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.

  • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I’m sorry you had a bad experience. However, it’s not that one deserves torment for existing, it’s that one deserves punishment for sin. If you look at the state of the world, it’s filled with sin. Societies cannot function because of greed, people are oppressed, madmen have nuclear bombs capable of destroying the world, and the constant suffering in Gaza and Ukraine, humanity is inherently evil. And we all have participated in that evil in some kind of way. Asking for forgiveness and trying to do the right thing isn’t a bad thing, it’s the correct thing.

    With churches being toxic - every environment is. It doesn’t make it right. What people identifying as Christian do and act doesn’t represent Christianity as a whole. People will abuse children regardless, whether it be in schools, etc. I don’t live in the United States, I live in the United Kingdom, so I cannot speak for there.

    Homeschooling isn’t a Christian doctrine. I personally think it is cringe retreatism and a good way to create an atheist.