Utah police found a secret “panic room” in parenting blogger Jodi Hildebrandt’s $5.3 million desert home in Ivins, to which convicted fellow blogger Ruby Franke sent her children to stay, new documents released over the weekend said.
Both bloggers were convicted of four counts each of second-degree aggravated child abuse in December 2023 and sentenced to 30 years in prison after one of Ms. Franke’s children escaped the home and went to a neighbor’s house. The neighbor noticed that he looked emaciated and had duct tape on his ankles and reported the abuse to the police.
The room, called a “safe room” by Ms. Hildebrandt’s husband, was discovered when police raided Ms. Hildebrandt’s home looking for Ms. Franke’s other children.
It was also mentioned on a police radio dispatch call on Aug. 30, when an officer said, “There’s a panic room inside the garage, downstairs and beneath the garage. He’s calling it a safe room.”
The room was in the home’s basement behind a vault-like door, and police thought one of Ms. Franke’s children was inside. Instead, they found a bare room with a Murphy bed and cleaning supplies.
The missing child was found in a closet in Ms. Hildebrandt’s bathroom. She was emaciated and ate an entire small pizza when police offered it to her, then asked for more.
Police later learned that two of Ms. Franke’s children were sent to stay in the room at times.
The abuse that Ms. Franke’s children endured under Ms. Franke and Ms. Hildebrandt included forced physical labor, withholding food, binding at least one child’s hands and feet, and emotional abuse.
The children were told that they were evil and that the punishments were necessary. The two bloggers seemed to be motivated by religious fanaticism.
Some of the videos posted by Ms. Franke and Ms. Hildebrandt encouraged parents to raise their kids in “truth.”
Ms. Hildebrandt said in one video that pain can be a good thing for children to experience.
In a phone call to an unknown person after her arrest released by the attorney’s office, Ms. Hildebrandt reportedly said, “Now, it’s abusive to make a kid sleep on the floor. It’s ridiculous. You can’t even raise your kids anymore.”
In another call, Ms. Franke said adults can “have a really hard time understanding that children can be full of evil and what it takes to fight it,” and she doesn’t “know any other adults who are going to see the truth.”
“The good works needs to be painful — otherwise the service becomes another feel-good-distraction,” she wrote in a journal entry. “A day of fasting and prayer for me after learning my children have been spawns of Satan. R has been out of control. Pee, poop, lie, steal, run away. E crying, whaling (sic), you could not know what this has been like unless you were here.”
Ms. Franke stopped posting on her blog 8Passengers after backlash over some of her discipline methods, such as withholding Christmas presents from some of the children.
“My kids are literally starving,” Ms. Franke, wearing red lipstick, said in one video in front of a Christmas tree. “I hesitate to say this because this is going to sound like, I’m, like, a mean barbarian, but I told the kids, I said, I’m not even going to let you eat breakfast until you get your chores done.”
Other discipline she shared in her videos included making her son sleep on a beanbag chair instead of his bed for pulling a prank on his brother.
Ms. Franke’s husband Kevin was separated from the family at the time.
“I know nothing that’s going on in their lives or anything going on,” Mr. Franke said when police interviewed him. He was not charged with abuse.
