HURRICANE, Utah, Sept. 9, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — A former Utah YouTube personality and her business partner have experienced health problems during their first ten days in jail.
Ruby Franke, 41, whose 8 Passengers YouTube channel had more than 2 million subscribers before it was shut down, and Jodi Hildebrandt, 54, founder of the Orem-based counseling program ConneXions Classroom, were both arrested on child abuse charges Aug. 30.
At a court hearing Friday a judge ordered both be held without bail in Washington County’s Purgatory Correctional Facility even after health concerns came up at the hearing with both women. Review hearings on their detention were set for later this month at the request of defense counsel.
Sgt. Lucas Alfred, a Washington County Sheriff’s Office public information officer, said officials could not comment on the health concerns because of privacy issues.
But he could confirm both women are now housed in cells directly adjacent the jail’s medical facility.
The sergeant acknowledge their assigned inmate housing designations place them where they can be readily observed by medical staff. ‘Unfortunately jail is not a great place to be” Alfred said. “It can affect you.”
Franke and Hildebrandt’s housing designations are held by only a handful of inmates, a perusal of Friday’s jail inmate roster shows for the roughly 500 inmates now in the Purgatory facility.
Alfred noted both women were healthy enough to attend Friday’s hearing. And the judge ordering them held without bail would indicate any health concerns were not serious enough for a release from jail, he said.
Both women face two counts of aggravated child abuse. They were arrested Aug. 30 after a 12-year-old boy escaped an Ivins home and ran to a neighbor’s house requesting food and water, according Santa Clara-Ivins police.
Police say the boy climbed out the window of the home and sought help from neighbors, who saw duct tape on his ankles and wrists and called law enforcement.
Santa Clara-Ivins police officers responded and “observed the wounds and the malnourishment of [the child] to be severe,” according to a probable cause statement filed in 5th District Court. The child was taken to St. George Regional Hospital with “deep lacerations from being tied up with rope and from his malnourishment,” the affidavit says.
Officers then responded to Hildebrandt’s home and found Franke’s 10-year-old daughter inside. The girl also was malnourished and taken to the hospital, police said. The children are now in the custody of the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, police said.
