Nearly two years have passed since Ruby Franke, the once-popular 8Passengers YouTube blogger, was sentenced to a potential six decades behind bars for aggravated child abuse. Now, her son Chad Franke is stepping into the spotlight, offering his perspective in a captivating series of TikTok videos.

In these candid clips, Chad, now 20, dives into his personal diary entries from 2023, a year before his mother faced a judge in a Utah courtroom to receive her severe sentence, according to People. His decision to share these reflections comes in response to numerous requests from his TikTok followers, who have encouraged him to pen a book about his experiences. However, Chad expresses reservations about his writing abilities and hesitates to let someone else tell his story.

“Hi, my name is Chad, and I used to be very brainwashed,” he said in the first video. “And no, I’m not kidding. You can look me up.” 

The downfall of Ruby Franke and her associate Jodi Hildebrandt, which culminated in their imprisonment, has been a point of fascination and speculation. The partnership between the two, both in friendship and business, unraveled dramatically, leaving a trail of legal woes.

Chad, however, finds empowerment in his own narrative. “I realized I had already documented my journey,” he shares, gesturing to the journal he meticulously kept during that tumultuous time. Through his videos, Chad is not only recounting his past but also reclaiming his story, ensuring it’s told in his own words.

“Then I remembered I kind of wrote my own story myself,” Chad said, pointing to a journal in which he wrote every day during that period of his life. 

“And to show you guys how real it was for every single day of the year, I will go back to 2023, two years ago, and read every single journal entry that I wrote,” he added. 

In the second video installment, Chad went on to read an entry dated Jan. 22, 2023, detailing how he visited church with his roommates before playing Mario Kart, and later cooking “funeral potatoes.”

Chad Franke discusses his relationship with his mother, Ruby Franke, in Hulu’s “The Devil in the Family” documentary series. (Hulu)

“And then I called Mom,” Chad said. 

“We talked for two hours about removing lust. It’s a little more complicated and difficult than I thought,” he read, adding that he was working as a lifeguard at the time. 

“Being at the pool has many opportunities to show God I will not lust anymore,” he continued, before listing a series of goals he wanted to accomplish within the upcoming week, including, “Scripture study, scripture notes, traveling to work, finishing and starting a finance book, finish a 12-hour Python coding course, and keep on cooking.”

Ruby Franke pleaded guilty to four of six counts of aggravated child abuse. (Sheldon Demke/ St. George News/ Pool)

Chad then addressed his viewers to clarify his views regarding religion and his situation at the time the entry was written. 

“I want to make it very clear that not all of this is bad,” he said. “Scripture study, not bad. Cooking, obviously not bad. And talking to my brainwashed mom at the time, also not bad.”

“This is just me giving my story. This isn’t me saying everything is bad.”

In a third video posted to TikTok, Chad shared another journal entry from the following day in 2023, in which he mulled over the concept of “lust” and his job as a lifeguard at a local pool. 

“Being a lifeguard, I just watch people’s choices over and over,” he wrote. “I have two opportunities to either feel compassion or lust. It is difficult to rid lust after a lifetime of feeding it.”

“But at the pool, I have more and more chances to evidence, I will not lust. It will take more practice. And I have not spoken the lustful language or shared lustful comments. It is all immature and I need and want to grow into a hard-working and principled man. I need to be disciplined.”

Franke earned an impressive online following in 2015 by posting videos of her children – Chad, Julie, Abby, Russell, Shari and Eve – on her family’s YouTube channel, titled 8Passengers. The Utah blogger quickly rose to fame, earning over two million followers on her platform.

However, the popularity of the family’s YouTube channel began to fall after Chad mentioned in a video that he had been forced to sleep on a beanbag chair for several months as punishment. 

Seven years later, Franke began partnering with controversial family therapist Jodi Hildebrandt on a podcast and joint-Instagram account, “Moms of Truth,” where the pair shared intense and often-abusive parenting tactics.

Hildebrandt soon became a central figure in the Franke family’s lives, and eventually moved in with the family after Shari, Franke’s oldest child, left for college. 

In 2023, Utah authorities arrested both Franke and Hildebrandt on charges of abusing Franke’s two youngest children, a 9-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy.

Authorities became aware of the abuse after Franke’s son fled Hildebrandt’s home and reached a neighbor, who called 911 to report the malnourished boy had duct tape on his wrists and ankles. 

The pair were arrested in August 2023 and subsequently pleaded guilty to child abuse in December 2023. Both Franke and Hildebrandt were sentenced to four consecutive terms between a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison in February 2024.