PARENTING EXPERTS JAILED FOR CHILD ABUSE

     In Utah yesterday, two principles of a Youtube vlog channel were sentenced to between 4-16 years in the State Penitentiary on multiple charges of Child Abuse. Ruby Franke and Counselor Jodi Hildebrandt were jailed last Fall after a 12 year-old escaped and was discovered begging for food and water. "The child had been bound with duct tape and had visible open wounds as a result of being tied with rope," according to police. The two accused ran a vlog on so-called traditional parenting called 8 Passengers, which had 2,300,000 subscribers.

   "The children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment," Prosecutor Eric Clarke said. "They were isolated from others, and were hidden when people came to visit the house. They were also forced to do manual labor outdoors in the extreme summer heat, at times without shoes or socks. Both children had extensive physical injuries from the abuse that required hospitalization. The children were emotionally abused to the extent that each believed, to some degree, that they deserved what was being done to them. Heaven knows how much longer they could have survived in that situation."

   Unsurprisingly, until police moved in, nobody knew what was going on, including Ruby Franke's separated husband, who is running all over the Media playing the Victim Card despite having Visitation Rights and participating in several videos himself. Kevin Franke, a professor at Brigham Young University, once even called the police and tried charged his own daughter with burglary after she ran away from the abusive environment and sought refuge in a home that Franke owned. 

    All three of these characters are members of the Mormon Cult; and as we've seen before, the Cult rallies to protect its members like this. Much like the Scientology and Moonie cults, the Mormons have considerable reach in media and government. In a sane society like other countries have, Kevin Franke would be tried too and dangerous cults like these would be suppressed. But Utah is dominated by the the despotism of the cult and this is tolerated in exceptional America where such organizations are seen as political assets: traditional religions, not so much. 

    

     All of this would be bad enough by itself, but the most troubling thing is that over two million American parents sought parenting advice from this collection of scumbags. The same demographic which sends its children and teens to public schools in full awareness of what hells those places are. With the degree of abuse, exploitation, and neglect that Americans experience until their early 20s, it's a wonder that the younger generations aren't more messed up than they already are. The situation is so bad here that many foreign governments discourage participation in cultural exchange programs with the United States. It's not unknown that immigrant families have returned to their homelands because the culture here is so toxic for children and young adults. 

   By and large, though, American parents are in complete denial about any of this. Typically, they also deny any responsibility for this state of affairs and demand top-down solutions, so it's only logical that cultish approaches would appeal to them. Over the years, I've seen enough of American parenting, public schools, children's media, and the ridiculously-named 'child welfare' and 'juvenile justice' systems to believe that all of the talk about America's concern for the children is just another of the numerous cultural illusions that we collectively enchant ourselves with. 

  Sadly, unlike politicians, I don't have an easy answer to this problem; since it really begins with parents' inability or unwillingness to address it. The Government---if we had one that itself really was interested in solving the problem---could take a few proactive measures; but expecting any kind of top-down solution when the problem is this deep and has gone on for this long is pure fantasy. The problem needs to be turned around at the individual level, but until and unless parents acknowledge the problems even exist, we can expect stories like this Utah case to become increasingly common.