involved with the parasite that is Jody Hildebrand. It's unknown how exactly Ruby met Jody Hildebrand. It's been vaguely claimed through multiple sources that both Kevin and Ruby were recommended Jody as a counselor through a mutual friend and there have been many signs of when exactly they met and how they well connected apart from what we've already covered in this video. One particular redditor's theory I believe personally is the most accurate after the research that I've done. Around the year 2019 Chad was acting out in school and at home pranking his brother not liking the school that he was attending wanting to be in public school with his friends Sherry the oldest daughter was well behaved, performed well at school. Sherry has always been really motivated but you're not motivated so Ruby had never encountered this sort of behavior before and started looking for resources for how to parent a child like Chad as well as mental health resources and this redditor believes that Ruby ordered a mental health course from Jody but Kevin's attorney has claimed that both of them were recommended Jody Hildebrand as a therapist through a mutual friend. Any idea how Kevin and Ruby got connected with Jody as a counselor? They were introduced to her by a mutual friend who recommended her as being this exceptional mental health provider and it was recommended that they take her advice and visit with her and like I said it wasn't just them it was their son also who's now an adult who was receiving therapy and counseling from her. Then it's pretty undeniable that Jody zeroed in on Ruby who had a few things that Jody could utilize social media following money to spend. You can find through research that Beau Ruby's brother left Jody a bad Google review. One star with critical in communication and professionalism. I am very concerned that what I've shared gets gossiped about among others I've scheduled an appointment that was cancelled without informing me Jody ignores my requests for a receipt of services so Beau, Ruby's brother started to feel nervous that Jody was a bit of a gossip and literally sharing his private information which he shared with her in therapy with other people which is illegal I'm pretty sure so Ruby started out as one of Jody's clients then became even further involved with Jody and Jody had Ruby become what she called the original 10 women who Jody trained to become mental fitness trainers and we have Ruby here and Ruby is is a part of the original 10 women that are being trained to become mental fitness trainers who from their own words were trained to teach others principles of truth so Ruby you want to tell us about what a mental fitness trainer is yes so we are getting mentally fit the same way your body would get physically fit by running and lifting weights and working with a personal trainer we are getting ready to be your mental fitness trainer we're getting truth really easy to teach we're making it very simple boiling it down to principles that's how you're going to understand truth is really knowing principles being able to put words to it and help you and you're going to feel so much better absolutely they also gave the option to train anyone who is interested in becoming a mental fitness trainer and any of you who are interested in becoming a mental fitness trainer we are going to open that up to train other people so give us a call or email us at support at connectionsclassroom.com and maybe you can come to the next retreat for the come work out with us put you to work eventually I think that this group sort of became the moms of truth group something that references the principles of truth that they spoke about in this video they even created instagram and facebook pages dedicated to the moms of truth teachings also as a forum that's what the professor points out the entire model of this mental fitness trainer sounds like a pyramid scheme jody literally is training non-professionals to become a mental fitness trainer so you're training people who have no background in psychology on how to help people with their mental health that sounds incredibly dangerous really really dangerous then those people who somehow train other people to become mental fitness trainers even more terrifying and dangerous also that sounds like a pyramid scheme and as ruby dove further and further into becoming this mental fitness trainer viewers started noticing more and more ruby's strange phrasing in her content especially in the way that she would continue to say that her very very young children were manipulating her and those around them did anyone else see ruby's insta stories today? apparently according to ruby eve was manipulating sherry into letting her eat more cookies i'm sorry we're talking about a 7 to 8 year old kid viewers started to notice that ruby's family members became distant and estranged from her as well didn't see any of ruby's siblings wishing her a happy birthday do they not want to be associated with ruby on social media and even ruby's own mother is very prevalent on social media but people began to analyze ruby's own mother's posts to find out that her own parents had distanced themselves from her on social media the difference in birthday posts that ruby's mother posted between ruby and her sister ellie is definitely very telling for ruby her mom posted happy birthday ruby this picture of our family