Convicted Child Abuser Ruby Franke’s Oldest Daughter Will Never Speak to Her Again: ‘I’ve Seen Too Many Crocodile Tears'

Shari Franke, the eldest daughter of convicted child abuser Ruby Franke, has no plans to reconcile with her mother anytime soon.

In Hulu’s new docuseries Devil In The Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which premiered on Thursday, Feb. 27, Shari, now 21, recalls sitting in the courtroom at Ruby’s sentencing in February 2024 and concentrating her attention on the judge rather than her mother, who was visibly emotional and apologetic.

“I personally have seen too many crocodile tears from her, and so I can’t say whether she is sorry,” Shari says in the last episode of the three-part docuseries. 

Ruby and her ex-business partner and therapist Jodi Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. Both women will serve four to 30 years in Utah prison.

Ruby rose to fame in 2015 with her husband Kevin Franke as they documented their life as the parents of six children on their now-defunct “8 Passengers” YouTube channel, garnering more than 2 million subscribers. However, in 2020, viewers became suspicious of the Mormon family’s strict parenting style, after sharing vlogs of them taking away necessities as punishments.

Ruby stopped posting on the channel in 2022 when she started posting videos with Hildebrandt on her ConneXions podcast. During this time, Kevin and Ruby were living separately and Shari and her brother Chad were kicked out of the home.

Over the years, Shari became incredibly concerned for the safety of her siblings who remained in the home. She even called child services, though no further action was taken after a welfare check.

Ruby and Hildebrandt were ultimately arrested in August 2023 after Ruby’s 12-year-old son asked a neighbor to call the police after he escaped from Jodi’s home in Ivins, Utah. The neighbor, who was driven to tears by the boy’s “emaciated” condition, called 911.

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Ruby later admitted in a plea agreement that she abused her two youngest children, telling them they were “evil and possessed,” denying them food and water, handcuffing her son’s wrists and ankles and holding his head underwater. (Kevin was not arrested or charged).

Shari previously opened up about the abuse she and her siblings suffered at the hands of Ruby and her feelings towards her estranged mother in her memoir The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, which was released in January 2025.

“Part of me feels guilty if I don’t forgive,” she told PEOPLE in January. “But I’ve come to realize that forgiveness for me just means that I don’t let her actions consume my thoughts.”

“I’m still angry about what she did, of course, and that’s never going to go away, but I am living my life and I am not letting her take any more of that from me than she’s already taken.”