Disturbing photos, videos and journal entries written by Ruby Franke have been released in a trove of documents that police collected while investigating Franke for child abuse.
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‘Spawns of Satan’: Ruby Franke detailed torture of kids in newly released journal
By
Kathryn Mannie Global News
Posted March 22, 2024 3:39 pm
Updated March 25, 2024 12:28 pm
12 min read
RELATED: Utah court sentences disgraced family vlogger Ruby Franke to 4-60 years for child abuse – Feb 20, 2024
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trove of documents, videos, photos and audio recordings from the child abuse investigation into disgraced family vlogger
Ruby Franke and her business partner
Jodi Hildebrandt paint a disturbing picture of the state Franke’s children were in when they were finally rescued.
The video footage and photos show Franke’s 10-year-old daughter with stick-thin arms and buzz-cut hair. Police documents detail how she refused medical treatment for hours before letting anyone touch her.
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Ruby Franke’s 10-year-old daughter was found emaciated in a closet. Washington County Attorney's Office
Franke’s 12-year-old son was found with saran wrap around gaping, still-bloody wounds on his ankles. He told a witness he was to blame for his injuries.
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Ruby Franke’s 12-year-old son in the back of an ambulance with after medics removed the saran wrap covering the injuries on his ankles and wrists. Washington County Attorney's Office
But the most disturbing pieces of evidence in the collection were journal entries written by Franke, found in the home. The entries detailed how Franke starved and beat her children, and how she believed they were possessed by demons and needed physical punishment to “repent.”
Franke and Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to child abuse and were both sentenced Feb. 20 to
four consecutive terms of one-to-15 years each.
Before getting into the journal entries, here’s what the documents revealed.
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statement from the Washington County Attorney’s Office, included with the trove of documents, described the home environment as a “work-camp like setting,” in which the children were forced to complete gruelling physical tasks, sometimes bare-foot in the heat of the summer sun in Utah.
“The investigation found that religious extremism motivated Ms. Franke and Ms. Hildebrandt to inflict this horrific abuse. The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies,” prosecutors wrote.
Franke’s son tried to run away in June 2023, before the children were rescued, which exacerbated the abuse against him and led to him being tied up by his wrists and ankles.
The children were eventually found after Franke’s son, referred to as R in documents, ran away for a second time from Hildebrandt’s Utah home where he was being held, and asked a neighbour for food and water.
A witness statement given by Danny L. Clarkson, the neighbour who discovered R, states that the 12-year-old boy was found with duct tape around his ankles. When asked about it, R said “it was personal business, but that it was his fault.”
“I did not press the issue but became further alarmed,” Clarkson wrote. “We also discovered he had duck (sic) tape around his around his wrists, hidden by long sleeves, and again he said ‘I got these wounds because of me.’ It was obvious to us that he had been in bondage.”
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Ruby Franke’s son was captured on a Ring camera walking up to a neighbours house asking for food and water. Washington County Attorney's Office
When police arrived, R told them that he believed two of his sisters were also in Hildebrandt’s home, but he wasn’t certain. He said he hadn’t seen them “in over a month as they were kept separately in the home.”
When Hildebrandt’s home was searched, police found R’s sister, referred to as E in documents. She was found sitting in a walk-in closet inside the expansive home and refused to leave or allow anyone to touch her to provide medical treatment, video footage shows.
The girl was “concerned that Jodi did not want her to go to the hospital. She was concerned that the medical personnel would give her a vaccine and told me, ‘vaccine kill you,'” an officer referred to as N. Tobler wrote in a supplemental report.
Police officers said that during their search of the residence, they “located several rolls of duct tape, plastic wrap, used rope,
cayenne pepper, honey paste (described from victim Child 1), used medical gauze and other documents describing the forms of discipline in the household.”
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Photos of these pieces of evidence were also released, including a video of a police officer finding a pair of large, silver handcuffs with a long rope attached to the end of it. The handcuffs were found in a safe room in the home’s basement, behind a large vault-like door.
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A pair of handcuffs attached to a rope being placed into an evidence bag by a police officer investigating the home of Jodi Hildebrandt. Washington County Attorney's Office
As for the documents “describing the forms of discipline in the household,” those journal entries were made public, though some parts have been redacted, including the real names of the children.
The journal entries
The earliest journal entry dates to June 11, 2023. Franke writes that her daughter, E, has been hitting her own head on the ground in frustration.
“Big day for evil. E manipulates me. She won’t scream when Jodi is around but with me she whails (sic). All night, E screamed, cried and would hit her head on the tile floor.”
An undated entry that appears on the same page reveals that Franke cut off E’s hair.
“E is better behaved with Jodi. She likes to think she can still manipulate me. I gave her a pixie haircut. All her long hair is gone. No more distracting with hair.”
In an interview with Franke’s husband Kevin, he revealed that his daughter E had long hair and was very talkative the last time he saw her, which was around a year prior. Kevin told police he and his wife separated because he didn’t treat Franke well enough and had a pornography addiction.
At that time, he said he was working to win his wife back. Kevin has since filed for divorce from Franke.