A TV movie about Ruby Franke, the Utah parenting influencer convicted of aggravated child abuse, is set to premiere this month — and Franke’s estranged eldest daughter has called the film “trash.”
“Mormon Mom Gone Wrong: The Ruby Franke Story” is scheduled to debut on Lifetime this Saturday at either 6 p.m. or 9 p.m. Mountain time, depending on which cable and satellite system one uses — and can be found on Hulu and other streaming services on Sunday.
Shari Franke, the oldest of Ruby Franke’s six children, posted on her Instagram story on Oct. 4 that “none of us were contacted about the movie. None of the proceeds are going to the kids.”
“I saw the trailer suddenly in class and had an anxiety attack,” Shari Franke wrote. “This movie is trash, and only hurts my siblings more. Please do not support this movie.”
The publishing house Simon & Schuster announced on Oct. 15 that it will release Shari Franke’s memoir, “The House of My Mother,” under its Gallery Books imprint on Jan. 7.
According to the publisher, the book, with the subtitle “A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom,” will describe “the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.”
(Simon & Schuster) Shari Franke's memoir, "The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom," is scheduled to be released Jan. 7, 2025, on Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books imprint.
Shari Franke, now a student at Brigham Young University, testified last Wednesday before a Utah legislative committee, calling herself “a victim of family vlogging.” She urged lawmakers to consider the ethical and financial issues that come from being a web influencer, particularly when putting one’s family on camera.
”There is never, ever a good reason for posting your children online for money or fame,” Shari Franke said, according to a FOX 13 report. “There is no such thing as a moral or ethical family blogger.”
The Lifetime movie arrives 15 months after Franke’s son, then 12, escaped from the Ivins home of Franke’s business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, and asked a neighbor for help. Law enforcement officers soon found Franke’s daughter, then 10, inside the home. Both children were malnourished, police said.
The discovery of the children, and what Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke called the “concentration camp-like setting” inside Hildebrandt’s house, led to Franke and Hildebrandt being sentenced to prison about six months after their arrest. Each pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse, and in February each was sentenced to between one and 15 years per count — meaning both will serve at least four years in prison.
Lifetime’s publicity materials for the movie describe how Franke, her husband and their “six adorable kids” were part of the YouTube channel “8 Passengers,” which the network called “a web series documenting the group’s every-day-life and Ruby’s [Latter-day Saint]-influenced parenting style.”
Franke’s “perfect life,” Lifetime’s publicists wrote, “took a turn for the worse when Ruby’s marriage counselor Jodi Hildebrandt … entered their lives.” The description continues: “Jodi and Ruby’s views of disciplining children were not ‘strict parenting’ but actually abuse.”
The movie stars Emilie Ullerup, a regular on the Hallmark Channel series “Chesapeake Shores,” as Franke. Heather Locklear, best known for her starring role on the ’90s nighttime soap “Melrose Place,” portrays Hildebrandt. The movie was shot in Canada earlier this year.
A Lifetime spokesperson said Friday the network would not make a copy of the movie available to critics before it airs.
The movie is one of six of Lifetime’s “Ripped from the Headlines” series of true-crime stories scheduled to premiere this fall. It’s the same series that produced “The Gabby Petito Story,” a 2022 TV movie that retold the real-life story of a Florida travel vlogger who was killed by her boyfriend in Wyoming shortly after the pair drove through Utah.
