Content warning: This story discusses child abuse.
The case surrounding Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt continues.
Two months after the previous business partners got 4 consecutive one to fifteen yr prison sentences on child abuse charges, Ruby’s estranged husband Kevin Franke has filed a lawsuit against Jodi.
Within the court documents, as obtained by local outlet KUTV and viewed by E! News, Kevin alleges Jodi was accountable for physical and emotional abuse against two of his and Ruby’s six children—listed as 11-year-old son “R.F.” and 9-year-old daughter “E.F.” within the documents—after Ruby moved them into Jodi’s home in May 2023.
Within the documents, Kevin alleges Jodi confined his children to the basement of her house, “from which they weren’t allowed to go away without the permission of the Defendant or Ruby Franke” upon the specter of punishment. Among the many punishments and “physical torture” Jodi is accused of inflicting against R.F. are “wall sits, carrying boxes filled with books up and down stairs and […] outside labor without shoes and in the summertime heat.”
The latter accusation is further detailed as R.F. being forced to face in direct summer sunlight for days on end with minimal water and no sun protection, leading to “repeated and serious sunburns with blistered and sluffing skin.”