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
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    3 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?

    • Flax
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      03 months ago

      Wasn’t it child sacrifice and wife burning- the type of pagan crap Christians eradicated?

      • @Olhonestjim
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        3 months ago

        You think Christians never killed children and burned women? Wasn’t that long ago.