Thelife- In May, Ruby and Kevin Franke of the YouTube channel
8 Passengers found themselves in the middle of a tidal wave of rumors andaccusations about theirfamily . - Drama YouTube channels and TikTokers used a clip of a recent video where the Frankes' 15-year-old son, Chad, was talking about sleeping on a beanbag to support allegations of
child abuse . They also trawled the family's past videos, looking for evidence of abuse. - Many people were upset when it emerged that one of the Frankes' daughters, Eve, had gone to school without lunch one day.
- Child protective services were even called to their house after one viewer set up a Change.org petition.
- Ruby and Kevin told Insider that clips were taken out of context and that there was more to Chad's story than they've shown.
Ruby and Kevin Franke's lives took an unexpectedly dark turn about four weeks ago. When Ruby posted a video on their family YouTube channel, 8 Passengers, where she and her kids spoke about some of the things they'd been through recently, she never thought it would backfire and cause weeks of turmoil for their whole family.
Something her 15-year-old son, Chad, said turned out to be a particularly contentious issue for viewers. It sparked accusations of abuse, death threats, and a visit from child protective services.
"My bedroom was taken away for seven months," Chad said in the video. "I was sleeping on a beanbag since October."
He said he lost his room after playing pranks on his little brother, Russell, including getting him to pack a suitcase for a fake Disneyland trip and hanging him from a basketball hoop. He was living in the same room as Russell but was taken out on a therapist's recommendation, giving him the option to sleep on a pullout guest bed or an inflatable mattress, or somewhere else in the house.
Ruby told Insider that the previous video showed how thrilled Chad was to have a room again.
"He had done a bedroom reveal where he was excited that he put LED lights up in his bedroom and he was hanging puzzles on his wall that he had put together and glued," Ruby told Insider. "It never occurred to him that it would turn on us."
Where the accusations of child abuse started
The Frankes have nearly 2.5 million subscribers on their channel, which follows the lives of Kevin and Ruby and their six children: Shari, 17, Chad, 15, Abby, 13, Julie, 11, Russell, 8, and Eve, 6.
The video, called "What we haven't told you," has been deleted. But Kevin told Insider it was a moment of vulnerability and part of Chad's "story of redemption" that showed his "victory over the challenges that he's faced over the last several years."
"The people who've been following us this whole time ... they would have perceived it as such," he said. "The problem is when individuals who aren't familiar with the narrative don't get the entire story, they fill in the unknown with their own narrative. And that's really where this blew up."
They also trawled their past videos — over five years' worth — to find any other evidence of mistreatment.
If you search "8 Passengers" on YouTube, you'll be met with a string of videos "exposing" the Frankes and calling them "toxic" and "abusive" toward their kids. Some creators were upset that the Frankes sent cease-and-desist letters to have these videos taken down.
Harsh punishments deeply affect children
It makes sense that people would be upset by what they perceive as such a harsh punishment. According to parenting experts, severe discipline can be profoundly damaging for a child in the long term.
Maryhan Baker, a psychologist who has worked with parents for 15 years, told Insider that it often leads to the child not really understanding what they did wrong and repeating the behavior.
"It is simply concerned with getting the child to conform to a set of predetermined, often poorly communicated, and ever-changing set of goalposts, so the child is almost doomed to fail," she said. "Children make choices with their behavior based on their emotions, and if you don't seek to understand and discuss these emotions, the child ends up storing up a host of resentment and anger at the very least."
More worryingly, she said, they can develop a poor sense of self-worth and a fear of abandonment.
Sophie Niedermaier-Patramani, a pediatrician and cofounder of Little Tummy, told Insider that parents often resort to harsh punishment when they are struggling to moderate bad behavior. They tend to be at their wits' end, feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and unsure of what else to do. It's tough on both parties but can lead to severe behavioral issues as the child grows up.
"If you punish incoherently, it will be difficult for them to establish relationships later on in life and moderate their own behavior later on as well," she said.
"And if we look at brain function, a neurotransmitter is secreted when something like reward or punishment happens. Punishment sets free a stress reaction in our brain, which actually hinders learning."
