The Mormon mother blogger accused of abusing her children was visited by police at her home twice by concerned relatives and neighbors, police reports show.
Ruby Franke, 41, made a living lecturing on strict parenting while allegedly abusing her children. She was arrested last week after one of her sons was discovered with open wounds and duct tape on his wrists and ankles.
Long before the sickening charges were filed against Franke and her podcast partner Jodi Hildebrandt, her family first landed on police radar after her children were caught running into the road in April 2022, according to police data first reported Through People.
This was followed by another visit in August, when Franke’s eldest daughter Shari urged police to conduct a welfare check at the family home in Springville, Utah, fearing her siblings had already been in the house for nearly a week abandoned.
After the YouTube blogger was charged with six felony counts of child molestation, she made wild and shocking claims that one of her minor children had sexually abused a sibling and other children around them.
YouTuber mother Ruby Franke (pictured) has been charged with six counts of child abuse after her 12-year-old son was found with open wounds and duct tape on their limbs
Franke’s eldest daughter Shari (Red Coat) reportedly urged police to conduct a welfare check on the family home in Utah in August 2022, fearing for her younger siblings
According to police reports, Shari called Utah police after being notified by a neighbor that her younger siblings had been left alone in their home for about five days.
She reportedly said her mother was with Hildebrandt, from whose Irvins, Utah, home Franke’s 12-year-old son Russell allegedly escaped last month after fleeing out a window and running to a neighbor’s house seeking food and water begged.
After Shari called Springville police to check on her mother’s home, the officer said, “(She) asked that we check on the children and make sure they were safe and had food for the extended period of time.” ‘
According to the police report, the officer received no response when he knocked on the door, and “the children were seen through the windows, but would not answer the door.”
After her mother’s arrest, Shari celebrated the moment by saying that she had been “trying to tell the police and law enforcement about this for years.” She also shared a photo of their home on Instagram with the caption: “Finally.”
It remains unclear why more decisive action wasn’t taken, as in her previous attempt to call police to the house, the officer on the scene also spoke to concerned neighbors when the children wouldn’t answer the door.
Springville police have been contacted for comment.
The reporter said neighbors claimed that “the mother of the residence, Ruby Franke, will be leaving her children’s home for an extended period of time and going to St. George and spending time with her friend Jodi Hildebrandt.”
“Everyone who arrived at the scene was very concerned about the children being left home alone,” the report said.
“They expressed great concern that the two youngest children are homeschooled while the two oldest attend public school.
‘Especially because it shows that they are home alone during the day and that they have no way to contact the emergency services if they need to, because they do not have a telephone and there is no landline available at home.’
Franke made a living lecturing on strict parenting, but police reports claim that neighbors warned police over a year ago that they were ‘very concerned about the children and that they would be left home alone’
Ruby Franke, (left) who ran the now defunct channel 8 Passengers, was arrested on August 30 along with her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt (right).
Ruby Franke’s home in Springville, Utah, was seen Saturday, having been visited by police long before her arrest last week
Ruby’s eldest daughter Shari, 20, posted about her mother’s arrest on Instagram, sharing a photo of police officers outside the house with the caption “Finally”
Russell Franke reportedly ran out of Hildebrandt’s house (pictured) with duct tape around his wrists and ankles to get help
According to KSL, police assisted Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) three more times. Springville police did not immediately respond to a request for further details when contacted by DailyMail.com.
The other time police were called to the home was months earlier, in April 2022, when a DCFS case worker contacted police after “she was notified of two children running into the road unattended.” , the police report said.
When an officer arrived, they did not report seeing any children on the street.
In a stunning twist following her arrest, Franke alleged via video from a Utah jail on Friday that one of her minor children had sexually abused their sibling and abused several other family members and children in the neighborhood over the years.
But according to police reports, Franke herself called the police twice in 2020 after claiming to have received threatening messages about exposing her twisted family life.
In one incident, on April 27, 2020, she told police she “received a text message from someone saying they were going to tear down her family and there will be riots at their door when the world finds out the truth.”
Ruby Franke’s husband Kevin listened in court Thursday as his wife made wild accusations about their children
The Mormon blogger broke down in tears as she made wild accusations – without providing evidence – about her own children following her arrest on child abuse charges.
Franke appeared to shift the blame for her behavior onto her children, going into gruesome detail about how one of her six children abused other children.
She claimed that one of the Franke children started watching pornography at just the age of three.
In one of the most shocking claims, Franke said her child sexually abused a younger sibling for years, adding that they eventually began abusing other children.
She also claimed that her two children were playing a “beating” game with each other, but did not elaborate.
Franke said her child admitted in May to sexually abusing 20 people, including cousins and neighbors.
The family blew up on social media after they started posting videos in 2015, showing the ‘day in the life’ of the clan of six
One of Franke’s family members also spoke out after the YouTuber’s arrest, claiming the “disgusting” child abuse case is “bigger than people know.”
An unnamed cousin claimed that child abuse, physical behavior and food withholding is something that is a ‘multigenerational’ problem in the Franke family in a covert interview with Law & Crime.
‘I’m not shocked. It’s not a shock at all. The direction it went was not what I thought, but where it came from was to be expected,” they said.
“I didn’t expect that some of the details in that story would tie in with details in my own family history.
‘My mother handcuffed my sisters when they were young, and lack of food was not uncommon, but it wasn’t for lack of money. There was a time when it could have been prevented and it wasn’t.’
“All I can say is that my mother has been avoiding my siblings. I’m not shocked.’
When asked when they last saw Ruby, they replied, “When I was very young, that was a long time ago. More than fifteen years ago.’