Review of Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke Rating *****
This three-episode documentary series is a cautionary tale. While it is about the downfall of a woman who seemed to have everything going for her. Other topics find their way into the story: the side effects of social media, religion, and cults.
Too much of anything is never good. There are plenty of examples of families torn apart by excess exposure through social media or reality TV. For Ruby Franke, it all started with an interest in creating a YouTube channel for family Vlogging. Certain personality types crave attention—some more than others. If I’m honest, I hope that people will read this post or hit the like button. The more comments and likes I get, the better. I’ll check the stats for a day or two, then I’m off to something else. For Ruby, the number of likes she got from her YouTube videos encouraged her to start producing more and more content in search of more likes and subscribers. Eventually, she earned money from her YouTube channel from ads and brand endorsements. Her husband, Kevin, confesses that at their peak they were earning as much as $100,000 a month. They were doing well enough that they were able to move into a much larger house. But the need for fresh content became a burden for everyone in the family.
Because Ruby was forced to film constantly, the filmmakers were able to show this progression from a happy family caught in unscripted moments to more scripted scenes with Ruby becoming more controlling and her children rebelling. Then, just as fast as her channel had taken off, it all came crashing down when Ruby posted a video where she admitted to disciplining her son Chad by not allowing him to sleep in his bedroom for six months. Suddenly, the positive comments turned negative and the views on her subsequent videos plummeted. Their income dropped almost overnight.
This is about the time that Jodi Hildebrandt enters the picture. Jodi was a psychologist initially hired to provide therapy to Chad. This is also the start of what would become a cult involving family members and others. Certain characteristics of cults are easy to spot from the outside. Here are just a few:
- Unreasonable fears about the outside world that often involve evil conspiracies and persecutions
- Absolute authoritarianism without accountability
- Zero tolerance for criticism or questions
- Abuse of members
- A belief that the leader is right at all times
- A belief that the leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or giving validation
Jodi was the cult leader, and Ruby, Kevin, and Chad were followers. Things start to go south when Jodi moves in with the Frankes. It doesn’t take long before Jodi convinces Ruby that Chad and Kevin must go. Her motivation appears to be to gain control over Ruby mentally and physically. Both Kevin and Chad obey and leave their family. Unfortunately, they are so brainwashed into believing that leaving is the right thing to do that they don’t fight back. They accept their fate.
Both Kevin and Chad are well spoken. They are the narrators of this dark story along with Kevin and Ruby’s daughter Shari Franke. But there are signs throughout that something isn’t quite right. Both Kevin and Chad are convinced that Jodi is a messenger from God. When Ruby calls Kevin, after a year of not speaking to him, to inform him that two of his kids are possessed by the devil, he doesn’t say that’s crazy. He seems to accept that as fact since it is coming from his wife. There’s one point where the police are describing to Kevin that two of his kids were found emaciated. He asks them, What does emaciated mean? For me, that is an indication that this entire family lived in a religious bubble. They didn’t trust the outside world, so they made no effort to learn about the outside world.
The maltreatment of Ruby’s two youngest children is the hardest thing to accept. When a police officer finds the youngest daughter, whose head had been shaved, sitting alone in a closet, she is so traumatized that she doesn’t respond. She sits there like someone who has spent the last ten years in solitary confinement with periodic torture sessions.
Would any of this have happened if Jodi had not entered the picture? It’s hard to say. Ruby is a narcissist. She needed the constant adulation. She likely would have blamed her husband and kids for her problems and self-destructed. It’s too bad because she also had potential.
Shari Franke wrote a memoir about her experience – The House of My Mother