Netflix’s recent documentary, Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story, has drawn renewed attention to the horrific acts of Ruby Franke, a mother who had subjected her children to unbearable pain and torture. She and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were finally arrested in August 2023, after Franke’s visibly suffering son had escaped their house in Utah and alerted neighbors.
The Netflix documentary promised to dig deep into the “twisted tale of manipulation”, which had understandably shook the world when it had first come to light following the arrest of Franke and Hildebrandt. The documentary, keeping true to its promise, is hard-hitting and even includes the footage of the moment Franke’s son escaped by somehow jumping out of a window with duct tape around his ankles and wrists.
Skye Borgman, the director of the Netflix documentary, talked to Tudum about the boy’s escape, saying, “If that young boy hadn’t escaped that day…I think those kids probably wouldn’t be with us today. Just the simple fact that this little boy escapes from Jodi Hildebrandt’s house, where the abuse is happening, not from his mom’s house. That, to me, was the simplest and the most diabolical part of the story.”
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She further explained her decision to take up this incident as the subject of her documentary, saying, “All of these things were happening in full view and broadcast to the world. This kind of manipulative behaviour and coercive control can happen right in front of your eyes. It’s essential to understand that if we want to prevent this from happening again.”
As reported by Ladbible, “Franke and Hildebrandt are both behind bars at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City after pleading guilty to numerous counts of child abuse. The pair were each sentenced to four consecutive terms of one to 15 years in February last year, and both have first parole hearings scheduled for December 2026.”
Three days after the arrest, Franke had pleaded guilty. According to a statement released by her attorneys, “Initially, Ms. Franke believed that Jodi Hildebrandt had the insight to offer a path to continual improvement. Ms. Hildebrandt took advantage of this quest and twisted it into something heinous.”
It should be noted here that Franke had joined Mormon therapist Hildebrandt’s ConneXions podcast in 2022. The Netflix documentary explores Hildebrandt’s role in the abuse as she became obsessed with the idea of fixing these kids.
Tonight I clicked on the #1 show on Netflix: “Evil Influencer: the Jodi Hildebrandt Story”. And man oh man am I sick to my stomach.
I knew this story was bad, I’ve followed the Ruby Franke story since day 1. But it so much worse than I realized.
These women abused Ruby’s… pic.twitter.com/VRE9o6ueCv
— Maile (@MaileOnX) January 6, 2026
Talking about Hildebrandt’s involvement in children’s lives, Borgman explained, “It’s like the 101 of how to get somebody to fall in line. She uses threats and all these cult-y techniques, and she isolates them. It really is just the methodology that she incorporates that really works to separate these people from anything that is positive in their lives.”
However, that does not change the fact that Franke had subjected her children to inhumane torture, which she later admitted to. She had held her son’s head underwater, tied him with ropes, and gave the children bare minimum food, just enough for them to survive. Franke believed that her children were “possessed and evil” and therefore needed this kind of treatment to be okay. She also tried to make the children believe the same, who were helpless recipients of the harrowing abuse until the boy managed to escape.
The Netflix documentary does not feature the children, and according to the director, they are trying to move on and search for their own normal.
