Fasting, corporal punishment and sleep deprivation. These are some of the “severe parenting practices” adopted by an American YouTuber mother, Ruby Frankefollowed by over 2 million subscribers and arrested in Ivins, Utah, with her “business partner”, Jodi Hildebrandt, for alleged aggravated child abuse.
It was not difficult for the local police to reconstruct the evidentiary framework and stop the influencer, mother of six children, who had already had problems with the law in the past.
His “educational recipes”, even after the previous ones, continued to be shared on the YouTube channel «8 Passangers», now finally suspended. According to the local authorities, this time it was the neighbors who took in one of Franke’s children, who was injured and evidently hungry.
“The minor appeared emaciated and malnourished, with open wounds and obvious signs of duct tape” on his ankles and wrists, the police said in a statement, specifying that “the minor was asking for water and food.”
The police, after searching the house, identified another minor “in similar physical conditions of malnutrition”. The two children were rescued and hospitalized while the two women, Washington County prison authorities confirm, “are still in custody.”
The handcuffs for the influencer mother and her colleague were imposed on the basis of six counts of aggravated abuse and after years of controversial videos and controversy overseas for the “repressive” character conveyed on a channel which, in theory, he was supposed to dispense good parenting advice.
Many of the videos posted (and, unfortunately, reshared after the news of the arrest) show moments of family life in which the two influencers promoted “Spartan” educational practices, for example, threatening to “take away the privilege of eating” as punishment, or showing a child sleeping on the stool after “losing his room” for messing up.