Newly released video shows the malnourished son of a parenting advice YouTuber approaching a neighbor for help on the morning that his mother and her business partner were arrested on child abuse charges.

The malnourished and badly bruised son of a parenting advice YouTuber politely asks a neighbor to take him to the nearest police station in newly released video from the day his mother and her business partner were arrested on child abuse charges in southern Utah.

The 12-year-old son of Ruby Franke, a mother of six who dispensed advice to millions via a popular YouTube channel, had escaped through a window and approached several nearby homes until someone answered the door, according to documents released Friday by the Washington County Attorney’s office.

Crime scene photos, body camera video and interrogation tapes were released a month after Franke and business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, a mental health counselor, were each sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. A police investigation determined religious extremism motivated the women to inflict horrific abuse on Franke’s children, Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke announced Friday.

“The women appeared to fully believe that the abuse they inflicted was necessary to teach the children how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies,” Clarke said.

  • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
    2·
    6 months ago

    Yes, and all of that is still pure fucking evil, no matter how hard you wanna spin it. You said there was no child abuse. Well there it is. I do not care at all how you want to explain it away. Sounds like nothing but devil worship to me.

    The context is that a bunch of primitive desert nomads wanted to kill their neighbors, steal their land, loot their cities, rape and terrify their children, enslave the survivors and still feel like they were good, moral, chosen people. So they made up excuses about how the man in the sky said that what they did, and planned to keep doing, was all ok. So were they listening to God, the Devil, or were they just a bunch of men making stuff up? That’s the only context that matters.

    The basis for your belief system is that these assholes had life figured out. You and I both seem to agree that they didn’t. So why do you keep defending them? Why do you believe in the religion built on their terrible foundation?

      • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        And yet despite your protests, it absolutely does prescribe child abuse, genocide, slavery, rape, kidnapping, murder, and torture. It calls the men who committed those atrocities righteous. Christians only began to consider them crimes in the last century or so. You claim that followers of Yahweh should have just read between the lines to know that these were lessons for what not to do. But instead, for some 4000 years, followers of those scriptures enthusiastically did all of those things, because they wanted to and scripture said it was okay. The fact that you now believe those things are wrong is proof that you do not get your morality from those scriptures, but rather from the modern, secular culture in which you were born.

          • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
            1·
            6 months ago

            Except that Christians have been doing all that stuff the entire time. Because the book said they could.

            Modern secular society looked at all the harm done by religion and decided those things were wrong all by ourselves. That’s the power of democracy for you. It’s so much better than taking life advice from ancient people who beat each other to death with rocks.

            So I’ll ask you again. Why do YOU think genocide, slavery, rape, child abuse, and torture are wrong? Is the Bible the word of God? Is it just another book written by men? Or did Satan write it pretending to be God?

            And how do you know?