A Son Goes Public On TikTok
Chad Franke is the second-oldest child of Ruby Franke, the Utah mother who built a large audience on the family YouTube channel “8 Passengers”. In recent weeks, he has begun posting TikTok videos in which he reads from diary entries he wrote in 2023, the year before his mother pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse.
In one of the first videos, Chad introduces himself to viewers by saying, “Hi, my name is Chad, and I used to be very brainwashed. And, no, I am not kidding. You can look me up.” He tells followers he has been urged to write a book, but says he prefers to let his own contemporaneous notes speak.
According to reporting by People and Fox News, the videos focus on a journal Chad kept daily in 2023. He says he plans to read every entry from that year, framing the project as a way to show viewers what his life and mindset looked like while he was still closely following his mother’s beliefs.
In one entry dated in January 2023, Chad recalls going to church with roommates, playing Mario Kart and cooking what he calls “funeral potatoes”. Then, he says in the video, “I called mom. We talked for two hours about removing lust. It is a little more complicated and difficult than I thought.” At the time, he was working as a lifeguard at a local pool.
From Family Channel To Felony Convictions
Ruby Franke started “8 Passengers” around 2015, documenting the daily life of her six children for a growing audience on YouTube. At its peak, the channel had more than 2 million subscribers, according to archived channel statistics reported by several outlets, including the New York Times.
As the channel expanded, some viewers began expressing concern about disciplinary methods shown in the videos. In one widely discussed clip, Chad described being required to sleep on a beanbag for months as punishment. Critics flagged the content to child welfare hotlines and social services, according to coverage compiled by the Associated Press, although detailed official records of those contacts are not public.
Ruby Franke later partnered with Utah counselor Jodi Hildebrandt, who ran a life coaching and counseling venture known as Connexions Classroom. The two promoted rigid rules around obedience, confession and what they described as “truth” on social media projects, including an Instagram account titled “Moms of Truth”.
In August 2023, the private world behind those teachings came into sharp focus. According to charging documents summarized by Utah prosecutors and reported by local outlets and the Associated Press, a 12-year-old boy identified as one of Franke’s younger sons climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt’s home in southern Utah and went to a neighbor for help. The neighbor called 911 and reported that the child appeared malnourished and had duct tape around his ankles and wrists.
Police responded and found another minor sibling in the house. Investigators later alleged both children had been subjected to severe physical and emotional abuse, including food deprivation and harsh physical restraints. Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested and charged with multiple counts of aggravated child abuse, all first-degree felonies under Utah law.
In December 2023, both women pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. As reported by the Associated Press and Utah outlets, including the Salt Lake Tribune, prosecutors dropped two additional counts as part of the deal. In February 2024, a Utah judge sentenced each of them to four consecutive prison terms of one to fifteen years. The structure of the sentence means they face a minimum of 16 years and a potential maximum of 60 years, with the state Board of Pardons and Parole to determine the exact time served.
At sentencing, Franke acknowledged the harm to her children and accepted responsibility for her role, according to summaries of the hearing by the Associated Press. Hildebrandt has also remained incarcerated. Neither woman has given a detailed public account of the events described in court records since entering their guilty pleas.
Inside The Diaries: Obedience, Lust And Discipline
Chad’s journals, as he presents them on TikTok, do not describe the physical abuse that formed the core of the criminal case. Instead, they document how thoroughly he had internalized the language and rules he was taught.
In one entry he reads aloud, he writes about his lifeguard job and the struggle to control his thoughts. “Being a lifeguard, I just watch people’s choices over and over,” he reads. “I have two opportunities to either feel compassion or lust. It is difficult to rid lust after a lifetime of feeding it.”
He goes on to tell viewers that working at the pool provided “many opportunities to show God I will not lust anymore”. In the same passage, he lists detailed weekly goals, including scripture study, taking notes on scripture, a long online coding course and continuing to cook meals for himself and others.
Across the entries shared so far, several themes repeat. Chad writes about:
Item 1: Closely tracking his thoughts and labeling them as “lustful” or “compassionate”.
Item 2: Setting ambitious self-improvement targets, such as finishing a twelve-hour course in one week or reading a full finance book.
Item 3: Regular contact with his mother, framed around spiritual correction and the removal of “lust”.
Those elements mirror core messages of the “Moms of Truth” and Connexions materials, which criticized what they described as “worldly” parenting and urged parents to confront children aggressively about perceived dishonesty or sexual impurity. Critics, including some mental health professionals interviewed by outlets like the Salt Lake Tribune and People, have described those methods as controlling and emotionally abusive.
By reading the entries now, Chad is trying to draw a line between the everyday routines captured in his journal and the more visible, documented abuse that occurred in 2023. He tells viewers he wants to show how persuasive those beliefs felt to him at the time, and how convinced he was that strict self-surveillance was evidence of personal growth.
What Courts Saw, And What The Diaries Add
The criminal case against Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt centered on two of the younger children. Prosecutors described a pattern in which the children were denied food, made to perform labor and restrained with rope or tape. At least one child was treated for severe malnutrition.
Court records and statements at the plea and sentencing hearings, as reported by the Associated Press and Utah outlets, painted a picture of escalating isolation. The younger children were taken out of school, contact with extended family was restricted and Hildebrandt’s home became the main setting for discipline and instruction.
Chad’s diaries, by contrast, come from a young adult who was no longer living at home but who remained deeply engaged with his mother’s ideology. They show a person who describes himself as voluntarily pursuing high standards of purity and discipline, while also conceding in retrospect that he was, in his words, “very brainwashed”.
The journals are not part of the formal case file. They have not been introduced as evidence in any known criminal proceeding and have not been tested through cross-examination. They do, however, offer contemporaneous notes that align with long-standing reports about the belief system surrounding the Franke household and Hildebrandt’s counseling practice.
They also highlight a tension that often appears in abuse cases rooted in coercive control. On paper, Chad’s 2023 goals to cook, study scripture and complete online courses look industrious and self-directed. Viewed alongside the criminal record and his later description of being “brainwashed”, those same passages suggest a young man shaping his entire life around meeting standards set by authority figures he trusted.
Unanswered Questions About Oversight And Recovery
Beyond the TikTok videos and the completed criminal case, several parts of the story remain largely undocumented in public records.
There is limited verified information about how Utah child welfare agencies responded to earlier concerns from viewers and relatives, or what specific investigations, if any, were conducted before the 2023 arrest. Agencies are restricted in what they can disclose about child protection cases, and they have not publicly released a full timeline of contacts with the Franke family.
It is also not clear how much coordination now exists between corrections officials, child welfare agencies and the adult Franke children around public discussion of the case. Chad is an adult and is free to speak, but his younger siblings are still minors. Victim privacy laws and sealing rules in juvenile court limit what can be disclosed about their current circumstances.
Chad has framed his diary project as part of his own recovery. He has not laid out any specific legal goals tied to the videos, such as influencing potential future parole hearings. No appeals by Ruby Franke or Jodi Hildebrandt have significantly altered their convictions or sentences as of early 2025, according to court dockets reviewed by outlets like the Associated Press.
For viewers, the diaries blur the line between therapeutic disclosure and public documentation of a crime’s context. They provide a first-person look at how a rigid belief system operated in one member of the Franke family in the year before the arrest, but they cannot answer on their own why formal intervention came when it did, or what protections failed earlier in the process.
Ruby Franke’s prison sentence is fixed by statute, but the full story of how her online persona, private parenting practices and institutional oversight intersected is still incomplete. Chad’s notebooks fill in one corner of that picture. The larger question of who knew what, and when, still rests in sealed files and agency records the public may never see in full.
