Olly Lambert's The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke

Olly Lambert's three-part documentary The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which is currently on the BBC website, is a brilliant and horrifying piece of work. It's like a David Lynch film, every frame of which is true.

Lambert has written about the making of it in the Independent:

Last May, I sat in a Utah coffee shop with Chad Franke, the son of the infamous 'momfluencer' turned convicted child abuser Ruby. Once regarded as 'America’s mom', Ruby and her family’s former counsellor Jodi Hildebrandt are now both serving up to 30 years in prison for aggravated child abuse on Ruby’s young children. “My mom would always tell me I’d end up in prison,” Chad says casually, then turns to look out the window. “Which is kind of ironic, when you think about it.”

Eight months earlier, Chad and his family had become headline news all across the US and beyond. Theirs was a dark tale of a spectacular fall from grace, with Ruby’s mugshot appearing on magazine front covers and branded a 'Monster Mom' after her 12-year-old son was found in the haze of the Utah desert begging for food and water.

He was emaciated and covered in deep wounds, and would lead police to discover his youngest sister – mute and similarly malnourished – in a closet at the home of the family therapist. Medics later determined that the young boy would have died within two weeks had he not unlocked his own handcuffs and heroically sneaked out an unlocked door to get help. His actions undoubtedly saved his and his sister’s life.

Questions about what had happened behind the façade of this 'perfect' Mormon family still remained unanswered, and Chad, his sister Shari and their dad Kevin were keen to give their first, detailed account of what really went on behind closed doors and when the cameras were turned off.

I watched all three parts last week and was left with three overriding impressions:

• just how weird the Mormon faith is. It has taken the least appealing aspects of Evangelical Christianity and added bucketfuls of its own woo. And then imagine whole towns dominated by it.
• the immense damage to people that such high-demand religions and bad psychotherapy can do. All practitioners should be constantly aware of the dangers of what they are doing.
• the heartbreaking politeness of the abused child.

I hesitate to recommend something so dark, but this is a brilliant piece of work.