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“8 Passengers” host’s arrest on Aug. 30.
Franke, who was initially charged with two counts of child abuse, is scheduled to make an initial court appearance on Friday, Sept. 8.
The momfluencer’s lawyer declined to comment.
A press release from the Washington County Attorney’s Office claimed that “each defendant is accused of causing or permitting serious physical injury to the victims in three different ways: (1) a combination of multiple physical injuries or torture, (2) starvation or malnutrition that jeopardizes life, and (3) causing severe emotional harm.”
Police arrested Franke and her ConneXions co-founder last week after one of the YouTube personality’s children escaped through a window and ran to a neighbor’s house for food and water.
The neighbor, who noticed the child was “emaciated” and had duct tape wrapped around their extremities, called police, who then discovered a second child who was malnourished, according to the arrest report.
Both children were transported to a nearby hospital, and Franke and Hildebrandt were booked and held without bail.
Franke’s husband, Kevin Franke, said via his attorney, Randy S. Kester, that his client’s “urgent focus is simply to keep his children together under his fatherly care.”
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Despite the charges Ruby is facing, Kevin and the influencer remain married; however, Ruby’s siblings called her arrest a “weight that’s been lifted.”
“The only thing that we ultimately care about is that our nieces and nephews are safe and they are,” Ruby’s sister Bonnie Hoellein shared in a YouTube video, noting that the allegations against her sister have been testing her “belief in God.”
“I know that [the kids] will be taken care of,” she added. “I know the kids will be OK.”
Hoellein’s video came after she and her siblings released a joint statement explaining why they “kept quiet” about the alleged abuse.
When fans first raised concerns about Ruby’s treatment of her children, which included refusing to bring her 6-year-old daughter’s lunch to school, Ruby dismissed the viewers as “malicious.”
