Shari Franke gives raw retelling of mom's abuse, Jodi Hildebrandt influence in memoir

Shari Franke, daughter of the disgraced YouTube family vlogger Ruby Franke, is sharing her side of the story in her memoir, “The House of My Mother.” The collection of memories, realizations and journal entries is out now from Simon & Schuster. 

Ruby Franke, creator of the “8 Passengers” channel, was arrested in August 2023 after one of her sons climbed out of a window, duct tape around his wrists and ankles, and went to a neighbor’s house asking for food and water. Franke later pleaded guilty to four felony counts of second-degree child abuse and was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison for each count. 

Jodi Hildebrandt, her business partner, received the same charges and sentence. Hildebrandt, a former clinical mental health counselor, ran the controversial counseling business ConneXions Classroom, considered a cult by some for its promotion of extreme parenting styles.

Now 21, the eldest Franke child is revealing more about the abuse she experienced from what she describes as a “malignant narcissist” and how her family is healing now. 

Here are some of the biggest revelations:

1. Franke children's abuse started long before Jodi Hildebrandt

Public evidence from Ruby Franke’s arrest and sentencing revealed handwritten journals describing the abuse and justifying it through extremist religious theories – forcing her children to sleep on hard floors, locking them in a concrete bunker, starving them and forcing her son’s head underwater while holding his mouth and nose closed.

Shari’s memoir details the turn Ruby took when Hildebrandt entered the picture, but there was a pattern of abuse from the start in the Franke household, she says.

During piano lessons, she writes, her mother's slaps “were calibrated – never hard enough to leave visible bruises, at least on me, but always sufficient to instill fear,” she writes.

On one occasion, her mischievous younger brother, Chad, snuck into her room and cut a chunk of Shari’s hair off, she writes. Ruby punished him by shaving a “reverse Mohawk” into his head, she said. In another instance, she paid Shari $100 to wax off half of her eyebrows for a clickbait video titled “SHARI, I’M SO SORRY!!”

When Shari disclosed her depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation to her parents, her father, Kevin Franke, was initially supportive. But Ruby said that “all problems can be solved with prayer, diet, and exercise.” 

“Mom has become obsessed with this place called West Point Military Academy, which means she now punishes us by making us condition, like soldiers,” Shari wrote in one journal entry.

2. Shari Franke says Ruby’s abuse conditioned her for sexual abuse by older church member 

Shari writes about how she became close with an older man high up in her church, known only as “Derek” in the memoir, helping him with social media strategy for his company. She began to see him as a friend and a father figure, the only person who supported her, listened and sympathized with her pain. 

On her first night as a student at Brigham Young University, he sexually assaulted her for the first time, she says. This pattern continued during her time at BYU, with Derek saying he was “training” her for marriage, she writes. He bought her gifts, co-signed on her apartment, and texted her frequently. When she eventually cut off contact from him and told her bishop what happened, her "temple recommend" – a document that certifies “you’re worthy to enter and participate in temple ceremonies” – was revoked for a month. Derek faced no punishment, she writes.

She says Ruby’s emotional abuse primed her for Derek’s: “Ruby had implanted in me very effective mechanisms for intense guilt, shame, and self-loathing. The situation with Derek was the first real-world instance where I faced the repercussions of this conditioning.”  

3. Jodi drove a calculated wedge in the Franke family

Hildebrandt entered the Franke family as a therapist for Chad, who was on a rebellious streak. Shari writes that Jodi had a reputation in the Utah Church of Latter-day Saints community as a “miracle worker.”

Jodi later became a coach for Shari after Ruby told her daughter: “You don’t have empathy. You’re not compassionate. As your parent, it’s my job to help you fix your flaws.” Shari says Jodi forced her to micro-analyze her personality, training her inner critic: “Think to yourself, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to fail this test because I’m a very stupid little girl.’”

Shari eventually fell headfirst into Jodi’s thinking, costing her friends at school but gaining the praise of her mother. 

“Jodi seemed to specialize in guiding wives from their husbands. Or kicking them out entirely. ConneXions language framed it as ‘inviting him to leave,’ code for ‘I’m going to make you isolate yourself from everyone you know, except Jodi,’” Shari writes. 

Eventually, Kevin was “invited” to leave the family and told to take Chad with him. And Shari too – while at college, a neighbor told her that Ruby had left the younger kids alone for five days, prompting Shari to call child services. Ruby called her a “traitor” and a “Judas in our midst,” cutting her off as well, she writes.  

4. Jodi and Ruby’s relationship: ‘Sneaking around in the middle of the night like a teenager’ 

Before Kevin, Chad and Shari were cut off, Jodi moved into the Franke house, staying in Shari’s room while she underwent “spiritual interventions” and Shari slept on the couch. Jodi and Ruby grew closer, obsessed with a book of doomsday prophecies called “Visions of Glory” and taking trips to Mexico to “stockpile antibiotics for the end of days,” Shari writes. 

Shari says that one evening she saw her former bedroom lit with candles and massage oils, “feeling like I had just walked into someone else’s honeymoon suite” and later saw her mother, “cheeks flushed and her robe hastily tied,” sneaking out of the room. 

“Why was Ruby sneaking around in the middle of the night like a teenager trying not to get caught by her parents?” she writes, later saying the two women “condemned queerness very publicly in their ConneXions videos, while embodying it privately. In my room. On my bed, most likely.”

And then, eventually, Ruby moved into the room with Jodi, she writes. Kevin was told the upstairs was off limits and was allowed to reenter the kitchen and house only with Ruby’s permission, Shari says. He had “as much autonomy as a wet noodle in a hurricane,” she writes.

5. ‘God gave us this platform’: LDS values and family vlogging tradition

“Family vlogging is a very LDS-aligned pursuit,” Shari writes, elaborating on the church's mission to share its teachings, attract new members and keep family records. She adds, “The synergy between YouTube and LDS families seemed almost predestined.”

As the “8 Passengers” account grew exponentially and brought the family more and more money, comments of support and admiration only fueled Ruby’s narcissistic tendencies, Shari writes. When Ruby started her channel, her sisters were already making an income as mommy bloggers.

“You couldn’t sneeze without it being immortalized from multiple angles,” Shari writes.

From a young age, Shari learned she could earn her mother’s affection only by participating, she wrote. She started her own vlog channel, making videos of her shaving and talking about periods because she knew “this is what makes money.” Her mom took 10% of her earnings, she writes. Ruby also filmed her when she was sick with mono, telling her how to pose to look as if she were on her “deathbed” and pulling over on the way to urgent care to film herself celebrating reaching 1 million subscribers. 

Shari has since spoken about being a “victim of family vlogging,” telling Utah lawmakers in a testimony that “there is no such thing as a moral or ethical family vlogger.”

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support to survivors and their loved ones in English and Spanish at: 800.656.HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org and en Español RAINN.org/es.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weeklyBooks newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at[email protected]. 

Contributing: Mary Walrath-Holdridge