- Ruby Franke's sisters made new statements about the child-abuse allegations she is facing.
- Julie Deru and Bonnie Hoellein said they had not been in contact with their sister for years.
Ruby Franke's sisters posted public statements about Franke's partnership with Jodi Hildebrandt, saying they had long felt "weird" about it.
One of the two sisters said the family had done as much as they could to intervene before Franke was arrested on child-abuse charges, but mostly blamed Franke's husband Kevin for doing too little.
Julie Deru and Bonnie Hoellein, both popular YouTubers in their own right, posted videos on Wednesday about their sister, who was arrested on August 30.
Franke is a famous parenting YouTuber who launched the channel 8 Passengers along with her husband Kevin, documenting their life with their six kids. Deru and Hoellein have family vlogging channels too, and used to collaborate with the Frankes.
8 Passengers closed earlier this year after a long period of inactivity and Franke switched to helping front Hildebrandt's family-counseling channel, which is called ConneXions.
Franke and Hildebrandt were both arrested, and now face six felony counts of child abuse. It came after police were called to a report of an emaciated and wounded children escaping Hildebrandt's home and seeking help.
Another child was found in the same condition at Hildebrandt's residence when police arrived at the scene, per court documents seen by Insider.
In a five-minute video, Deru said the time since the arrest had been "extremely hard." She said she would not give "nitty gritty details," but did provide some answers about how the wider family viewed Hildebrandt and ConneXions.
"We all felt weird about this Jodi lady," Deru said. "We weren't comfortable with it. We didn't like it. We didn't like the teachings Ruby was bringing to the family functions, and we were this close to telling her, if you come to our family events anymore, we do not want to hear what you were learning through ConneXions because we don't like it."
Franke "left the family" three years ago, Deru said, and she had not heard from her since.
Franke did not tell her sisters why she was cutting contact, Deru said, but said she called their mother and yelled at her for 45 minutes. She said it seemed like Ruby "had been making up memories from her childhood" and was "exaggerating" the past.
Deru said she and the rest of the family were in "shock" at the charges Franke is now facing, and that they had not made any content about Franke and her children, citing the children's privacy.
"I wasn't sure if her kids were maybe still watching these videos," she said. "And I didn't want to be not tactful and slander their mom and then have them watch those videos."
Hoellein also posted a video in which she made similar remarks about Franke and her family, titling it "I am not my sister. I am not my Sisters Crimes."
Hoellein appeared more emotional in her video, saying she was "mad" and "beyond disgusted" at her sister's alleged actions.
She mirrored Deru's words, saying they had "kept quiet" about Franke, largely because they didn't know what was going on.
"I knew they were weird. I knew that they were off," she said. "Those were the things that we kept quiet about because what was I going to say? What was I going to? I was not going to come out and publicly say that I don't like my sister and I don't like what she's doing, and I think she's weird."
Hoellein said she had reconnected with Franke's eldest daughter Shari last year. Shari cut off contact with her parents when they became heavily involved with ConneXions.
"It was then that we were learning slowly bits and pieces," Hoellein said. "Behind the scenes we did everything that we could. We did everything legally that we could do."
Hoellein made similar comments as she did in a previous, now-deleted video, where she said the family "did as much as we could, legally" to protect Franke's kids in the years before her arrest.
"I did everything that I could with the knowledge that I had and within the legal rights to Ruby and Kevin," Hoellein said. "The one person that could have done something within his legal right was Kevin. We had zero contact with him. It was Kevin's job to check in on things and he did not."
Since Franke's arrest, Kevin Franke has been distancing himself from his wife and her alleged actions through statements made through his attorney Randy Kester. In a recent interview with Law&Crime Network, Kester said Kevin was "manipulated" by Hildebrandt, and labeled her the "spearhead" that destroyed their marriage and family.
Kester said the couple had been separated for just over a year and that Kevin Franke didn't know that his kids had been living with Hildebrandt.
Hoellein also said that Hildebrandt and ConneXion had been "destroying" their lives and "causing turmoil within our family" for the past three years.
"We would talk in circles because nothing made sense, nothing made sense of what they were saying, of what they were doing, and it was off the wall," she said.
"There's only one person that could have helped and he didn't," she added, referring to Kevin. "What he was doing all that time when him and Ruby were separated is beyond me."
Hoellein added that she was going to continue putting her family first.
"I am not my sister," she said. "I am not my sister's mistakes."