Religious fanatics Jodi Hildebrandt, left, and Ruby Franke, center, being arrested on child abuse charges on Aug. 30, 2023, in Ivins, Utah.
Washington County Attorney’s Office via AP
Only a few days ago I wrote an article explaining why people who believe absurdities can be persuaded to commit atrocities and now we have a spectacular example of the truth of that claim.
It comes in the form of an Associated Press story of how a fanatical Mormon and mother of six, Ruby Franke, who held the absurd belief that magic demons can take over and 'possess' people because her religion teaches that these demons exist, became convince that her twelve-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter were the Devil incarnate and inflicted physical punishment, including deliberate starvation, on them, "to teach them how to properly repent for imagined ‘sins’ and to cast the evil spirits out of their bodies".
Belief in a magical 'evil' Devil figure is of course fundamental to the Abrahamic superstitions, of which Mormonism is a recent manifestation, and is found in all forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their derivative superstitions. It was particularly strong during the Middle Ages when thousands of (mostly) women were burned alive in the belief that they were so possessed.
Ruby Franke and a business associate, Jodi Hildebrandt, have each been sentenced to 30 years in jail after pleading guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse after the 12-year-old boy managed to escape through a window from the room he was locked in and alerted a neighbour who called the police.
Franke is a well-known YouTuber who made her name lecturing gullible people who assumed her religious fanaticism gave her special insight into how to be a good parent. She and Hildebrandt, a fellow Mormon and mental health counsellor, were arrested after neighbours, the Clarksons, answered their door to find an emaciated boy with bruising and other injuries on their doorstep.
