Ruby Franke’s daughter Shari about the relationship between mother and Jodi Hildebrandt

Shari Franke opens 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 mom’s relationship with Hildebrandt, a Utah-based therapist.

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

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

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

In her new memoir, Shari went further and shared an excerpt with GMA who 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 spilled over into the physical. Ruby, expressing her frustration at having to meet Jodi’s need for physical affection without getting anything in return.”

But when asked about GMA if Ruby and Hildebrandt were romantically involved, Shari was more hesitant. “I never saw anything specific about it,” 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 separated at Hildebrandt’s suggestion. Kevin was forced to move out of their home and was cut off from communicating with his wife and children.

Soon after, Ruby stopped writing about her 8 passengers family YouTube channel for the benefit of performing at the Hildebrandts Connections 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 ran away and came to a neighbor’s house to seek help. The neighbor, driven to tears by the boy’s “emaciated” condition, called 911.

Both Ruby and Hildebrandt received four separate prison terms of 1 to 15 years after pleading guilty to child abuse charges, which run consecutively. The length of each prison term will ultimately be determined by Utah Board of Pardons and Parole — but they will serve no more than 30 years because of a Utah law regarding consecutive sentences, per Insider.

The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom is available January 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 free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.