huddled together balancing on a rock in the middle of the river thanks for being the oldest for her daughter ellie ruby's mom posted happy birthday to my baby girl i hope we can continue to cuddle till i am 90 and you are 60 but no matter where i am rest assured you will be in my arms because i will always be your mom there's definitely a difference there and her mother posted on her daughter julie's birthday i am so grateful for you you were born with a kind spirit and a soft heart you are smart and wise i value your opinion on so many things you amaze me with how much you can get done in a day you work circles around me you are beautiful julie and i think you get more beautiful every year and ruby just gets thanks for being the oldest people kind of assumed there may be some beef going on within the griffith family and the family was distancing themselves with ruby especially as her involvement with this strange therapy practice started to intensify because ruby started posting more and more of her mental fitness trainer teachings and they all got more concerning like when ruby posted that anxiety is a choice now i think the most upsetting belief that ruby had and perpetuated from her trainings as a mental fitness trainer is the belief that mental health can be controlled by the individual and therefore is their fault this belief was brought to light even more when ruby decided to make a video preaching this audacious statement that anxiety is a choice anxiety as horrible and abilitating as it feels you still have choice and that's one of the things that i am responsible for teaching my children these mental health videos she is doing have me outraged i wish it would get the hate it deserves i left a comment saying something like anxiety can also be caused by chemical imbalances and medication helps and it was deleted then from my burner account i posted one saying something like anxiety can be caused by medical conditions like low vitamin d medical professionals should always be consulted also deleted this is so so dangerous she is not putting disclaimers she is not consulting medical professionals she is claiming to be the professional this could have deadly consequences instead of listening to critics again ruby doubles down and preaches her take on anxiety a second time and says in a video that feeling anxiety and maybe even feeling paralyzed from anxiety is not only thinking with distortion that famous word distortion but also that you are an entitled person for living that way as far as being anxious and fear you know i i'm in because i am nervous about the christmas party tonight i'm entitled to stay in bed all day society will say that's kind of okay like no one's saying oh yeah that's really wrong or that's distorted um they're saying yeah you're entitled to that so it's all it's all entitlement i'm a person who's been going to therapy or my really intense anxiety issues and while i'm definitely not an expert on the topic since i'm still learning the only thing i can really say is that being more harsh on yourself because you have anxiety like telling yourself that you're an entitled piece of shit because you are anxious about going to a christmas party is only going to give yourself more anxiety like of course anxiety shouldn't be used as a crutch or a reason to treat anyone like crap but at least in my life i've found that being a little bit more forgiving on myself especially in hard or stressful times is essential so i don't spiral into this endless pit of anxiety and as ruby became more and more involved in connections she started to aim her disdain at the books that her kids were reading even posting an instagram with a caption that read when school started rustle read the charlie bumper series and i began noticing sassy words and entitled attitudes so i read a few pages of the books and came across the exact behaviors in the book characters found the same thing in eave series of junior b jones in january i did a thorough clearing of books endorsing sassy indignant behaviors and replaced them ruby began more and more exerting control over exactly how her children behaved and acted what they read eventually taking away most of their education altogether as ruby and the frankie family stopped appearing in ruby's sisters vlogs people began to wonder more and more about the relationship between ruby and her sisters ruby also stopped talking about her sisters in any of her videos which was odd because ruby used to talk about her sisters occasionally in her vlogs she also stopped visiting with them completely even though they didn't live too far away from one another on top of that if you remember at the beginning of this video i spoke about how ruby was in the room during her sister julie's birth vlog well julie had another baby and not only did ruby never show up to see this new baby but ruby didn't even mention the birth of this new baby in any content or any social medias instead of ever addressing this or becoming more involved with her family ruby becomes more emboldened with being a career woman even doing literature at one point at bringum young university which is a little bizarre to me because why why ruby but in this lecture she speaks about how at the height of the eight passengers controversy they hired a pr expert of sorts i assume to help them with their controversy and this person advised them to