Tag: Utah

  • American parenting vlogger sentenced to prison for child abuse

    American parenting vlogger sentenced to prison for child abuse

    A Utah mother-of-six who doled out parenting advice on a popular YouTube channel has been sentenced to prison for abusing her children, holding two of them in conditions prosecutors likened to concentration camps.

    Ruby Franke, 42, pleaded guilty in December to four counts of aggravated child abuse and was sentenced on Tuesday to one-to-15 years in prison on each charge.

    Franke’s business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, 54, whom she described as her “mentor,” received the same sentence.

    Beginning in 2015, Franke ran a since-deleted YouTube channel called “8 Passengers” which provided parenting advice. She would later feature on a YouTube channel run by Hildebrandt after separating from her husband.

    Utah prosecutor Eric Clarke said Franke and Hildebrandt held two of the children, then aged nine and 11, in a “concentration camp-like setting.”

    “The children were regularly denied food, water, beds to sleep in, and virtually all forms of entertainment,” 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,” the prosecutor said. “Both children had extensive physical injuries from the abuse that required hospitalization.”

    Clarke also said the children were emotionally abused, “to the extent that each believed, to some degree, that they deserved what was being done to them.

    Eventually, the older one “had the courage” to run away and ask a neighbor to call the police, Clarke said, adding “Heaven knows how much longer they could have survived in that situation.”

    Franke apologized for her actions at her sentencing hearing before Judge John Walton.

    “I was led to believe that this world was an evil place filled with cops who control, hospitals that injure, government agencies that brainwash, church leaders who lie and lust, husbands who refuse to protect and children who need abuse,” she said.

    She said her paranoia “culminated into criminal activity for which I stand before you today ready to take accountability.”

    Franke and Hildebrandt will serve a minimum of four years in prison but their exact prison terms will be decided by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

  • Woman who wrote book on grief after husband’s death charged with his murder

    Woman who wrote book on grief after husband’s death charged with his murder

    Kouri Richins, a mother of three and author of a book about grief following the death of her husband, has been charged with his murder.

    According to prosecutors, she allegedly poisoned Eric Richins with a lethal dose of the synthetic drug fentanyl, which was found in his system after he died on March 4, 2022.

    Ms Richins was detained in Provo, Utah, on Monday and is also charged with possessing GHB, a drug commonly associated with “date rape” cases due to its sedative effects.

    Search warrants seen by KPCW revealed that Mr Richins’ family had expressed suspicion that Ms Richins was responsible for his death, and he had reportedly warned them that she was to blame if anything happened to him. The charges also come after an “unnamed acquaintance” claimed to have sold fentanyl to Ms Richins.

    Ms Richins claimed to have found her husband “cold to the touch” after she had given him a THC gummy and a Moscow Mule to celebrate him selling a house. Following his death, she wrote a picture book titled “Are you with me?” to help children dealing with the loss of a loved one.

    She had been promoting the book in recent television interviews, including an appearance on “Good Things Utah,” where she explained that children needed to be reminded that a loved one’s spirit is always present in the home.

    In addition to the murder charge, Ms Richins is also accused of altering her husband’s life insurance policy to make herself the sole beneficiary. She is currently in custody, and the case is ongoing.

  • Google announces launch of 8gbps internet service

    Google announces launch of 8gbps internet service

    Google Fiber’s unexpected return will result in a significant increase in internet speeds. Google has disclosed that it will offer 5 Gbps and 8 Gbps subscriptions in early 2023.

    Symmetric upload and download rates, a WiFi 6 router, and up to two mesh network extenders will be included in both levels. According to the corporation, the changes should aid in large file transfers while minimising lag and jittering.

    Customers in Kansas City and Utah can test the faster plans as early as November if they sign up to become ‘trusted’ testers. If they qualify, Google will ask how they intend to use the additional bandwidth, according to The Verge.

    This is a significant improvement over Google’s previous-best 2 Gbps service, which was introduced in 2020, and it might make a significant impact if you’re a gamer or rely on cloud computing. If a 150 GB Microsoft Flight Simulator download takes 11 minutes at 2 Gbps, the 8 Gbps plan might reduce that time to under three minutes under perfect conditions.

    It certainly makes ordinary cable internet plans appear costly. Comcast, for example, already provides 6 Gbps service in select regions, but it costs $300 per month on contract and does not yet provide symmetric uploads.

    In any case, the new plans are a statement of intent. Along with the first network additions in five years, the faster speeds indicate that Google is returning to Fiber’s beginnings. That is, it is raising expectations for truly fast internet access while also (to some extent) increasing competition among incumbent providers.

    Of course, this might help Google promote its other services, but you might not mind if it offers telcos an extra incentive to push out ’10G’ and other comparable upgrades sooner than they otherwise would.