The House of My Mother: Shari Franke’s Memoir Exposes Her Mother’s Downfall
Shari Franke, the eldest daughter of disgraced Utah parenting blogger Ruby Franke, has written a memoir detailing her mother’s downfall, including their last conversation together. Ruby, a mother of six and creator of the once-successful 8 Passengers YouTube channel, was sentenced to serve four consecutive terms between a maximum of 60 years in prison and a minimum of 30 for child abuse.
In her memoir, “The House of My Mother,” Shari recalls the last conversation she had with her mother not long before her arrest. At the time, rumors of her mother’s abuse had begun circulating on social media, and Shari took to Instagram to speak out publicly about the online discussions about her family life.
Ruby and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested and charged with six counts each of second-degree aggravated child abuse inflicted upon two of Ruby’s children. The allegations against Franke and Hildebrandt only came to light after Franke’s son fled Hildebrandt’s Ivins home and ran to a neighbor, who called 911 after seeing the malnourished boy with duct tape on his wrists and ankles.
Shari’s memoir focuses on her mother’s intense psychological abuse stemming from Hildebrandt’s extreme online teachings and apocalyptic religious views. Ruby and Hildebrandt subjected Ruby’s children to Hildebrandt’s expensive and mind-bending “therapy” sessions and relentlessly over-analyzed every statement Shari made, whether said aloud or texted to either woman.
The case has prompted discussions about how parenting and lifestyle blogs often present only a sliver of a person’s or family’s reality, as well as children’s rights to their own privacy if their parent is a social media star.