lie and ruby proudly stated that she refused to lie to help with over the controversy me that tells me two things the first thing is that this expert that they had hired had in my opinion probably determined that what they did was to a certain extent abusive and that they should probably lie and say that they did not do those things to their children if they wanted to regain their audience the second thing it tells me is that other youtubers in controversy have probably done this before and i wonder how many times they have also lied just lied to get out of controversy my mind is spinning wondering that slowly more and more ruby gravitated away from youtube and the family persona that she had and for a long time she was silent on eight passengers and gave no reason for the reduction in posting but in mid december of 2021 ruby finally shed some light on the situation with a video titled life changes ruby said that she was no longer posting as much because she was involved with the mental health community you may have noticed that i am not vlogging as much as i used to and that is because i have been getting um more involved in the mental health community and that she was working very closely with jody hildebrand and her company connections i have been working really close with jody over at connections classroom ruby said that she still wants to vlog but that it is no longer her priority and that she has found her passion with connections why ruby and kevin became so passionate about connections was quite a mystery the connections business was centered around making counselors, therapists and life coaches out of regular individuals who have no specialized trading or qualifications but either way both kevin and ruby became deeply involved in connections and all the therapeutic teachings of the company and began making tons of videos for the connections social medias a lot of these videos garnering just as much controversy as the eight passengers youtube content ruby and kevin's role in connections became mainly about filming couples workshops for the connections youtube channel in a two part series that was titled christmas with no presence ruby starts out filming a video with a lot of concerning connections language saying that her two youngest children russell who is nine years old at this time and eve who is only seven years old at this time are showing long patterns of selfishness and an unwillingness to repent kevin and i we have two well we have six children the two youngest are showing long patterns of selfishness they have been showing through their choices their unwillingness to repent their unwillingness to go sorrow over some pretty egregious choices that they've made so again in this very creepy nexions style phrasing ruby says that her and her husband kevin decided that they were going to give the gift of truth this year for christmas and the gift of boundaries and the gift of repentance kevin and i have decided that we're going to give the gift of truth to them for christmas we are gonna give them the gift of boundaries and we're gonna give them the gift of repentance they sat their children down this year they won't be visited by Santa and not their four older siblings will be visited this year, but they will not. We just laid it out very clear and we told them that this year they are not going to be visited by Santa. So they will, and we kept them, we let them know that the Christmas morning, their four older siblings will be getting Christmas presents to open and that they will have the gift of love from their dad and I, because we want them to really have a visceral experience that hits them. We even said that before this, she had tried to punish her two youngest children in other ways, having them stay home from school, not go to school, and instead clean the floorboards all day as a punishment. So up until now, I was really hoping that like keeping them home from school and wiping the floorboards would like really bring pain, like, like, oh my gosh, I really want to change this behavior that I've been exhibiting. But this didn't change their behavior. In fact, the children actually loved this because they didn't need to go to school. It wasn't painful for them. They're like, oh yeah, we get to stay home from school and clean floorboards. This is kind of fun.  It's because they're so numb. And also, isn't that sort of punishment just a detriment to the children who would become more and more behind on school? What good does that do? What sense does that make? The strangest and honestly downright scariest thing that Ruby says in this no gifts from Santa advice video, because that's the other thing. This is an advice video. Remember, the entire time that Ruby is filming this, it's through the lens of her trying to give this advice to other parents. The scariest thing is that Ruby says that Eve and Russell weren't affected viscerally. That Eve and Russell didn't have a visceral enough reaction her punishments because they were numb and that they needed a more devastating experience to wake them up. So the more numb your child is, the greater experience, the bigger the outcome, they need to wake them up. Now that is extremely scary to me. Talk about the red flag of all red flags in this video. Something about that, that is like ultimate alarm bells going off because Ruby in that video basically says, at least in my