Ruby Franke’s son breaks silence on jailed YouTube mom, reads diaries from before arrest: 'I was brainwashed'
The son of convicted 8 Passengers YouTube blogger Ruby Franke is speaking out nearly two years after his mother was sentenced to up to six decades in prison for aggravated child abuse.
Chad Franke, 20, is sharing his side of the story in a series of TikTok videos by reading diary entries from 2023, one year before his mother sentenced in a Utah courtroom, according to People.
"Hi, my name is Chad, and I used to be very brainwashed," he said in the first video. "And, no, I’m not kidding. You can look me up."
Throughout the video, Chad explained he has received countless requests from his TikTok followers to "write a book on my story" but conceded he feels he is not a "very good writer" and does not want a third party telling his side of things.
"Then I remembered I kind of wrote my own story myself," Chad said, pointing to a journal in which he wrote every day during that period of his life.
"And to show you guys how real it was for every single day of the year, I will go back to 2023, two years ago, and read every single journal entry that I wrote."
In the second video installment, Chad read an entry dated Jan. 22, 2023, detailing how he visited church with his roommates before playing Mario Kart and later cooked "funeral potatoes."
"And then I called mom," Chad said.
"We talked for two hours about removing lust. It's a little more complicated and difficult than I thought," he said, adding he was working as a lifeguard at the time.
"Being at the pool has many opportunities to show God I will not lust anymore," he continued, before listing a series of goals he wanted to accomplish within the upcoming week. "Scripture study, scripture notes, traveling to work, finishing and starting a finance book, finish a 12-hour Python coding course, and keep on cooking."
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Chad then addressed his viewers to clarify his views regarding religion and his situation at the time the entry was written.
"I want to make it very clear that not all of this is bad," he said. "Scripture study, not bad. Cooking, obviously not bad. And talking to my brainwashed mom at the time, also not bad.
"This is just me giving my story. This isn't me saying everything is bad."
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In a third video posted to TikTok, Chad shared another journal entry from the following day in 2023, in which he mulled over the concept of "lust" and his job as a lifeguard at a local pool.
"Being a lifeguard, I just watch people's choices over and over," he wrote. "I have two opportunities to either feel compassion or lust. It is difficult to rid lust after a lifetime of feeding it.
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"But, at the pool, I have more and more chances to evidence. I will not lust. It will take more practice. And I have not spoken the lustful language or shared lustful comments. It is all immature, and I need and want to grow into a hard-working and principled man. I need to be disciplined."
Franke earned an impressive online following in 2015 by posting videos of her children — Chad, Julie, Abby, Russell, Shari and Eve — on her family’s YouTube channel, 8 Passengers.
The Utah blogger quickly rose to fame, earning over 2 million followers on her platform.
However, the popularity of the family’s YouTube channel began to fall after Chad mentioned in a video that he had been forced to sleep on a beanbag chair for several months as punishment.
Seven years later, Franke began partnering with controversial family therapist Jodi Hildebrandt on a podcast and joint Instagram account, "Moms of Truth," where the pair shared intense and often abusive parenting tactics.
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Hildebrandt soon became a central figure in the Franke family's lives and eventually moved in with the family after Shari, Franke’s oldest child, left for college.
In 2023, Utah authorities arrested Franke and Hildebrandt on charges of abusing Franke’s two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy.
Authorities became aware of the abuse after Franke’s son fled Hildebrandt’s home and reached a neighbor, who called 911 to report the malnourished boy had duct tape on his wrists and ankles.
The pair were arrested in August 2023 and pleaded guilty to child abuse in December 2023. Both Franke and Hildebrandt were sentenced to four consecutive terms between a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison in February 2024.
Fox News Digital's Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.