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.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    What?

    This is par for the course.

    Pretty much every Abrahmic offshoot was started by someone who was completely insane.

    According to their own history, it all kicked off with Abraham killing family members because a voice in his head told him that anyone doubting the voice needs murdered.

    He was violent and insane and now literally billions and billions of people worship the voice he invented, and legitimately believe that if a voice in their head shows up telling them to do horrible shit, it’s probably cool because maybe it’s just God again.

    There is absolutely nothing surprising when a person who not only believes those fairy tales, but come from a family they may have spent thousands of years believing them, starts thinking theyre the next “special one”.

    Sure, most people dont actually believe in their own religions. But they pretend it’s real, and then the really crazy ones do shit like this.

    Being shocked this keeps happening is like asking why your car runs out of gas when you never put gas in it until after the tanks dry

    This is the rational result of what they’re doing.