interpretation and in hindsight, that unless her children are extremely devastated by whatever punishments she's doling out, they're not conscious enough, practically dehumanizing them. When if you've had a really restrictive, strict or aggressive parent, you know that what happens over time is you just simply begin to tune out their punishments and just become really numb to everything. And you start to just detach from holding any sentimentality to anything since anything can get taken away from you at any moment. And for Ruby to now hold their detachment against them, which is probably these children's only safety mechanism that they have left to the point where she probably inflicts harsher and harsher punishments till she can get a reaction from them, really honestly makes me hate her truly and is so scary to me. Evan makes a second part to the No Gifts from Santa video in which at first he goes on a rather creepy rant for the first 30 seconds of the video. I just want to add into this, the world has these definitions of what love and tenderness look like. I watch all these Christmas shows that I used to just love because I feel all warm and fuzzy. And this year I watched them and I'm like, oh gross because warm and fuzzy in the show was always about at the end that the kid just got whatever they wanted. Evan, Kevin defends Ruby's video in another angry rant saying that as her choice to give her children a no gift Christmas was the tender and loving choice. Then after he finishes his rant, the camera eerily cuts to Jody who was there the whole time watching over the message. The greatest gift that I could have received going back from my experiences that I shared as a child would have been an outcome, a Christmas just like the one Ruby described where I had all of those fears and all of those distractions taken away and I was forced to come face to face with the fears that I had. That would have been loving. That would have been tender. Maybe it would have broken the cycle that ravaged my life for the next, what, three decades. And that is so powerful. I, as a parent, just sitting here listening to you say that, it's like, I want to love my children. In my opinion, everyone involved in connections just looks angry when they're talking about children and parenting. Now, obviously, because the rest of the world isn't living in truth or is it distortion? I don't know. People saw what Kevin and Ruby posted and had some pretty harsh reactions to it. So to defend the teachings of connections because the ideas probably, most likely, came from her, Jody made a video about the no gifts from Santa controversy. And I was deeply, deeply saddened by some of the comments that had been made on our social media platform. In a reactionary measure to the couples conference that we had last weekend, or couples workshop that we had talking about truth and distortion. And for those of you who decided to be aggressive and mean and use foul language and be attacking, all of those people would be choosing to live in distortion. I will choose to live in distortion if it means never having to be involved in your creepy cult and creepy opinions on how to parent. Ma'am, Jody then mentioned some really legitimate questions that were brought up from people who were concerned about the potential negative impacts of refusing to give your children Christmas gifts as a method of trying to get them to feel a sense of punishment, as well as having them skip school to clean the floors. One of the questions is, was this manipulated? Is this going to cause childhood trauma? And then the last question was, young children, show up selfishly. Why do something according to these particular comments that looks drastic? I wanna respond to those. Jody acts like she has every intention of responding to these questions sincerely.  I have dedicated my life to truth and truth has been hated since the beginning of time. Since Adam and Eve, truth has been hated. It doesn't surprise me that distortion is attacking truth. And those of you who have been mean and aggressive and hateful in your comments, you are the reason why there's so much distortion in the world, because you keep perpetuating it.  Jody claims that Kevin and Ruby's two youngest children, Eve and Russell, have been making selfish choices because they're children. Which means to Jody that they no longer feel empathy. Several of their children, two of their children in particular, have been making choices that have been very, very selfish. And when someone starts becoming selfish, they don't feel empathy for people any longer. It's really clear by some of the comments that have been made that these children or these young adults don't feel empathy for people.  It in a way disconnects you emotionally from them. Therefore, you don't feel as badly for your harsher treatment of them. Jody goes on to attempt to list some of the distorted behavior that Eve and Russell have allegedly done according to Jody, which we don't even know if they've actually done this or if Jody is the distorted one here. But Jody claims that this nine and seven year old have sent her messages on social media and threatened to attack her Google reviews unless she, an adult and professional business owner, does what they tell her to do. They don't even know me and they've attacked me personally.  