Ruby Franke's family is speaking out amid her incarceration.
The disgraced family YouTuber, 43, is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence, after she and the family's therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, 55, pleaded guilty in December 2023 to felony child abuse involving two of the former's six children with her estranged husband Kevin Franke.
The former couple's six children, which featured in the YouTube channel 8 passengers are daughters Shari, Abby, Julie and Eve and sons Chad and Russell.
Chad and Kevin, speaking out for the first time since Ruby's sentencing, opened up to People about where they stand with Ruby.
"I definitely hate the things she did," Chad, her eldest son, said, noting: "I feel like I'm also a very lighthearted person in a sense where I would never wish someone to have a bad life."
"What I really hope is that from here she becomes a better person and that she works on that, and she truly tries to change," he maintained.
© InstagramChad then shared: "I have no contact with her and I don't plan to anytime soon," before adding: "But then again, she's still blood."
He went on: "She's still my mom and maybe down the road, eventually I'll have a conversation with her, and maybe eventually have a relationship where we can just talk but when it comes to her actually being a mom and then eventually a grandma, I don't think I'll ever have that kind of close relationship again."
© Instagram"It's hard of course," he relented, though added: "But when I go home, I feel like no one is missing, I don't really feel like, 'I wish mom was here.' I don't really have those feelings really at all."
"It doesn't feel wrong not having her in my home and that's okay. So I feel like I'm in a good spot even though she's not here."
© InstagramRuby's estranged husband, who filed for divorce a month before she pleaded guilty, has similarly cut off contact. "The last letter that I received from her from prison was maybe in March or April of last year and then I requested The Department of Corrections to ask her to stop writing me," he revealed.
Kevin explained: "I didn't want to hear anymore. I didn't like what she was saying — and I'm not going to share that, that's between her and me — but it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel good. And I'm very angry. I'm still very angry. And I need space and I need time."
