Originally appeared on E! Online
Content warning: This story discusses child abuse.
Details into Ruby Franke‘s horrific mistreatment of her kids have come to light.
More than a month after the disgraced parenting influencer was sentenced to four to 30 years in prison on child abuse charges, prosecutors released scans from a handwritten diary belonging to Franke that detailed her behavior toward her children.
In the journal, which had the names of Franke’s kids redacted to protect their privacy, the 42-year-old described one child as “Satanic.”
“He slithers & sneaks around looking for opportunities when no one is watching & then he scurries,” she wrote in an entry dated July 10, 2023, which was the boy’s 12th birthday. “If he wants to emulate the savior, he needs to be 100% obedient with exactness. No wavering, no hiding.”
Elsewhere in the diary, the mom of six detailed how she confronted the same son over his “deviant behavior” by holding him underwater in the family pool.
“I told him, ‘Give your demon friend a message for me. I will not rest. I will not stop,'” she wrote. “‘The devil lies and says I’m hurting you, abusing you.'”
In addition to her son, Franke also believed another one of her children was possessed by a demon. In multiple diary entries, the YouTuber described her 9-year-old daughter as “sinful” and “manipulative.”
“These selfish, selfish children who desire only to take, lie, and attack have zero understanding of god’s love for them,” Franke wrote in a July 23, 2023 entry. “Oppositional force is required for growth, development and maturity. [They] have never experienced oppositional force. They are very weak-minded.”
Throughout the journal, Franke also seemingly detailed a variety punishments she imposed on her kids, including beating, poking, withholding food and water and forcing them to jump on a trampoline.
“The world we live in today does not support children being uncomfortable,” she wrote in an Aug. 15, 2023 entry. “They, the adults, are uncomfortable w/ children being uncomfortable. And so children are comforted, entertained, distracted from the need to confess + change. Stripping down a child’s world to the basics of beans + rice + hard work would be considered abuse. And it’s not. It’s necessary for the prideful child.”
Franke and her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested in August after the 12-year-old boy ran to a neighbor’s home for help, according to the Washington County Attorney’s Office. Upon further investigation, prosecutors said in a case summary that Franke and Hildebrandt, a mental health counselor, “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.”
Three months following their arrest, Franke pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse, while Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to four counts of the same charge as part of a plea deal.
Like Franke, Hildebrandt was ordered to spend four to 30 years in prison — the maximum sentence for this kind of an offense — when they were both sentenced in February.
E! News has reached out to Franke and Hildebrandt’s attorneys for comment on the journal entries but hasn’t heard back.
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