A nine and a seven year old having concept of the effect of Google reviews on a business and also somehow having the concept of how to leverage that for blackmail against someone, through sending them threatening messages via social media, that's extremely hard to believe. Either these two children are extremely brilliant evil masterminds, which honestly, good for them. That's amazing, especially against a woman like Jody. She deserves that. Or honestly, the more likely story, Jody is spouting a massive load of bull. I also think that Jody is making this up personally because just a few minutes later, Jody goes on to say also that all the haters of her content and her business are threatening her in the exact same manner. All of those haters are also saying that they're going to attack her Google reviews. Just like I shared a minute ago, I've had hateful comments with people saying if you don't take this video down, then I'm gonna hurt you.   Somehow both a nine and a seven year old and all the haters of Jody Hildebrand online and on the internet are all coming for her Google reviews. This is a woman of logic here, of discernment. Yep. Also, side note, Jody has an obsession with her Google reviews and has often ranted about receiving poor Google reviews and has complained to her clients and her customers that they were not reviewing her business positively. Super professional. So all you have to do is click the link and give us a five-star review. That's as simple as it is. But you guys aren't doing it. I think we've had five people. From the last time I asked, which was probably a month ago, five out of almost 9,000, five people, give us a review. That's five. And we've had probably 50 to 75 people give us one-star reviews. So we started with a five and in three months we're down to like a two. So please, I'm a minimum. Please, I don't understand why you won't do it. Go on to Mom's Adtrief. There is a link underneath every single video that says give us a review. Click it and give us a five-star, please. So I think Google reviews are what haunts Jody Hildebrandt, what keeps her up at night during the holidays. While the Frankies were busy not giving their children any Christmas gifts, viewers noticed that Ruby and Kevin were completely absent from any extended family griffiths get-togethers that all of the other siblings, apart from Ruby, were spending time with one another during the holidays and appearing in each other's blogs, even alongside Ruby's parents. Ruby and her family were really the only ones missing. It seems there was a very clear divide among the griffiths that was being speculated on for a while but was not being addressed. Some also started to speculate on a divide within the Frankie family as well as the oldest daughter, Sherry, started to slowly distance herself from her parents, spending Thanksgiving apart from her family. Meanwhile, Ruby's beliefs started to get more and more extreme as she exerted more and more control over her children, resulting in what I would call the TikTok dance saga. As Ruby's extreme beliefs became more and more outwardly separate from modern culture, her outrage and vitriol started to seem somewhat ridiculous to the general public. This can be seen and pretty well documented in Ruby's TikTok meltdown series. The saga of Ruby's meltdown began when she documented her fight against TikTok dances, the evil of TikTok dances. Charlie D'Amelio, Ruby is on to you.  So what happened is Ruby's 13 year old daughter, Julie, came home from school and told her mother that her PE class was doing a flash mob dance that had a compilation of popular TikTok dances. Julie is in a PE class over at the middle school and for PE, this teacher is doing dance. The teacher is going to have all of the students in her class, which includes Julie, do a TikTok dance for the school to like interrupt their lunch, like a surprise dance to everybody. Ruby was immediately triggered by the word TikTok and asked what the song was and what sort of dances they were doing, seemingly jumping to the worst possible conclusions and interpreting her daughter's answers to their most extreme. And I said a TikTok dance, hmm, what are the dance moves? And she's like, well, in the real dance, they're kind of naughty but she said just to do something different there. And Ruby demanded the name of the song and went home to research it. While she didn't say what the song's name was, she ended up claiming it was Straight Up Hardcore P, which of course makes absolutely no sense. Not only would it be extremely unlikely for a school to authorize a dance to a song that is Straight Up Hardcore P, but also, unless it's The Ice Cream Man by Tyga or something, I don't think that lyrics to a song can constitute as Hardcore P. I said, what songs are in this? And she told me, she told me one of the songs and I looked it up to look up the lyrics. It is Straight Up Hardcore, Straight Up. But Ruby is determined to document her battle with the school over the fight of the use of this song. I think that's what she's fighting about. So part two follows shortly after this video. The video begins with Ruby storming out of the school, shaking and red-faced. She gets into the car and goes into a 12 plus minute meltdown, screaming, sobbing, verbally attacking all the school officials that she spoke with. Ruby explains that during the meeting that she had with the school officials, the principal