Helen Archer | On 04, Mar 2025

In August 2023, a man in Ivins, Utah, answered his doorbell, only to find a 12-year-old boy, asking for his help. Sitting the boy down, speaking to him softly, he called out to his wife as he phoned 911. Hunched over on his chair, his voice broke as he described to the dispatcher the boy’s condition – so emaciated his Achilles tendons were visible, with duct tape wrapped tightly round his ankles. 

That boy was the youngest son of Kevin and Ruby Franke, who had – along with his sister – been subjected to months of extreme abuse at the hands of his mother and her ‘life coach’ Jodi Hildebrandt, YouTube influencers well known in their Mormon community and beyond. The neighbour who made the 911 call showed more emotion at the sight of him than his father, Kevin – interviewed extensively for this series – does throughout.

Directed by Olly Lambert, the programme is broken up into three parts, titled Abundance, Distortion and Truth. It tells the story of Ruby Franke’s rise to prominence as ‘America’s Mom’, a family vlogger who used her six children as content, and who, at the height of her fame, was bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a month through her ‘8 Passengers’ channel. Viewers began to question her much-lauded parenting tips when she accidentally let slip that she had punished her oldest son, Chad, for some mild transgression by making him sleep on a beanbag in the basement for seven months. Finding herself on the receiving end of ‘cancel culture’, she sought the help of Hildebrandt, a therapist who had been struck off some time previously and now made her living preaching her own brand of values to a susceptible audience. 

The documentary tells us the story through never-seen-before outtakes courtesy of Ruby’s prolific filming, and interviews with Kevin, Chad, and eldest daughter Shari, along with various neighbours and co-workers. They talk us, in chronological order, through the rise and fall of Franke, from her initial striving for perfection to her folie à deux with Hildebrandt, via Satanic possessions, exorcisms and apocalypse prepping. While Kevin – who left the family home a year before Ruby’s arrest, blocking the numbers of his daughter and neighbours who were trying to alert him to the fact that something was wrong – claims to have been unaware of the abuse, it is clear it started long before Jodi came into the picture. Ruby’s own filming is testament to that, as is the fact that one Christmas, the two youngest children were not allowed gifts, though everyone else in the family exchanged them. 

What makes the series so unnerving – other than its upsetting subject matter – is Kevin’s detached affect throughout. Though prompted occasionally from behind the camera to ask about his feelings – specifically if he carries any guilt – he remains impassive, barely mentioning his children, and most animated when talking about his deep love for his wife, which, he tells us, remains strong, despite everything. It all makes for unsettling, though somewhat compelling, viewing. While we never quite get to the bottom of what made Ruby’s dark heart beat the way it did – nothing is included, for example, about her own upbringing – the series does, perhaps accidentally, examine the many ways in which she was enabled.

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