Ruby & Jodi: A Cult of Sin and Influence

What Is the Series About?

Ruby & Jodi: A Cult of Sin and Influence is a four-part HBO Max documentary series about the criminal prosecution of Ruby Franke, a once-popular family vlogger, and Jodi Hildebrandt, a self-styled therapist and founder of the ConneXions self-help program. The series premiered on September 1, 2025, and charts how two women who publicly promoted faith, family values, and mental wellness descended into a pattern of severe child abuse rooted in cult-like coercive control. Directed by Olivia Crist Grant, the docuseries draws on Ruby Franke's personal journals, survivor testimony, and investigative reporting to reconstruct one of the most disturbing child welfare cases to emerge from America's family influencer world.

The series is available via HBO Max and is also listed across streaming platforms including Hulu, positioning it at the intersection of true crime, social media culture criticism, and child protection advocacy.

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The Case

Ruby Franke built a substantial online following through her YouTube channel 8 Passengers, where she documented family life with her six children in Utah. Behind the curated content, however, investigators would later uncover a deeply disturbing reality. Jodi Hildebrandt, a counselor and the architect of the ConneXions parenting and self-help system, had become a dominant force in Franke's life — and, according to the series and law enforcement, a primary driver of the abusive ideology applied to Franke's children.

The case broke open in September 2023 when one of Franke's children managed to escape and reach a neighbor, who immediately alerted authorities. When law enforcement arrived, they found two of Franke's children in a state of severe physical abuse and malnourishment. The conditions described by investigators and later confirmed through the criminal proceedings were shocking even by the standards of experienced child welfare professionals.

Both Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested in September 2023 and subsequently charged with aggravated child abuse. The prosecution presented evidence — including Franke's own journals — that detailed how ConneXions teachings had been weaponized to justify withholding food, imposing physical punishment, and enforcing extreme emotional deprivation on the children under the guise of spiritual discipline and "accountability." Both women were convicted and sentenced to prison terms in Utah, where they remain incarcerated.

The series frames Hildebrandt as a "rogue therapist" whose unorthodox and controlling belief system gave Franke a pseudo-religious framework to rationalize escalating abuse. The docuseries is careful to show how this dynamic — a charismatic, authoritarian figure supplying ideology to a follower in a position of parental power — mirrors classic cult mechanics, even when operating in a domestic, suburban setting.

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Production

The four-part series was directed by Olivia Crist Grant (credited as "Olivia Crist" on some platforms including Rotten Tomatoes) and produced under the HBO Max and Investigation Discovery banner. According to review and premiere coverage, the production makes extensive use of Ruby Franke's personal journals as a primary source — a particularly chilling narrative device, as the entries reveal how Franke processed and internally justified the abuse in real time. Survivor testimony is also central to the series, lending direct, unmediated witness to events that unfolded largely behind closed doors.

The decision to build the series around journals and firsthand accounts rather than relying primarily on courtroom footage or talking-head commentary gives the docuseries a more intimate and psychologically probing quality than many entries in the true-crime genre. The production also contextualizes the case within broader cultural forces: the rise of the "momfluencer" phenomenon, the commercialization of parenting content on YouTube, and the vulnerability of social media audiences — and creators — to self-help systems that blur the line between spiritual guidance and authoritarian control.

The series premiered on September 1, 2025, with all four episodes made available on HBO Max. Its IMDb title ID is tt37721541, catalogued as a TV Mini Series (2025).

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Reception

Early viewer and critical reaction to the series has been intense. Review coverage describes it as a docuseries about "cults and momfluencers" that "escalates in crazy ways," capturing the disbelief many audiences feel when confronting the gap between Franke's public persona and the private reality uncovered by investigators.

UK coverage of the series quoted viewer reactions including phrases like "beyond heartbreaking," "insanity," and "horrifying documentary." At least one viewer specifically cited a preference for this HBO Max production over a competing Netflix treatment of the same case, praising its depth of detail and use of primary source material.

The series has also generated broader cultural conversation around the dangers of unregulated self-help systems, the parasocial dynamics of family vlogging, and the systemic failures that can allow abuse to continue in plain sight when perpetrators maintain carefully managed public images. Critics and commentators have noted that the ConneXions framework operated in a space between licensed therapy and religious community — a regulatory grey zone that the case has prompted calls to examine more closely.

A verified IMDb audience rating was not available at the time of publication.

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The Case Today

As of the series' premiere in September 2025, both Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt remain imprisoned in Utah, serving their sentences for aggravated child abuse. The criminal case is closed, with convictions secured and sentences handed down. The surviving children — whose identities and full details have been withheld in most coverage out of respect for their privacy and safety — are no longer in the custody of either woman.

The case continues to reverberate across conversations about child welfare law, the accountability of online influencers, and the role of faith-adjacent self-help systems in enabling abuse. Advocacy groups working in child protection have pointed to the Franke–Hildebrandt case as a landmark example of how cult-like dynamics can operate within ordinary-looking family structures, amplified and partially concealed by social media.

For audiences encountering the case through the HBO Max series, the docuseries serves as both a detailed criminal account and a broader cautionary examination of the systems — digital, spiritual, and therapeutic — that made the abuse possible for as long as it continued.