Ruby Franke’s Daughter Shari Opens Up About Her Mom’s ‘Strange’ Relationship with Jodi Hildebrandt. Was There Romance?

Shari Franke is opening up about the “strange” relationship between her mother Ruby Franke and the family’s therapist Jodi Hildebrandt in her new memoir, The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom.

Ruby and Hildebrandt were arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse in September 2023. Now Shari is shedding some light on the nature of her YouTuber mother’s relationship with Hildebrandt, a Utah-based therapist.

“I certainly got weird vibes from Jodi and Ruby,” Shari said in an interview with Good Morning America on Tuesday, Jan. 7. “I don’t think it’s normal at all that a therapist would move into her client’s home. I was moving out to college, and I hadn’t even left the house yet and she is in my room and in my bed.”

Ruby disowned Shari when she moved out to go to college, according to an Insider report, but Shari said she noticed “strange” behavior between her mother and Hildebrandt prior to this.

“Ruby tried to be secretive about it, and so I don’t know all the details,” Shari said. “The vibes I was getting was that something was strange between them.”

In her new memoir, Shari went further, sharing in an excerpt with GMA that says she found messages on Ruby’s laptop after her arrest, “that confirmed for me the truth about the nature of her relationship with Jodi and how it had spilled over into the physical. Ruby, expressing her frustration about having to cater to Jodi’s needs for physical affection without getting anything in return.”

However, when asked on GMA if Ruby and Hildebrandt were romantically involved, Shari was more hesitant. “I never saw anything specific about that,” she said, adding that she wasn’t sure if they were more than friends. 

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Hildebrandt first became involved with the Franke family in 2019 after meeting through church. In 2022, Ruby and her husband Kevin Franke split at Hildebrandt’s suggestion. Kevin was forced to move out of their home and was cut off from communicating with his wife and children.

Shortly after, Ruby stopped posting on her 8 Passengers family YouTube channel in favor of appearing on Hildebrandt’s ConneXions podcast. In May 2023, Ruby moved herself and her four youngest children 300 miles away to Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah.

Ruby and Hildebrandt’s arrests came after Ruby’s 12-year-old son escaped and made his way to a neighbor’s house seeking help. The neighbor, who was driven to tears by the boy’s “emaciated” condition, called 911.

Both Ruby and Hildebrandt received four separate prison sentences for 1 to 15 years after pleading guilty to child abuse charges, which will run consecutively. The length of each prison sentence will ultimately be decided by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole — but they will not serve more than 30 years due to a Utah law regarding consecutive sentences, per Insider.

The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom is available Jan. 7. from Gallery Books.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.