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In one of the calls to police, Franke’s oldest daughter Shari requested a welfare check at Franke’s Springville home on Sept. 18, 2022.
The call was made to police less than a year before Franke, 41, wasarrestedalongside her podcasting partner Jodi Hildebrandt on Aug. 30 after her 12-year-old son, who allegedly had duct tape on his wrists and ankles, escaped from a window at Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins, Utah, and ran to a neighbor’s house pleading for food and water, police say.
The two women have since been charged with six felony counts of child abuse, the Washington County Attorney’s Officeconfirmed to PEOPLE.
“[She] asked that we check on the kids and make sure they were safe and had food for the extended period,” says the reporting officer with the Springville Police Department.
In the report, the officer said he went to Franke’s home and knocked on the door but no one answered.
“The kids were seen through the windows but would not answer the door,” states the report.
Earlier, in April of 2022, a case worker with the Division of Child and Family Services contacted the police after “she was made aware of two kids running out in the road unsupervised,” according to the police report. The officer checked out the complaint but did not see any children on the street.
According to the police records, Franke herself called police twice in 2020 to report that she was receiving threatening messages.
In one incident, on April 27, 2020, Franke told police that she received “a text message from somebody stating they were going to take her family down and there will be riots at their door when the world finds out the truth.”
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Franke documented her strict parenting style on the family’s YouTube channel 8Passengers for years before she transitioned last summer to posting family advice podcasts with Hildebrandt on her ConneXions channel.
YouTube deleted both the 8Passengers and ConneXions pagesfollowing the women’s arrest last week, and a spokesperson recently told PEOPLE the platform implemented a permanent ban on Franke in light of her child abuse charges.
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go towww.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
source: people.com