Learning about the consequences of your actions
Baker said that punishing a child by taking away their bed would be incredibly upsetting — as illustrated by Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we all seek a sense of safety and security in our environment, and taking away a bed "strips this out entirely and actually leaves the child in trauma."
Punishment doesn't have any place in modern parenting, she said, and children only really learn about their actions when they are taught about outcomes. For instance, a person who fails to submit work on time could lose their job — in a child's world, this might be missing a bedtime story if they don't go to bed early enough.
"There are natural consequences to every choice we make, and if we communicate these when children make poor choices in behavior, the learning is profound," she said. "This way the child learns their choices have a direct impact."
Discipline and punishment are all about power and authority, while thinking about the consequences provides autonomy and gives the child an opportunity for growth.
"When our focus is more about making choices with our behavior and these choices having consequences, we completely change the dynamic to one of a discussion around freedom to make better choices next time," Baker said. "We have to be clear that our role as parents is to help our children grow up into adults able to navigate the world successfully."
'We give our children choice in everything'
Ruby and Kevin said Chad was being taught the consequences of his actions when he was told to sleep somewhere other than his little brother's room.
Kevin said the decision came amid "years of physical and emotional damaging behavior" that Chad was participating in with his siblings and classmates that ended up getting him suspended from school. This was also why he was sent to the Anasazi Foundation's Wilderness Therapy Program, which says it provides "intervention services for troubled teens," for 10 weeks.
Chad and Russell slept in the same room shortly after they moved because one bedroom was being redecorated, but therapists and psychological professionals recommended they be separated. Chad was given a variety of choices of where he could sleep, including a pullout guest bed, an inflatable mattress, and a beanbag.
"What people aren't understanding is that we give our children choice in everything," Ruby said. "We are teaching our children to be self-governing, so it was always very open with our son that he gets to choose how long he's separate from his brother, dependent upon his behavior."
The Frankes said Chad chose the beanbag because he found it the most comfortable. He also removed the doors to the room in an effort to be transparent and help regain his parents' trust, they said.
"I said, 'Well, if that's your choice, I'll support you in that,'" Ruby said. "'But at any point, you can move around. You just can't be sleeping with your brother.'"
Ruby said that as soon as Chad's behavior changed, he would be able to go sleep in his new room — something "he knew the whole time."
"It just happened to take seven months for him to make that choice," she said.
The full story is Chad's to tell, the Frankes said, and he may choose to when he's older. For now, he's decided to stay off social media because he found it toxic and disconnecting. Ruby said she even asked Chad whether he wanted her to cut out the conversation about his bedroom in the video because of how raw and vulnerable it was.
"He said, 'No, I am open to sharing this,'" she said, though she added that if she "had foreseen the anger," she probably would have cut it out.
Kevin and Ruby received backlash after their 6-year-old daughter went to school without lunch
Another narrative that appeared in drama videos was that Ruby was starving their 6-year-old daughter, Eve, because she forgot her packed lunch one day.
In a vlog at the time, Ruby said the teacher told her she was uncomfortable with Eve being hungry and would prefer she drove her lunch over.
"But I responded and said, 'Eve is responsible for making her own lunches in the morning, so the natural outcome is she is just going to be hungry,'" Ruby said in the video. "And hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her lunch."
The YouTube channel Tea Spill shared this clip and explained why many people were disturbed by it.
"Instead of being concerned for her young daughter, she says to the vlog that she hopes no one shares their lunch with her to teach her some sort of sick lesson," the narrator of the video said. "And just remember this kid is literally 6 years old."
In response, the Frankes told Insider the clip didn't show that the children go to a school that's a 45-minute drive from their house and that Eve had two hours left of school that day.
"My heart broke for her," Ruby said. "And I told her, 'Oh honey, my darling, I am so sorry. You're going to be hungry. And I am so uncomfortable with this with you. I'm going to be uncomfortable alongside you because I know you are so capable of picking up your lunch off the front-door rug and taking it with you when you go get in the car.'"
Kevin said all the children were taught how to prepare lunch when they reached Eve's age. They go to the pantry and collect a food bar, a drink, and some other snacks; pick up a ready-made sandwich and piece of fruit from the fridge; then put it all in a bag and take it to school. This day, Eve simply forgot to pick hers up.