explains that she personally approved the song that the PE teacher used for the dance. I said, my problem is the choice of songs. And she says, well, all the songs were approved by me. The teacher put together a list of songs and she gave them to me and I approved them. Now, all of the songs are commonly used songs that appear frequently in all sorts of media. And Ruby then attacked this principal for using what's popular instead of using what's in truth. That is so disappointing because I would hope that the principal where my kids go to school, that the standard would be truth, that the standard would be principles, that the standard would be morality. I'm sure after Ruby said using what's in truth, the principal was like, what the heck is that supposed to mean? The children like what's popular. The principal tried to calmly explain that just because Ruby had different morals, if that's what you would call connections and principles of truth, didn't mean that she had to ruin the experience for all the other children. And the 30 plus parents who approved of the song and were excited for their child's chance to perform. So Ruby went on a tirade talking about how the principal will have to answer to God. Paul, the principal's sick, screamed that she wasn't being heard and stormed out the school. She said that the principal was introducing children to the world and it wasn't okay.  I am here to invite you to see you, you, the principal who are supposed to be bringing morality and supposed to be a standard who had these precious children. You are not protecting them. You are not protecting them.  And you're saying it's okay.  I live in like a quaint conservative little city where people think they're safe. Oh, let me get this straight. Apparently the greatest danger in a quaint conservative town is gas, TikTok dances. The privileged sort of life that you have to lead for TikTok dances to be the greatest fear for your children. But personally, I think that this meltdown was more over the fact that Ruby needed to control every aspect of her children's life and literally lost it over the fact that the principal was not letting her control this aspect of her child's life. She lost control and subsequently lost her control. And she says, well, you know, if Julie wants to get out of the class, I totally find making adjustments. Whatever would make Julie feel comfortable. I'm open to doing. I will, if she doesn't want to participate, that's fine. And I said, you're missing the whole point of why I'm here. I am not here for anyone's comfort, including my daughters. I'm not here to make her comfortable. Of course she can move classes, not because you said so, but because I said so. I am the parent. In a later video, Kevin gave a speech to the school district board about the TikTok flash mob whores ripping apart their quaint conservative town. This past term, my 13 year old daughter, who's a student that registered for a dance PE class. She was shocked to learn that the entire curriculum for the class was focused on replicating viral dance videos from the social media platform TikTok. Then reiterates to the board, Ruby's brave battle with the principal, where Ruby fought nobly with the tyranny of evil. That is the school principal and TikTok mashup dances. When my wife learned about this, she took it upon herself to approach the administration. She met three times with the principal and the assistant principals of the school to express her concerns and demand that the activity be modified or rescinded. The principal was minimizing smug, defensive, and deflective of the issues raised by my wife. And in his speech, Kevin revealed that the horrible song in question that Ruby was so upset about was flow writers low. Well, it was so simple, she was flexible, professional, hold up, wait a minute. Do I see what I think guy? Whoa, I'm into that. I like women exposed. That is the straight up hardcore Pete, a song that is not even marked E for explicit. In the end, I don't think Kevin and Ruby's antics were taken very seriously. Ruby had a meltdown because Ruby didn't get what she wanted. Ruby believes that her children should be sheltered and shouldn't be exposed. Any piece of the world that she hasn't specifically approved for them. But the unfortunate thing is that her children had very little choice in the matter and had to get sucked into her toxic vortex. And it seems like the more Ruby didn't get her way publicly, the more the public openly rejected her concepts and ideas, the more Ruby sheltered her children and completely cut them off from the rest of the world. If I'm going to raise my children with people looking out for them, I will have to do it myself. I cannot count on their teachers. I cannot count on their principle to look out for my kids. As Ruby transitioned more and more into the connections business, she slowly stopped posting on YouTube until the final eight passengers upload. On January 3rd of 2022, eight passengers family channel uploaded their final video titled Eve's baptism. What is it today? My baptism. And it's gonna be bad by the Holy Spirit. So I'm very excited for you and it's gonna hold it. And I'm excited to see what you feel and how you listen to that Holy Spirit throughout your life. We have been told and we understand never as the Lord goes. And in the vlog, Ruby mentioned that she's gonna be cutting back on her video upload schedule due to her work with connections. And I am cutting back even more. And I am doing some really fun and exciting things in the mental health field. I'm really passionate about and it's a place where I wanna put my time. And soon after that, Jodi Hildebrand and Ruby fully dove into the Moms of Truth social media pages. Now, the most ironic thing about this is the strongest criticism that Ruby has ever gotten time and time again is that she is a bad mother.  