Kevin Franke

[Longtimelurker1980]

I have just watched the Iplayer documentary on Ruby Franke. I almost wish I hadn’t. It’s such an extreme situation and a fall from grace and I struggle to see how it happened and was allowed to happen by people around them, including her husband Kevin.

for those not familiar, ruby franke was a Mormon mummy vlogger in ( the very LDS friendly) Utah, US, who went viral and ran her 6 children’s lives around creating content that showed a ‘perfect’ life when it was actually controlling and cruel. Nasty even before she met a weird counsellor who said her youngest two children were possessed by the devil resulting in horrific child abuse, including her two youngest being starved and tied up, from which the boy thankfully escaped and sought help and rescue for his sibling. The middle two kids were left to fend for themselves at home (young teens) while the mum moved 300 miles away to live with the counsellor to ‘exorcise’ the youngest kids.

my question - her husband saw all of it except the last year, and he missed that because his wife instructed him to leave home and not have contact with either her or any of his 6 children including the young adults in order to ‘save’ his family. Which for inexplicable reasons, he did. He ignored his children when they messaged him and left them to their abusive mother. When he was called more than a year later to say his children were at the police station he wouldn’t believe the story the police told and initially chose instead to believe his wife who said the children were possessed, passing this story on to his brainwashed young adult children who also believed him. The end of the doc shows him saying quite openly that he still loves his wife.

he now has full custody of the 4 minor children. How the fuck did that happen?

Well people were trying to justify Constance Martin and her behaviours, that she had trauma, controlled by Mark Gordonm, was abused blah blah blah

And Ive seen in on other threads lots of times, women are always portrayed as victims despite allowing their children to be harmed.

If a woman was the victim of religious abuse and coercive control, ordered to leave the home and then the husband arrested a year later, I think we’d have a lot of sympathy for her.

That entire family is messed up. The entire family are “family bloggers” and despite what happened to their nieces and nephews they continue to post their children on the internet. The state went full force on Ruby and Jodi. If there was scope for Kevin to be charged and imprisoned I have no doubt that he would have been.

He co-operated with the documentary, which made him out to be the good guy in all of this. I wonder if his children will rethink his innocence as they get older:
he lived in a home where his wife beat the children with a belt and punched his son in the nose until his blood was all over the walls, but didn't notice anything? I can't believe she was always sweetness and light when he was not at work.

He walked out on his younger children who looked so terrified of being left with Jodi and Ruby. He refused to even exchange texts with his older children, both effectively kicked out of the house, for a year. He blocked very disturbing messages from concerned neighbours. He was 100% guilty of neglect and dereliction of duty. He should have protected them. Instead he sat feeling sorry for himself for a year. He is the most spineless, self-deceiving amoral creep.

And all that "I still love her" shit - he divorced her asap and married another woman within months of meeting her. I hope to God she is a better parent to those children than their blood relatives.

Yes, we would feel sorry for her. But not if she then didn't attempt to make any contact with her obviously deeply unhappy children for over a year, not if she blocked messages from her adult children, and blocked friends and neighbours who told her what was going on. Then I would judge her every bit as harshly as I judge him.

But there is something extra creepy about his big muscular, gym-built body being incapable of scooping up those tiny children and taking them with him. What's the point of physical strength if you don't use it for the good, and to protect the vulnerable? Covert narcissism. Victim narc. It's all about him and his 'deep love' for his bullying, social media addict wife.

I just think it’s interesting that a woman has been imprisoned for the most horrific crimes and people still seek to blame a man, despite that man being investigated

Agree. I felt the documentary was very uncritical of the religion.

No . I blame them both.

Ruby is in prison for what she did. Kevin did absolutely nothing to protect any of his children because he was so besotted with his evil wife. @CypressMoon has nailed it with her post.
Awful man.

