Ruby Franke's Husband Kevin and Son Chad Reveal How They're Healing — But Say ‘There’s Still A Lot of Pain’ (Exclusive)

Kevin Franke and his son Chad have been through a lot in the past few years — but they see better days ahead.

“Life right now for me is getting back into, I would say, a comfortable normal,” Kevin, 46, the soon-to-be ex-husband of former YouTube star Ruby Franke — creator of the parenting channel "8 Passengers" — tells PEOPLE exclusively. “It’s just establishing a new normal.”

In 2023, Ruby, 43, and the family’s therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, 55, were pleaded guilty to felony child abuse involving two of the couple's six children. Each was sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.

The shocking crimes came to light after one of Ruby’s younger children escaped from Hildebrandt’s $5 million Utah home, where Ruby and some of the younger children had moved. The emaciated boy, whose wrists and ankles were duct taped together, was seen on a Ring camera begging a neighbor for help.

Now, Kevin tells PEOPLE, life is “more normal than it’s been in years. But there’s a long way to go.”

For the first time, Kevin and his oldest son Chad, 20, speak out in-depth about their ordeal in this week’s PEOPLE cover story and in Hulu’s three-part docuseries, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, streaming Feb. 27.

“There's still a lot of pain,” Kevin tells PEOPLE. “There's still a lot of healing that I work on each day, but it just looks and feels different now.”

The Frankes shot to social media stardom with the YouTube channel "8 Passengers," which Ruby started in 2015 to chronicle the life of her wholesome Mormon family in Utah. With 2.5 million subscribers and more than a billion views, the family earned up to $100,000 a month at their peak, Kevin says in the docuseries.

As time went on, however, viewers grew concerned about Ruby’s strict parenting.

One time, Ruby spoke openly on camera about withholding food from one of her daughters as punishment for forgetting to bring her lunch to school.

In another video, Chad said on camera that had been forced to sleep on a beanbag chair for 7 months as punishment.

“That was the spark that blew the powder keg,” Kevin says in the docuseries. “When this video hit, all hell broke loose.”

Enraged viewers pounced, calling the couple "sick,” the docuseries shows.

The online vitriol — and a substantially reduced viewership — led Ruby to end the channel in 2022 and partner with Hildebrandt for a podcast called Moms of Truth.

A controversial therapist, Hildebrandt allegedly espoused harsh punishments for children.

“I really believe that [Ruby] was damaged severely by swallowing the teachings that Jodi just was serving up for her,” says Kevin.

Hildebrandt directed Ruby to kick Kevin and Chad out of the family home in 2022, Kevin explains.

“We were both really indoctrinated that we needed complete isolation in order to heal,” Kevin tells PEOPLE. “And that if we were interacting with anybody that was contrary to the messaging that Jodi…and Ruby wanted us to accept and ingest, then we were being selfish and we were breaking the boundaries and the rules of the separation.”

Kevin says he went along with this because he wanted his family back.

“That was my motive and my purpose every single day," he tells PEOPLE.

Attorneys for Ruby and Hildebrandt did not respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

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 toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

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