To her fanbase, Ruby Franke was a hardworking mom who shared the raising of her six children with her husband, Kevin, for the world to see and learn from, guided by her devout Christianity as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Indeed, Franke’s trial showed that the vlogger’s abuse of her children was linked to her religious beliefs. As the case report notes: “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 out of their bodies” (via the Washington County, Utah website).
Franke’s journals reveal that she believed her children to be satanic, describing how her son “emulates a snake” in his underhand behavior. In it, she calls both her children “the spawns of Satan,” and writes that they are possessed by demons. Her journals then go into detail of the “training” she and Hildebrandt had concocted to discipline her children, whom she says she wants to “emulate the savior.”
