YouTube is a form of media where people are supposed to spread positivity and create fun content. Within moments, it is able to turn a family from ordinary people, to millionaires. However, some families don’t truly deserve this fame. A viewer never necessarily knows if what they are seeing on YouTube is actually what goes on behind the scenes. It is easy to make your life appear perfect when you are talking to a camera, even when it is not.  

There is a family YouTube channel called the “8 passengers”, who have been posting content with a large platform for years. However, this family has been proven to be living a not so perfect life. Mother of the family, Ruby Franke, has been arrested on two counts of alleged aggravated child abuse. Many people suspected and commented on the family’s videos about how she wasn’t treating the kids properly, but no one ever took action until now.

The Franke family lives in Utah, which is where the arrest occurred.  This arrest took place after a reported 911 call was made by a neighbor of the Franke family. The call was made at 10:50 P.M. on August 30, 2023. The neighbor decided to contact authorities after one of the Franke children had arrived on his doorstep. The child escaped from Ruby’s business partner’s home, known as Jodi Hildebrandt. The young child seemed to be “emaciated and malnourished, with open wounds and duct tape around the extremities,”. 

This child was not the only one out of the large family enduring abuse. Chad, one of the children, was supposedly forced to sleep on a beanbag for seven months. There were several other incidents just like this that were sometimes even documented.

Ruby was charged with aggravated child abuse, meaning she inflicted serious physical injury or allowed someone else to inflict serious physical injury upon a child.