YouTube vloggers, Ruby and Kevin Franke, have vehemently denied accusations of child abuse after they revealed that their son had been sleeping on a beanbag for months.
The social media family, who hail from Utah, US, run a popular YouTube channel called 8 Passengers, where they share the ins and outs of their daily life with their 2.46 million subscribers.
The couple has six children: 17-year-old Shari, 15-year-old Chad, 13-year-old Abby, 11-year-old Julie, eight-year-old Russell, and six-year-old Eve.
The family has now become the target of abuse allegations after the emergence of a now-deleted video, in which their teenage son Chad explained that he had his room taken away.
The 15-year-old said, "My bedroom was taken away for seven months. I was sleeping on a beanbag since October."
This came after Chad played a number of pranks on his eight-year-old brother Russell, and after allegedly seeking advice from a therapist, the Frankes told Chad that he shouldn't stay in his shared room with his brother while another bedroom in their house was being renovated.
Per The Metro, the couple claims that they gave Chad the option to sleep on a pullout guest bed, an inflatable mattress, or elsewhere in the house, but that Chad chose the beanbag because it was the most comfortable.
The family was also criticized for another video in which Ruby refused to drive to her six-year-old's school after she had forgotten to take in her packed lunch.
Recalling a teacher asking her to make the 45-minute drive to bring her child lunch, Ruby said: "I responded and said, 'Eve is responsible for making her own lunches in the morning, so the natural outcome is she is just going to be hungry. And hopefully nobody gives her food and nobody steps in and gives her lunch'."
The YouTube channel Tea Spill shared the clip, and the narrator said: "Instead of being concerned for her young daughter, she says to the vlog that she hopes no one shares their lunch with her to teach her some sort of sick lesson. And just remember this kid is literally six years old."
A Change.org petition was even set up to send child protection services to the Franke household, and a division of Child and Family Services did proceed to visit the home.
After speaking to all of the Franke children individually, the case - which named Ruby as the alleged perpetrator - was closed. Filings state that the allegations were unsupported.
Speaking to Insider about the ordeal, Ruby said: "It was just so malicious. They knew what they were doing was out of context. They were purely seeking to throw hate. That was their only objective. A reasonable person would not have seen [the Eve lunch video] and thought, 'She is a child abuser'."
