Chad Franke Recalls 2-Hour Call with Mom Ruby About ‘Removing Lust’ as He Reads Diary Entry 1 Year Before Her Prison Sentence By Tabitha Parent

Chad Franke is opening up online.

In a recent video shared on TikTok, the child of former 8 Passengers YouTube vlogger Ruby Franke read aloud diary entries from his life in 2023, a year before his mother was sentenced to up to 60 years in prison for aggravated child abuse.

In the first video he posted, Chad introduced himself to the camera, saying plainly: “Hi, my name is Chad, and I used to be very brainwashed.”

“And no, I am not kidding. You can look me up,” he went on.

Chad then shared that he had received requests from some of his over 857,200 TikTok viewers to “write a book on my story,” however, he pushed back, saying that he felt he wasn’t a “very good writer” and that he also wouldn’t want a ghost writer taking control of his story.

“Then I remembered I kind of wrote my own story myself,” he recalled.

“While I was in that phase of my life, I journaled every single day,” he said in the clip, presumably referencing his time living with his mother.

“And to show you guys how real it was for every single day of the year, I will go back to 2023, two years ago, and read every single journal entry that I wrote,” he continued.

He went on to assure followers that he wouldn’t be sharing anything “too personal” but that he was going to be “honest and thorough and show you guys what it truly was like.”

Related Stories

Where Is Chad Franke Now? All About His Life After Disappearing from Mom Ruby Franke’s ‘8 Passengers’ Vlogs

Chad Franke Marks 1 Year Since Mom Ruby Franke Was Arrested and Later Sentenced for Child Abuse: ‘Happy Prisonversary’

In the next video, Chad began by reading a journal entry from exactly two years before the date the video was posted.

“This [journal entry] is titled, ‘Call With Mom. January 22nd, 2023,'” he began. In the video, Chad read a rundown of the Sunday he had experienced. He wrote that he and his roommates had gone to church and then played Mario Kart together, and he had later cooked “funeral potatoes.”

“And then I called mom,” he read from the entry.

“We talked for two hours about removing lust. It’s a little more complicated and difficult than I thought,” Chad read, before going on to mention his job as a lifeguard at the time.

“Being at the pool has many opportunities to show God I will not lust anymore,” he had written. Then he went on to list a few goals he wanted to focus on for the upcoming week, which included “Scripture study, scripture notes, traveling to work, finishing and starting a finance book, finish a 12-hour Python coding course, and keep on cooking.”

At this point in the video, Chad paused his reading to offer a caveat.

“I wanna make it very clear that not all of this is bad,” he said. “Scripture study, not bad. Cooking, obviously not bad. And talking to my brainwashed mom at the time, also not bad.”

“This is just me giving my story. This isn’t me saying everything is bad,” he said.

PEOPLE reached out to Chad for comment.

In a follow-up post, Chad shared another video on Jan. 22, reading another entry from the following day in 2023, which also focused on Chad’s difficulties feeling emotions of “lust.”

“Being a lifeguard, I just watch people’s choices over and over,” he wrote. “I have two opportunities to either feel compassion or lust. It is difficult to rid lust after a lifetime of feeding it.”

“But at the pool, I have more and more chances to evidence, I will not lust. It will take more practice. And I have not spoken the lustful language or shared lustful comments. It is all immature and I need and want to grow into a hard-working and principled man. I need to be disciplined.”

In 2015, Chad’s mother Ruby Franke began growing a following online by posting videos of her children — Shari, Chad, Abby, Julie, Russell and Eve — on her YouTube channel 8 Passengers, garnering over two million followers and billions of views.

In 2022, Ruby began working alongside controversial family therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, and the two hosted a podcast and Instagram account under the handle “Moms of Truth,” where they shared their extreme views on parenting and discipline.

At the time, Franke separated from her husband, Kevin, and moved into Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah, which often allegedly resulted in Ruby leaving her two then-teenage daughters, Abby and Julie, alone in the family’s Springville home for weeks at a time without supervision. 

Police were contacted twice throughout 2022 out of concern for Franke’s children, and in August 2023, authorities were notified after Franke’s youngest son, then-12-year-old Russell, escaped Hildebrandt’s home and went to a neighbor’s house seeking help.

Franke and Hildebrandt were arrested on charges of aggravated child abuse. Franke later pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse and was sentenced to 4 to 60 years in prison for her crimes.

Three months after Ruby’s arrest in 2023, her husband Kevin, filed for divorce. It was finalized in March 2025, and Kevin was given full custody of their four children, who are still minors, according to the divorce agreement obtained at the time by PEOPLE.

In February 2025, Kevin, Chad and Shari spoke out in the Hulu docuseries Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke. The show featured the three sharing their experiences with Franke.

In fall 2025, Chad announced that he had married Kamryn Anderson, revealing the news on Instagram on Sunday, Oct. 12.

Alongside a photo of the bride and groom holding hands at their ceremony, Chad, 20, wrote: “She’s Mrs. Franke now… pray for her.🤍 will post all of our amazing wedding details this week!”