Why Shari Franke Is Speaking Out Against Family Vlogging After Surviving Mom’s Abuse: ‘No Ethical Way to Do It’ (Exclusive)

Shari Franke, the eldest of Utah-based YouTube vlogger Ruby Franke’s children, will publish her memoir, The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, through Gallery Books on Jan. 7. The memoir comes after Ruby, along with therapist Jodi Hilderbrandt, were arrested for aggravated child abuse in 2023, and given four consecutive prison sentences of one to 15 years in Feb. 2024.

Now, Shari is telling her story, as well as her experiences in the Franke house, for an important reason.

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“I’ve witnessed the damage of what happens when your life is put online,” Shari, 21, tells PEOPLE in a story in this week’s print issue. “There’s no ethical way to do it.” 

Ruby and her husband, Kevin, rose to fame when they started the YouTube channel 8Passengers in 2015. The channel, which catalogued the family’s daily lives, had 2.5 million subscribers.

Shari says that Ruby “was never warm or kind” as a mother, but she initially viewed her mom’s bribery to share private moments on-camera as “a fair trade-off.” As she got older, however, she became uncomfortable with some of the content.

“I was 18, and we went bra shopping, and she was filming it,” Shari says. “I was like, ‘This is kind of weird and inappropriate.’” Followers of the YouTube channel also began criticizing Ruby’s questionable behavior in the videos by 2020, which drove Ruby “deeper in delusion,” Shari writes in the memoir.

Related: Shari Franke Confronted Ruby Franke After Calling Child Protective Services: ‘I Never Hated You, Mom’ (Exclusive)

In 2018, Ruby connected with Jodi Hilderbrandt, a former sex therapist and founder of the religious social media network ConneXions. Hilderbrandt became the family’s therapist and advocated for extreme parental discipline within the home. Not long after, Shari was disowned by Ruby, who also asked Kevin and son Chad to move out of the house.

Ruby’s punishments evolved into “grand gestures and prolonged periods of deprivation,” Shari says. By the time she left for college at Brigham Young University, Shari had become incredibly concerned for the safety of her siblings who remained in the house. She even called the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, though no further action was taken after a welfare check.

“‘They’re old enough to take care of themselves. This is about you, Shari. Your jealousy, your need for attention,’” Shari recalls her mother saying, in the memoir.

In 2023, during her junior year at college, Shari received a call from a neighbor, who told her that police had surrounded her mother’s Springville, Utah home. On Aug. 30, 2023, Ruby and Hildbrandt were arrested after Shari’s 12-year-old brother, Russell, asked a neighbor to call the police after he escaped from Hildebrandt's home in Ivins, Utah through the window. Russell was malnourished, and had restraint marks and wounds on his wrists, as well as duct tape on his ankles. His sister Eve, 10, was also found malnourished in the home.

"My biggest priority was just making sure that the kids were alive,” Shari says. “As long as they were alive, obviously then I knew eventually things would be okay."

Today, Shari is looking forward. She is a political science major set to graduate in 2025, has started a new hobby rock climbing and is the proud owner of her cat, Muppet. Shari is also in therapy, and is beginning to repair her relationship with her father, who filed for custody of the younger Franke siblings (Shari declines to speak about their lives now to protect their privacy). She even got engaged recently, which she announced in a jubilant Instagram post.

However, while Shari shared this news, she also noted that “this is the end of me sharing my private life.” She explained, “I’ve had my voice and agency taken for so long, and now, I’m putting my foot down. I’m not going to talk about my wedding, future husband or future kids.”

The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom will be published on Jan. 7 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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