I think all these phrases that Ruby herself tends to project onto her children. And yet at the core of Ruby's identity, she wants to be seen as a good mother who has good concepts of what makes a strong and decent parent. So Ruby continued to align herself with connections in Jodi Hildebrand as some sort of expert in the mental health field, especially in the topics of parenting and parent advice. In March of 2022, Ruby and Jodi created a private Facebook group titled Moms of Truth with Judy and Ruby. We first want to thank you. We are so grateful and touched. You know, we go to the Facebook page and it's like, oh, look, we have this many more people that joined. We're so excited that you're with us. And we have this image and this desire to have an army of mothers and fathers, men and women, teams alike, moving forward throughout this planet and learning how to live principles of truth so that they actually have this beautiful outcome of connection. And this idea was likely inspired off of Jodi's original 10, who are learning how to be mental fitness trainers and teach Jodi's principles of truth. The Moms of Truth group description reads, welcome to Moms of Truth. This is a support group for mothers to ask questions and receive feedback on the parenting challenges you are facing. Jodi Hildebrand, MS, and Ruby Franke are mental fitness trainers with At Connections Coaching. They are available to give you truth-centered, principle-based training to help you create joy within your family. See that mountain range behind you?  It's like, oh my goodness, I have to do the same routine over and over. Well, we're here to invite you to our Facebook page called Moms in Truth. And we wanna help you understand that instead of chasing your kids all over the place, you need to learn what's called principles of truth. Principles of truth. That's right, become the mom of solid ground. Over 13,000 members joined this group. Jodi and Ruby claimed that this Facebook group was different from others because other mom Facebook groups or parenting Facebook groups, you join to give each other advice to ask questions and then chat about it in the comments. Nay-nay. Jodi and Ruby claim that this Facebook group, the Moms of Truth Facebook group, is solely offering truth, which is a wild claim to make when it comes to parenting. We're not giving opinions. We're actually interested in helping you understand principles of truth so that you can govern your life from a base of being honest, responsible, and humble. But if you can believe it, Ruby and Jodi started posting pretty wild takes in the Moms of Truth Facebook page.    I have always closely monitored my precious 13-year-old daughter's internet access, but recently, during one of our weekly phone checks, I found the following in her search history and then she goes through the statements that she, her daughter punched in and the daughter was trying to assess whether she was gay or not. Her first search was, am I gay quiz? She then says, we have temporarily confiscated all electronic devices until I decide as the mother how to address this moving forward. I don't want this to negatively impact her journey with God. She's a very sweet loving girl who enjoys some horseback riding on the side and has never done anything to break our trust. This has really affected me and added more stress into my already stressful week. Do you have any advice handling this situation? Should we consider therapy? Should we give her a second chance? Looking forward to hearing your advice, have a blessed day from a very concerned mother. So here's the core principle that this mom needs to understand. So mom, the truth is, is that your daughter is a daughter of God, period the end. Then as the video continues, Jodi becomes more and more unhinged, saying basically that LGBTQ community is trying to steal your children and take them away from you. We live in a world where there is a lot of evil going on and people are being very confused about the philosophies of men. There's no truth in them. Gender is clear.   Is now getting into a very mixed up, confusing world that will tell her if she likes to do boy sports and she's gay.     It's foolishness. Towards the end of the video, Jodi claims that the mother doesn't have a choice about whether or not she should limit this child's electronics and tells the mother that her child is in danger. The mother needs to do everything she can to protect her. Just basic fear-mongering, telling this mother that she needs to basically fear an entire demographic of people, claiming they're all out to get her child, which is so horrible.  In another advice video, Ruby responds to a mother who asks for advice about whether or not she should cut off her sibling's family because a family member had come out as transgender. So she says, hello, fellow mothers. Thanks for all the advice so far. I saw a post below that touched on the to