"She came home two hours later and had a wonderful, fulfilling snack," Kevin said. "And you know what? She never forgot her lunch again. So it's a way to teach our children how to live responsibly and to be masters of themselves rather than dependent upon somebody else to always take care of them."
The same logic goes for when the kids use their phones or tablets irresponsibly and have them taken away, he said. Some viewers took issue with the children not having access to their phones and accused the parents of isolating them from their friends. But Ruby and Kevin see it as a way to ensure they learn to be responsible and not to be dependent on screens.
"Having that need for electronics is the introduction into disconnect," Ruby said. "And that is why people are so uncomfortable with me showing a connected family. It rubs them against their shame, and they project what they're seeing onto me."
'It was just so malicious'
Ruby and Kevin said they weren't prepared for the backlash against them. Not only were established gossip channels like Tea Spill and Spill Sesh reporting the story, but new accounts were springing up because they knew it was a trending topic that could get them hundreds of thousands of views.
The couple said some accounts purposefully took clips out of context, such as a video where Ruby and Kevin installed a bidet in their bathroom during a recent toilet-roll shortage.
"The master bathroom is off-limits to the kids, but they have five other bathrooms in the house that they have access to," Ruby said. "And I had made a comment: 'Well, you could do some extra chores around the house so that you can come and use the bathroom.'"
Without the context of the full video, this clip could make it sound as if Ruby allowed her children to go to the bathroom only if they did housework. But she was saying the kids could use the master bathroom with the bidet as a kind of reward for completing their chores.
"It was just so malicious," she said. "They knew what they were doing was out of context. They were purely seeking to throw hate. That was their only objective. A reasonable person would not have seen that video and thought, 'She is a child abuser.'"
The narrative about abusive parenting was a powerful one. It's everyone's prerogative to agree or disagree with a family's parenting style, but it's quite another to accuse them of something as severe as child abuse. While some videos were made out of genuine concern, plenty were not.
"All of this is really ironic," Kevin said. "So many of these individuals are coming and they're intending to do us harm by accusing us of exploiting children for money, yet they are here exploiting my children and my family for their own personal gain."
He said they'd seen everything from death threats to attempts to get him fired from his job as a university professor of engineering. Companies have torn up their sponsorship contracts after viewers contacted them, and their children have received messages telling them to kill themselves, they said.
"Does that sound like they're really worried about child abuse?" Ruby said. "It does not sound consistent with what they're saying, and it's because they're not being honest about their motives."
Child protective services showed up at their house
The Division of Child and Family Services in Utah, where the Frankes live, showed up to their house about a week ago after one viewer set up a Change.org petition. The workers visited with each of the children individually over the two hours they were there, Kevin said.
"When they walked in unannounced, Eve and Ruby were baking bread together and doing a puzzle," Kevin said. "Hardly the evidence of an abusive home."
A letter from DCFS seen by Insider said the case, which alleged that Ruby was the perpetrator, was closed because the claims were unsupported.
Kevin said the workers said they were embarrassed they had to visit at all and apologized for the stress inflicted on the family.
Kevin and Ruby said that while their lives were far from ruined, the past few weeks had certainly knocked them.
Ruby said she had a lot more empathy and compassion for people who find themselves in the heat of a scandal on social media because it can really harm a person's mental
"People who aren't in a healthy mindset, it could drive someone to suicide, easily," she said. "I can see now, having gone through it, that it could take your life."
'My kids are so strong'
Kevin said he "can't express" how proud he is of all his children.
Ruby said the kids had told her that they prayed for everyone who was sending negativity their way. One of her daughters told her that people were spreading rumors only because they were looking for acceptance.
"My kids are so strong," she said. "They are amazing. And they have come together and have even prayed for our enemies. These people who are hating on us, they pray that they will feel the love that they are searching for."
As for Chad, Kevin said he was in a "wonderful place right now," with a good group of friends and a healthy outlook on life where he "holds high standards and high boundaries."
"He's definitely not chained in our basement," he said.
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