There are lots of documentaries about the extreme ends of LDS beliefs, everything from secret lives of mormon wives to the sister wives and this awful Franke woman. There are something like 18 million LDS members worldwide and most of them are decent people. I've been to Utah, stayed for a week with a Mormon family just outside Salt Lake, visited the temples (the public bit anyway) and although it's not a religion I am in any way interested in joining, every LDS member I met was friendly, welcoming and just a nice person. More like the Osmonds than the Frankes.

It is true that LDS culture promotes the patriarchy, men and women marry young (straight out of Uni aged 21 or 22) and families are large. 6 children is not unusual. Women generally stay at home with the kids but that doesn't mean they are in the home 24/7. The friend I statyed with spent a day a week volunteering in her kids' school, another day volunteering in the LDS food bank system, another day in a library in the city. She's definitely not downtrodden and an equal partner in her marriage to her husband.

Yes it’s not that I think the women are any less responsible for their actions, it’s that he -in my mind - is equally culpable for standing by, watching it and letting it happen. I think it is unforgivable on every level and I can’t believe it wasn’t in some way criminal.

He seemed to be enjoying the royalties rolling in from YouTube so turned a blind eye.

It was interesting. If it were a mini series made up you would have questioned it.

Deadly.mix of social media utah and most definitely religion

Poor kids.

If you’re interested in the story there’s a documentary on Netflix called “Evil Influencer” which focuses on Jodi’s side of things. It helps explain some of the wider context and how much control she had over the families that she was “helping”.

Yes, I've watched this one too! Jodi was really awfully manipulative and people bought into her schtick

I found it gobsmacking that with the men's video 1 hour calls with her, whilst she is picking on them and banging on about Lust... they just all sat there taking it. Unbelievable.

You have to wonder about the woman who has now married him.
I mean, would you??

I think I would run a mile from a man with his history and who still very publicly states that he loves his awful, awful first wife!

What on earth is the new wife thinking?

The most sane person in that whole crazy story is the eldest daughter who is a simply incredible woman.

Yes, who on earth would want to marry someone who says to the whole world he still loves his ex wife.

You do wonder if he only got divorced because of public pressure and the fact he got a bad rap for his interviews.

I think it’s more complex than that. You can have love for someone without being in love with them.

Again, I find it fascinating that the blame is being externalised away from her.

It isn’t. We are just shining the light on another player now, who isn’t in prison and who hasn’t received any kind of consequence for being a negligent, selfish, self- serving father.

I think all three are to blame but only two have been punished. And that’s my issue.

Oh my goodness, not. Everything I discuss about Kevin is not taking away what I think about the wife. A person can have two opinions about two people! And a third if we think Jodi.

I agree. She came across as so wise and emotionally mature. But I bet its impact will continue to be hard for her. If she has children herself, she won't have reliable grandparents, and she will revisit her mother's behaviour and her father's enabling, which might cause a rift between her and him.

No one is blaming a man for what a woman did. We are blaming him for what he did and didn't do: neglected his children, walked away when he knew they were in danger, cut off his older children, blocked warning messages from friends. He is culpable in all this. Not for the women's abuse, but for his own abuse by neglect. Yet he plays the victim, professes undying love of his children's abuser. He gives me the creeps.

One thing the documentary didn't address enough, I think, is the culture of mental obedience in the LDS church. From birth, people are trained - and coerced - into not only doing what they are told to do but thinking what they are told to think, and believing that this is right and godly. They're trained to admire and blindly follow the instructions of charismatic leaders with strong opinions which they are not allowed to question. This was just the right place for Hildebrandt's manipulative evil to go unchecked, and instrumental in Kevin's own dependency and obedience to both women.

I just finished reading Shari’s book too and interestingly she hints at the issue for Jodi being hidden homosexuality in a community that doesn’t accept it. She says ruby and Jodi’s relationship became ‘physical’ and alluded to them being sexual partners. Explains all the pent up frustration and self hatred a bit.

A Christian friend of my daughter’s has come out and been told by family/friends/church that being gay isn’t wrong but acting on it is. This conversation is taking place in the UK in the educated Christian middle class. The ignorance of some intelligent people
is phenomenal.